Music and brain chemicals

The brain!

A diagram of how music and the brain are related
A cool infographic about the brain and music![photo: Dr. Jockers]

What is dopamine?

Dopamine is a chemical that is released when people engage in activities like eating food, receiving money, doing drugs, eating sweets ... and listening to music! Dopamine pathways play a big part in reward motivated behavior and many mental health disorders are related to an excess or lack of dopamine. While most people with too much or too little dopamine need to seek medical help, increasing your dopamine in small amounts is easy to do. One way to do this is to listen to music! (Cristol, 2019).

An image of the brain
The brain! [photo: Getty Images]

Dopamine

How does music actually increase it?

So how does music actually make you happier? Dopamine is released when people listen to most music, but especially when it's music that they really enjoy. One study was done on a group of 8 people to determine if the amount of dopamine released is affected by how much someone enjoys the music. The sample size was really small, but this group was narrowed down from a larger group because they exhibited a specific trait: they had a song that consistently gave them chills, no matter when or where they were listening to the song. The scientists wanted to measure the amount of dopamine released when the participants were "feeling their highest emotional response to the music." They did different comparisons of music the person got chills to vs music they didn't and used PET scans and MRIs to determine that dopamine transmission was much higher when they were listening to music they enjoyed (McGilchrist, 2011)

Benefits

What are the benefits of music therapy?

Anja's Experience: Music and Focus

Personally, I find that I often can't focus on doing work if I am not listening to music. If I try to do school work without listening to music, my brain tries to multitask and I end up talking to myself in my head with a little commentary of life. So I can't focus on the work that I'm doing while all that is going on onside my head. Listening to music shuts off the personal commentary in my head. By playing familiar music, I am able to fully focus on what I'm doing because I am already familiar with what's going on in my head and I have control over it. So for me, listening to music drowns out my own thoughts so that I can use my brain to do work! I highly reccommend that people try listening to their favorite albums while doing their school work!