essay on how music affects your mood

How Listening to Music Affects Your Mood

Music can be seen as a coping resource that enhances internal abilities..

Posted November 8, 2022 | Reviewed by Abigail Fagan

• Music is a tool that can ease negative emotions and enhance positive emotions.
• Music can help people cope with stress or distract them from a bad mood.
• Many people use music to trigger their memory and remind themselves of important past events.

Music makes life better. Music is used across cultures and ages as a powerful mood regulator. We regularly use music to soothe our souls and comfort our pain. The emotional power of music is one of the main motivations why people devote so much time, energy, and money to it. People use music to achieve various goals, such as feeling more energized, maintaining focus on tasks, and reducing boredom . For example, we rely on music to help us power through workouts and tackle tasks we’d rather ignore, and we manipulate our moods with melodies.

So, how does music produce such a powerful effect on the mind?

1. Coping with stress

Music offers a resource for emotion regulation . For instance, sad music enables the listener to disengage from the distressing situations (breakup, death, etc.), and focus instead on the beauty of the music. Further, lyrics that resonate with the listener’s personal experience can give voice to feelings or experiences that one might not be able to express oneself. Listening to soft and slow music, such as classical music, is better for managing negative emotions compared to hard or heavy music. Listening to happy music can influence the way one perceives the world in a stressful situation. For example, upbeat tunes can give you an optimistic outlook and make you feel better.

2. Music and memory

Listening to a piece of music that was played a lot during a significant life event (e.g., a family celebration) many years ago can trigger a deeply nostalgic emotional experience. The feeling is not in the music, but in what it reminds us. Many listeners use music to remind themselves of valued past events, becoming nostalgic. For example, nostalgia is a powerful force around Christmas ('White Christmas'). Some people may have a fond memory associated with Elgar (Pomp and Circumstance) for graduation ceremonies, and Pachelbel’s “Canon in D Major,” (or Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March” in C major) for weddings.

3. Pleasure in sad music

For some, sad music intensifies the feelings of sorrow and loss connected to personal events and memories. Listening to a sad song while in a sad mood is like someone (a friend) empathizing with your experience. The reward could be purely biochemical. We have all experienced the feeling of relief and serenity after a good cry. At the biological level, sad music is linked to the hormone prolactin (associated with crying), a chemical that helps to curb grief (Huron, 2011). Prolactin produces feelings of calmness to counteract mental pain.

4. The feeling of being moved

Music often makes us feel like crying because we experience a sense of awe and admiration. The feeling is a kind of wonder at realizing what other minds can create. In response to these emotions, we may experience goosebumps and motivation for the improvement of self and society. The experience is often intense and pleasurable.

5. Music and time perception

Music shows that time perception is essentially subjective — music can distort “clock time”. Music is a powerful emotional stimulus that changes our relationship with time. Time does indeed seem to fly when listening to pleasant music. Hearing pleasant music seems to divert attention away from time processing. Moreover, this attention-related shortening effect appears to be greater in the case of low-arousing (calm) music with a slow tempo. For example, music is used in waiting rooms to reduce the subjective duration of time spent waiting or in supermarkets to encourage people to stay for longer and buy more. Consumers spend more time in the grocery store when the background music is slow. Music keeps workers happy when doing repetitive and otherwise boring work.

In sum, music can alter our moods, emotions, and motivation. We can use music to validate or challenge our moods. Music can also reflect the mood on a national level. For example, the protest song “Baraye,” (the anthem of Iran’s “Woman, Life, Liberty” protest movement) expresses Iranians’ painful grievances.

Shahram Heshmat, Ph.D., is an associate professor emeritus of health economics of addiction at the University of Illinois at Springfield.

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How Does Music Affect Your Mood? | Music and Emotion Relationship

• Categories music , mood , emotions
• Date August 2, 2019
• Comments 17 Comments

Why Does Music Affect Our Emotions?

Can you envision a life without music?

A world where your favorite musician is a doctor or lawyer, or construction worker because music doesn't exist?

A life where you can't turn on your favorite workout playlist while going for a run? Or the pump-up song to boost your confidence right before your big presentation?

If you can't, you are definitely not alone.

Music tends to hit on us a deep level. Whether it is sad music that helps us feel relatable when we are going through hard times or joyful music that adds an extra bounce to your step, music is incredibly powerful.

But, why is this the case? Why does music impact your brain and mood so deeply?

In the article below, we'll discuss how music can actually affect our mood.

