Music Makes the World Go 'Round

Imagine you're sitting in your room just in an awful and grumpy mood, feeling like nothing can pull you out of that funk. But suddenly, out of nowhere, your favorite upbeat song comes on. I'm betting that a little part of your mood will be changed in that moment.

It is proven that music can alter your moods and emotion. According to Natalie Sarrazin, an Associate Professor of Music at the College at Brockport (2016), music is "therapeutic, cathartic, and allows transcendence" (par. 15). For humans, this phenomenon begins at birth. If you ever put on music for a toddler or baby, you can sometimes see then moving along to the beat. This is because being able to recognize and enjoy music is an inborn human trait. From this, humans can learn to coordinate sound with muscle movement, as well as visuals. Later on, music can also help with memory learning. A few examples include the ABCs song and Old McDonald had a Farm (e-i-e-i-o). I know many of us learned our alphabet and animal sounds this way and we still remember these songs today.

Below is a video that explains how singing can assist with brain development in young children and how group singing is important. It also can make children more happy!

Dancing can also have a positive effect on mood and development. It helps us be successful at learning by observation and movement as there is an overlap in our brains where we observe movement and actually move (Asbury & Rich, 2013). Growing up, I was a cheerleader and a dancer. I learned cheers and dances by having them taught to me but within a few years, I realized I could learn choreography by simply watching a dance being performed. Still to this day (several, several years later), I can still fully remember every dance and cheer that I've ever done. This just proves that dance and music truly does help with memorization and observation.

Below is an interesting video regarding music memory. As the speaker points out, it's so fascinating that we can remember the words to so many songs but we can't remember other things (like anniversaries, for example)

References:

Sarrazin, N. (2016). Music and the brain. In Music and the Child. Open SUNY Textbooks. https://milnepublishing.geneseo.edu/music-and-the-child/chapter/chapter-7/

Asbury, C., & Rich, B. (Eds.). (2013). Learning, Arts, and the Brain. Dana Foundation, Dana Consortium on Arts and Cognition. https://dana.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/learning-arts-and-brain-dana-press.pdf