Table Of Contents

• Music as Therapy
• Music Boosts Our Mood
• Music Changes the Way We Perceive the World

Feeling Down? Just Press Play

• Bring Joy to the World

How Does Music Affect Us?

Sick of feeling down? Music may be able to help!

The Journal of Positive Psychology conducted a study in 2013 that discovered that individuals who listened to music that could be classified as happy and upbeat were able to improve their mood and overall happiness in just a few weeks.

Throughout the study, participants were encouraged to try to improve their mood, but they were only able to find success when they listened to happier music. The music options that were offered were Copland (upbeat) compared to the gloomier Stravinsky.

Feeling good about yourself is great, but there are larger implications at play.

Did you know that a better overall mood and demeanor are linked to the following:

• Better physical health
• Higher income
• Greater relationship satisfaction

That is pretty excited news and definitely an incentive to start scrolling to that upbeat song on your next playlist.

Music As Therapy

The first bullet point in the previous section included, " better physical health."

Is this possible? Could music really impact your physical well-being?

The American Music Therapy Association thinks so!

The American Music Therapy Association details that music therapy programs can be constructed to manage mental stress, boost memory, and even eliminate pain.

A study in 2015 found that people who listened to music before during, or after surgery experienced less pain and anxiety compared to those who didn't listen to music. - reference from Healthline .

How was this study quantifiable? The individuals that listened to music during surgery required less pain medication than those that did not enjoy music.

Data was gathered from 73 various trials and included more than 7,000 patients. With this information, music should be available to all individuals undergoing surgery procedures.

Music can also help with chronic conditions,  including dementia, stroke, Parkinson's disease, and multiple sclerosis.

The Low-Risk Nature of Music Makes it a Perfect Option

Think about those commercials showing happy couples on the beach and dancing at weddings, they always look happy but give you a dictionary-size list of potential side-effects.

That is not the case with music. Music can improve your mood, quality of life, and self-esteem, but it is also:

• Extremely safe
• Non-invasive
• Easily accessible
• Non-expensive

If you're looking for more ways to see first hand how music can be a powerful contributing factor to mental health, check out what Alive Inside is doing for dementia in elderly folks.

-back to contents

Music Boosts Our Moods

Can your favorite songs be a form of therapy? Let's discuss that.

Researchers from the U.K . found that a unique orchestra for people with dementia helped improve their mood and boost their self-confidence.

The orchestra is one of several research projects done by the Bournemouth University Dementia Institute that demonstrate that people with dementia can still have fun and learn new skills.

The study involved eight individuals with dementia, students, professional musicians, and a handful of caregivers.

The results were amazing. The orchestra was positively life-changing for all involved. Whether you are playing music or just listening and bobbing your head, the health benefits are remarkable.

You know that  chill sensation   you get when you listen to music you really like?

It was discovered that music can release dopamine in two main places in the brain, the dorsal and ventral striatum. When you are having a pleasurable experience, such as listening to your favorite song, these areas of the brain light up.

Music Changes the Way We Perceive The World

In experiments where people looked at a happy face or a sad face, the music they listened to affected how they perceived it. It influenced what they saw.

If you were listening to happy music, a more neutral face was more likely to be viewed as happy, and vice versa.

Music can also stir up old memories without the intention of doing so, bring back old emotions that were experienced at the time, shaping how we feel in the present moment.

If you've ever listened to any kind of music, you know your body can react in several different ways, such as:

• nodding your head
• tapping your feet
• snapping your fingers.

The beat of the song you're listening to can even influence your heart rate , and when people sing together, their breathing often becomes synchronized, producing positive emotions.

These things happen because musical patterns affect our auditory cortex, which is part of the neural reward system and other areas involved in memory and emotion.

Next time you're feeling down, just press play on some upbeat music .

The music will pick you up and put a smile on your face.

Even better, remember back to a specific time in your life. A time you were really happy.

Then, try to remember what music you listened to back then, and play that.

You will be flooded with the emotions you experienced at that time, affecting the way you experience the world around you in the present moment.

Create Music and Bring the World Joy

If you like the idea of creating music and bringing happiness to people around the world, then just contact the Atlanta Institute of Music and Media .

AIMM helps musicians and music producers break into the music industry and raises their opportunity of achieving professional success.

Just look at AIMM alum Turbo the Great or Kesha Lee .

AIMM now offers Online Music Certificates, too! Learn more about AIMM and how you can benefit from a music degree by clicking the link below today.

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Essay on How Does Music Affect Your Mood

Students are often asked to write an essay on How Does Music Affect Your Mood in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on How Does Music Affect Your Mood

Introduction.

Music is a powerful tool that can influence our feelings. It can make us happy, sad, relaxed, or excited. In this essay, we will explore how music affects our mood.

Music and Happiness

Happy tunes often make us feel joyful. Fast beats and uplifting lyrics can cause our brains to produce more of a chemical called dopamine. This chemical makes us feel happy. So, when we listen to happy music, we often feel happier.

Music and Sadness

On the other hand, slow and melancholic music can make us feel sad. The lyrics of such songs often talk about heartbreak or loss. When we listen to such music, we might feel a sense of sadness or empathy.

Music and Relaxation

Certain types of music, like classical or instrumental, can help us relax. They have slow tempos and soothing sounds. When we listen to such music, our heart rate slows down and we feel more peaceful.

Music and Excitement

Fast-paced music with strong beats, like rock or pop, can make us feel excited. The high energy of these songs can cause our heart rate to increase, making us feel more energetic and excited.

In conclusion, music has a strong effect on our moods. It can make us feel happy, sad, relaxed, or excited. So, the next time you listen to music, pay attention to how it makes you feel.

250 Words Essay on How Does Music Affect Your Mood

Music can change our mood in a flash. It is like a magic spell that can make us happy, sad, excited or calm. This essay will explain how music affects our mood.

The Power of Music

Music has a strong power over our feelings. It can make us feel all sorts of emotions. If we listen to a happy song, we feel happy. If we listen to a sad song, we feel sad. This happens because our brain reacts to the sounds of music.

Music and Memories

Music can also bring back memories. When we hear a song we know, it can remind us of a time or place. This can make us feel the same way we did when we first heard the song.

Music can help us relax too. Soft and slow music can make us feel calm and peaceful. It can help us forget about our worries for a while.

Music and Energy

On the other hand, fast and loud music can make us feel energetic. It can make us want to dance and move around.

In conclusion, music has a big effect on our mood. It can make us feel many different things. It can bring back memories, help us relax, and give us energy. So next time you listen to music, notice how it changes your mood!

500 Words Essay on How Does Music Affect Your Mood

Music is a universal language that speaks to the heart. It has the power to change our mood in an instant. One moment, you might feel sad, and the next, you’re dancing around your room. But how does music do this? Let’s explore.

Music is a form of art that uses sound to express emotions and ideas. It has a unique way of connecting with our feelings. When we listen to a song, our brain processes the sounds and lyrics, which can trigger various emotions. This is why we might feel happy when listening to a cheerful song, or feel sad when a melancholic tune plays.

Music and Emotions

Different types of music can stir different emotions in us. Upbeat music like pop or dance can make us feel happy and energetic. On the other hand, slower, softer music like ballads or classical pieces can make us feel calm or even sad. This is because our brain links the rhythm and tone of the music with certain feelings. For example, fast beats make us excited, while slow beats make us relaxed.

Music and Memory

Music can also affect our mood by bringing back memories. When we hear a song that we associate with a specific event or person, our brain recalls those memories. This can make us feel the same emotions we felt at that time. For instance, a song from your childhood might make you feel nostalgic and happy.

Music and Stress Relief

Music is a great tool for stress relief. When we’re feeling stressed or anxious, listening to calming music can help us relax. Our heart rate slows down, our breathing becomes more regular, and our body releases chemicals that make us feel good. This is why many people listen to music when they need to unwind.

In conclusion, music has a strong influence on our moods. It can make us feel a wide range of emotions, from joy to sadness, excitement to calmness. It can bring back memories and help us relax. So, the next time you’re feeling down or stressed, try listening to your favorite music. It might just lift your spirits and change your mood for the better.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

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• Open access
• Published: 21 March 2023

Changing positive and negative affects through music experiences: a study with university students

• José Salvador Blasco-Magraner 1 ,
• Gloria Bernabé-Valero 2 ,
• Pablo Marín-Liébana 1 &
• Ana María Botella-Nicolás 1  

BMC Psychology volume  11 , Article number:  76 ( 2023 ) Cite this article

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Currently, there are few empirical studies that demonstrate the effects of music on specific emotions, especially in the educational context. For this reason, this study was carried out to examine the impact of music to identify affective changes after exposure to three musical stimuli.

The participants were 71 university students engaged in a music education course and none of them were musicians. Changes in the affective state of non-musical student teachers were studied after listening to three pieces of music. An inter-subject repeated measures ANOVA test was carried out using the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) to measure their affective state.

The results revealed that: (i) the three musical experiences were beneficial in increasing positive affects and reducing negative affects, with significant differences between the interaction of Music Experiences × Moment (pre-post); (ii) listening to Mahler’s sad fifth symphony reduced more negative affects than the other experimental conditions; (iii) performing the blues had the highest positive effects.

Conclusions

These findings provide applied keys aspects for music education and research, as they show empirical evidence on how music can modify specific affects of personal experience.

Peer Review reports

Introduction

The studies published on the benefits of music have been on the increase in the last two decades [ 1 , 2 , 3 ] and have branched out into different areas of research such as psychology [ 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 ], education [ 1 , 9 , 10 ] and health [ 11 , 12 ] providing ways of using music as a resource for people’s improvement.

The publication in 1996 of the famous report “Education Hides a Treasure” submitted to the UNESCO by the International Commission was an important landmark in the educational field. This report pointed out the four basic pillars of twenty-first century education: learning to know, learning to do, learning to live together, and learning to be [ 13 ]. The two last ones clearly refer to emotional education. This document posed a challenge to Education in terms of both academically and emotionally development at all levels from kindergarten to university. In this regard, there has been a notable increase in the number of studies that have shown the strong impact of music on the emotions in the different stages of education and our lives. For example, from childhood to adolescence, involving primary, secondary and university education, music is especially relevant for its beneficial effects on developing students’ emotional intelligence and prosocial skills [ 1 , 14 ]. In adults, music benefits emotional self-regulation [ 15 ], while in old age it helps to maintain emotional welfare and to experience and express spirituality [ 16 ]. This underlines the importance of providing empirical evidence on the emotional influence of music.

Influence of music on positive affects

Numerous studies have used the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) to evaluate the emotional impact of music [ 17 ]. This scale is valid and effective for measuring the influence of positive and negative effects of music on listeners and performers [ 10 , 18 , 19 ]. Thus, for example, empirical evidence shows that exposure to a musical stimulus favours the increase of positive affects [ 20 , 21 ] found a significant increase in three positive affects in secondary school students after listening to music, and the same results has been found after listening to diverse musical styles. These results are consistent with Schubert [ 22 ], who demonstrated that music seems to improve or maintain well-being by means of positive valence emotions (e. g. happiness, joy and calm). Other research studied extreme metal fans aged between 18 and 34 years old and found statements of physiological excitement together with increased positive affects [ 21 ]. Positive outcomes after listening to sad music have also been found [ 23 ], who played Samuel Barbers’ Adagio for Strings , described by the BBC as the world’s saddest piece of classical music, to 20 advanced music students and 20 advanced psychology students with no musical background and subsequently found that the music only had positive affects on both groups.

Several experimental designs that used sad music on university students noticed that they experienced both sadness and positive affects [ 24 , 25 ] and also found that music labeled as “happy” increased positive affects while the one labeled as “sad” reduced both positive and negative affects [ 26 ]. For other authors the strongest and most pleasant responses to sad music are associated with empathy [ 27 ]. Moreover, listening to sad music had benefits since attributes of empathy were intensified [ 27 , 28 ]. In relation to musical performances, empirical evidence found a significant increase in positive affects [ 29 ]. Thus, music induces listeners to experience positive affects, which could turn music into an instrument for personal development.

Following on from Fredrickson’s ‘broaden‐and‐build’ framework of positive emotions [ 30 ], positive affects cause changes in cognitive activities which, in turn, can cause behaviour changes. They can also expand the possibilities for action and improve physical resources. According to Fredrickson [ 30 ], positive affects trigger three sequential effects: (1) amplification of the scope for thought and action; (2) construction of personal resources to deal with difficult simplifications; (3) personal transformation by making one more creative, with a better understanding of situations, better able to face up to difficulties and better socially integrated. This leads to an “upward spiral” in which even more positive affects are experienced. A resource such as music that can increase positive affects, can therefore be considered as a step forward in personal transformation. Thus, music teachers could have a powerful tool to help students enhance their personal development.

Influence of music on negative affects

There is a great deal of controversy as regards the influence of music on negative affects. Blasco and Calatrava [ 20 ] found a significant reduction of five negative affects in secondary school students after listening to Arturo Marquez’s typically happy Danzón N O 2. Different results were found in an experiment in which the change in participants ‘affects was assessed after listening the happy "Eye of the Tiger" by Survivor and the sad "Everybody Hurts" by REM [ 26 ]. They found that the happy piece only increased the positive affects but did not reduce the negative ones, while the sad piece reduced both positive and negative affects. However, neither of these findings agree with Miller and Au [ 31 ], who carried out an experiment to compare the influence of sad and happy music on undergraduates ‘mood arousal and found that listening to both types had no significant changes on negative affects. Shulte [ 32 ] conducted a study with 30 university students to examine the impact that nostalgic music has on affects, and found that after listening to different songs, negative affects decreased. Matsumoto [ 33 ] found that sad music reduced sad feelings in deeply sad university students, while Vuoskoski and Eerola [ 34 ] showed that sad music could produce changes in memory and emotional judgements related to emotions and that experiencing music-induced sadness is intrinsically more pleasant than sad memories. It therefore seems that reducing negative affects has mostly been studied with sad and nostalgic musical stimuli. In this way, if music can reduce negative affects, it can also be involved in educational and psychological interventions focused on improving the emotional-affective sphere. Thus, for example, one study examined the effects of a wide range of music activities and found that it would be necessary to specify exactly what types of music activity lead to what types of outcomes [ 2 ]. Moore [ 3 ] also found that certain music experiences and characteristics had both desirable and undesirable effects on the neural activation patterns involved in emotion regulation. Furthermore, recent research on university students shows that music could be used to assess mood congruence effects, since these effects are reactions to the emotions evoked by music [ 35 ].

These studies demonstrate that emotional experience can be actively driven by music. Moreover, they synthesize the efforts to find ways in which music can enhance affective emotional experience by increasing positive affects and reducing the negative ones (e. g. hostility, nervousness and irritability). Although negative emotions have a great value for personal development and are necessary for psychological adjustment, coping with them and self-regulation capacities are issues that have concerned psychology. For example, Emotional Intelligence [ 36 ], which has currently been established in the educational field, constitutes a fundamental conceptual framework to increase well-being when facing negative emotions, providing keys for greater control and management of emotional reactions. It also establishes how to decrease the intensity and frequency of negative emotional states [ 37 ], providing techniques such as mindfulness meditation that have proven their effectiveness in reducing negative emotional experiences and increasing the positive ones [ 38 ]. The purpose of this research is to find whether music can be part of the varied set of resources that can be used by a teacher to modify students’ emotional experience.

Thus, although empirical evidence of the effects of music on the emotional sphere is still incipient. It seems that they can increase positive effects, but it is not clear their impact on the negative ones, since diverse and contradictory results (no change and reduction of negative affects after listening to music) were found. In addition, the effects of the type of musical piece (e.g. happy or sad music) need further investigation as different effects were found. Moreover, previous studies do not compare between the effects of listening to versus performing music. Such an approach could provide keys to highlight the importance of performing within music education. Therefore, this study aims to contribute to this scientific field, providing experimental evidence on the effects of listening to music as compared to performing music, as well as determining the effects of different types of music on positive and negative affects.

To this end, the effects of three different types of music experiences were compared: (1) listening to a sad piece, (2) listening to an epic and solemn piece, and (3) performing of a rhythm and a blues piece, to determine whether positive and negative affects were modified after exposure to these experimental situations. In particular, two hypotheses guided this study: (1) After exposure to each musical experience (listening to a sad piece; listening to a solemn piece and playing a blues), all participants will improve their emotional experience, increasing their positive affects and reducing their negative ones; and (2) the music performance will induce a greater change as compared to the listening conditions.

Participants

A total of 71 students were involved in this study, 6 men and 65 women between the ages of 20 and 40, who were studying a Teaching Grade. These students were enrolled in the "Music Education" program as part of their university degree’s syllabus. None of them had special music studies from conservatories, academies or were self-taught; thus, all had similar musical knowledge. None of them had previously listened to music in an instructional context nor had performed music with their fellow students. In addition, none of them had listening before to the musical pieces selected for this experiment.

All signed an informed consent form before participating and no payment was given for taking part in the study. As the experiment was carried out in the context of a university course, they were assured that their participation and responses would be anonymous and would have no impact on their qualifications. The research was approved by the ethical committee at the Universidad Católica de Valencia San Vicente Mártir: UCV2017- 18-28 code.

Questionnaire

To assess emotional states, the Positive and Negative Affective States scales (PANAS), was administered [ 39 ]. In particular, the Spanish version of the scale [ 17 ], whose study shows a high degree of internal consistency; in males 0.89 in positive affects and 0.91 in negative affects; in women 0.87 in positive affects and 0.89 in negative affects. In this study, good reliability level in each experimental condition was obtained (0.836–0.913 for positive affects and 0.805–0.917 for negative affects (see Table 1 for more information on Cronbach’s α for each experimental condition).

The PANAS consists of 20 items which describe different dimensions of emotional experience. Participants must answer them regarding to their current affective state. The scale is composed of 20 items; 10 positive affects (PA) and 10 negative affects (NA). Answers are graded in a 5-options (Likert scale), with reversed items, ranging from extremely (1) to very slightly or not at all (5).

Musical pieces

The musical pieces choice stemmed from the analysis of some of the music elements that most influence the perception of emotions: mode, melody and intervals. Within the melody, range and melodic direction were distinguished. The range or amplitude of the melodic line is commonly divided into wide or narrow, while the melodic direction is often classified as ascending or descending. Chang and Hoffman [ 10 ] associated narrow amplitude melodies with sadness, while Schimmark and Grob [ 40 ] related melodic amplitude with highly activated emotions. Regarding the melodic direction, Gerardi and Gerken [ 41 ] found a relationship between ascending direction and happiness and heroism, and between descending direction and sadness.

In relation to the mode, Tizón [ 42 ] stated that the major one is completely happy, while the minor one represents sadness. Thompson and Robitaille [ 43 ] considered that, in order to cause emotions such as happiness, solemnity or joy, composers use tonal melodies, while to obtain negative emotions, they use atonality and chromaticism.

In this research, the selected pieces (“Adagietto” from Gustav Mahler's Fifth Symphony, MML; and “Titans” from Alexander The Great from Vangelis, VML) are representative examples of the melodic, intervallic and modal characteristics previously exposed. Mahler's and Vangelis's pieces completely differ in modes and melodic amplitude (sad vs. heroism). Likewise, Mahler's piece is much more chromatic than Vangelis' one, which has a broader melody made up of third, fourth and fifth intervals, often representative of heroism. Those features justify the fact that they have been used as soundtracks in two films belonging to the epic genre (Alexander The Great, 2004) and drama (Death in Venice, 1971).

The musical piece that was performed by the students was chosen in order to be easy to learn in a few sessions, since they were not musicians. So, three musical pieces were used for the experimental conditions, the first two musical pieces were recordings in a CD, while the third one was performed by the subjects.

The three chosen pieces are described below:

Condition 1 (MML): “Adagietto” from Gustav Mahler’s Fifth Symphony (9:01 min), performed by the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Claudio Abbado [ 44 ]. This is a sad, melancholic and dramatic piece that Luchino Visconti used in the film Death in Venice, made in 1971 and based on the book by Thomas Mann.

Condition 2 (VML): “Titans Theme” from Alexander the Great (3:59 min), directed by Oliver Stone and premiered in 2004, whose music was composed, produced and performed by Vangelis [ 45 ]. It has a markedly epic character with large doses of heroism and solemnity.

Condition 3 (BP): “Rhythm’s Blues” composed and played by Ana Bort (4:00 min). This is a popular African-American piece of music with an insistent rhythm and harmonically sustained by tonal degrees. This piece was performed by the participants using percussion instruments (carillons and a range of xylophones and metallophones).

The sample was divided into two groups (N 1  = 36 and N 2  = 35) that participated separately in all the phases of the study. The first two conditions (MML and VML) were carried out in each group's classroom, while the performance (BP) was developed in the musical instruments room. This room had 52 percussion instruments, including different types of chimes, xylophones and metallophones (soprano, alto and bass). It is a large space where there are only chairs and musical instruments and stands. The first group was distributed as follows: 6 chimes (3 soprano and 3 alto), 5 soprano xylophones, 5 alto xylophones, 5 bass xylophones, 5 soprano metallophones, 5 alto metallophones and 5 bass metallophones. The distribution of the second group was similar, but with one less alto metallophone.

Prior to the experiment, participants received two practical lessons in order to learn how to collectively perform the music score (third experimental condition). After the two practical lessons, during the next three sessions (leaving two weeks between each session), the experiment was carried out. In each session, an experimental condition was applied and PANAS was on-line administered online beforehand and afterwards (Pre-Post design). All participants were exposed to the three experimental conditions and completed the scale before and after listening to music.

In each of these three sessions, a different music condition was applied: MML in the first one, VML in the second one and BP in the third one.

As conditions VML and MML were listening to pieces of music, the instructions received by the subjects were: “You are going to listen to a musical piece, you ought to listen actively, avoiding distractions. You can close your eyes if you feel like to”. For the BP condition, they were said to play the musical sheet all together.

The aim of the study was to examine the effect of the music experience variable (with three levels: MML, VML and BP) in the Positive and Negative Affects subscales from the PANAS scale. The variable Moment was also studied to control biases and to analyze differences between the Pre and Post conditions.

The experiment was designed as a two-way repeated measure (RM) ANOVA with two dependent variables: Positive Affects and Negative Affects, one for each PANAS’ subscales.

The two repeated measures used in the experiment were the variables Musical Experience (ME), with three levels (MML, VML and BP) and the variable Moment, with two levels (PRE and POST). All participants were exposed to the three experimental conditions.

The design did not include a control group, similar to many other studies in the field of music psychology [ 27 , 30 ]. The control was carried out from the intra-subject pre-post measurement of all the participants. The rationale for this design lies in the complexity of the control condition (or placebo) design in psychology [ 46 ]. While placebos in pharmacological trials are sugar pills, in psychology it is difficult to establish an equivalent period of time similar to the musical pieces (e. g. 9 min) without activity, so that cognitive activity occurred during this period of time (e. g. daydreaming, reading a story, etc.) could bias and limit the generalization of results.

Additionally, one of the goals of this study was to compare the effects of listening to music compared to performance on affects. For this reason, two music listening experiences (MML and VML) and a musical performance experience (BP) were designed. In order to control potential biases, participants did not know the musical pieces in the experimental conditions and they had a low level of musical performance competence (musicians were excluded).

It was used SPSS statistics v.26 for the statistical analyzes.

Two ANOVA were performed. The first one, analyzed two dependent variables at the same time: Positive Affects (PA) and Negative Affects (NA).

In the second ANOVA, the 20 items of the PANAS scale were taken as dependent variables. The rest of the experimental design was similar to the first one, a two-way RM ANOVA with variables Musical Experience (ME) and Moment as repeated measures.

Examination of frequency distributions, histograms, and tests of homogeneity of variance and normality for the criterion measures indicated that the assumptions for the use of parametric statistics were met. Normality was met in all tests except for one, but the ANOVA is robust against this assumption violation. All the analyses presented were performed with the significance level (alpha) set at 0.05, two-tailed tests. Means and standard deviations for the 6 experimental conditions for both subscales, Positive Affects and Negative Affects, are presented in Table 1 .

Mauchly’s test of sphericity was statistically significant for Musical Experience and Musical Experience*Moment focusing on NA as the dependent variable ( p  < 0.05). The test only was significant for Musical Experience for PA as dependent variable ( p  < 0.05). The rest of the W’s Mauchly were not significant ( p  > 0.05), so we assumed sphericity for the non-mentioned variables and worked with the assumed sphericity univariate solution. For the variables which the W’s Mauchly was significant, the univariate solution was also taken, but choosing the corrected Greenhouse–Geisser epsilon approximation due to its conservativeness.

A significant principal effect of the Musical Experience variable F(1.710,119.691) = 22.505, p  < 0.05, η 2  = 0.243; the Moment variable F(1,70) = 45.291, p  < 0.05, η 2  = 0.393; and the Musical Experience*Moment interaction F(2,140) = 32.502, p  < 0.05, η 2  = 0.317 were found for PA.

Statistically significance was found for Moment F(1, 70) = 70.729, p  < 0.05, η 2  = 0.503 and Musical Experience*Moment interaction F(1.822, 127.555) = 8.594, p  < 0.05, η 2  = 0.109, but not for Musical Experience F(1.593, 111.540) = 2.713, p  < 0.05, η 2  = 0.037, for the other dependent variable, NA.

Table 2 shows pairwise comparisons between Musical Experience levels. Bonferroni’s correction was applied in order to control type I error. We only interpret the results for the Positive Affects because the Musical Experience effect was not statistically significant for Negative Affects. Results show that condition VML presents a significant higher punctuation in Positive Affects than the other two conditions ( p  < 0.05). It also shows that the musical condition MML is significantly above BP in Positive Affects ( p  < 0.05).

As regards Moment variable (Table 3 ), all but one Pre-Post differences were statistically significant ( p  < 0.05) for all the three conditions for both Positive and Negative Affects dependent variables. The Pre-Post difference found in Positive Affects for the VML Musical Experience did not reach the statistical level ( p  = 0.319).

Focusing on these statistically significant differences, we observe that conditions MML and BP, for PA, decreased from Pre to Post condition, indicating that positive emotions increased significantly between pre and post measures. On the other hand, for NA, all conditions increased from Pre to Post conditions, indicating that negative affects were decreased between pre and post conditions. Once again, one should bear in mind that items were reversed, thus, a higher scores in NA means a decrease in affects.

In order to measure the interaction effect, significant differences between simple effects were analysed.

The simple effect of Moment (level2-level1) in the first Music Experience condition (MML) in PA was compared with the simple effect of Moment (level2-level1) in the second Musical Experience condition (VML). Music Experience conditions 2–3 (VML-BP) and 1–3 (MML-BP) were compared in the same way. Thus, taking into account PA and NA variables, a total of 6 comparisons, 3 per dependent variable, were made.

The results of these comparisons are shown in Table 4 . Comparisons for PA range from T1 to T3 and comparisons for NA range from T4 to T6. All of them are significant ( p  < 0.05) which means that there are statistically significant differences between all the Musical Experience conditions when comparing the Moment (pre/post) simple effects.

In Table 5 , we can look at the differences’ values. As we said before the differences between Pre and Post conditions are significant when comparing the three musical conditions. The biggest difference for positive affects is between MML and BP (T3 = 8.443), and between VML and MML (T4 = − 6.887) for negative affects.

In this second part, the results obtained from the second two-way RM ANOVA with the 20 items as dependent variables are considered. Results of the descriptive analysis of each item: Interested, Excited, Strong, Enthusiastic, Proud, Alert, Inspired, Determined, Attentive, Active, Distressed, Upset, Guilty, Afraid, Hostile, Irritable, Ashamed, Nervous, Jittery, Scared ; in each musical condition: MML, VML and BP; and for the PRE and POST measurements, can be found in the Additional file 1 (Appendix A).

As regards the ANOVA test that compares the three experimental conditions in each mood, Mauchly’s Sphericity Test indicates that sphericity cannot be assumed for the musical experience in most of the variables of the items of effects, except for Interested, Alert, Inspired, Active and Irritable . For these items, the highest observed power index among Greenhouse–Geisser, Huynh–Feldt and Lower-bound epsilon corrections was taken for each variable. For the interaction Musical Experience*Moment, sphericity was not assumed for Distressed, Guilty, Hostile and Scared . For these items, the same above-cited criterion was followed.

Musical experience has a principal effect on all the positive affects, but only has it for 5 negative affects ( Nervous, Jittery, Scared, Hostile and Upset ) ( p  < 0.05). For more detail see Table S1 from Additional file 1 : Appendix B.

The principal effect of Moment is also statistically significant ( p  < 0.05) for all (positive and negative), but two items: Guilty ( p  = 0.073) and Hostile ( p  = 0.123). All the differences between Pre and Post for positive affects are positive, which means that scores in conditions Pre were significantly higher than in condition Post. The other way around occurs for negative affects, all the differences Pre-Post are negative, meaning that the Post condition is significantly higher than the Pre condition. For more detail, see Table S2 from Additional file 1 : Appendix B. In this way, Pre-post changes (Moment) improve affective states; the positive affects increase while the negative are reduced, except for Guilty ( p  = 0.073) and Hostile ( p  = 0.123).

Comparing the proportion of variance explained by the musical experienced and Moment (Tables s1 and s2 from the Additional file 1 : Appendix B), it is observed that most of the η 2 scores in musical experience are below 0.170, except Active and Alert , which are higher. On the other hand, the η 2 scores for Moment are close to 0.300. From these results we can state that, taking only one of the variables at a time, the proportion of the dependent variable’s variance explained by Moment is higher than the proportion of the dependent variable’s variance explained by Musical Experience.

The effect of interaction, shown in Table S3 from the Additional file 1 : Appendix B is significant in 7 positive moods ( Interested, Excited, Enthusiastic, Alert, Determined, Active and Proud ) and 4 negative moods ( Hostile , Irritable, Nervous , and Jittery ).

The pairwise comparisons of Musical Experience’s levels show a wide variety of patterns. Looking at Positive Affects, there is only one item ( Active ) which present significant differences between the three musical conditions. Items Concentrated and Decided do not present any significant difference between any musical conditions. The rest of the Positive items show at least one significant difference between conditions VML and BP. All differences are positive when comparing VML-MML, VML-BP MML-BP, except for Alert and Proud. So, in general, scores are higher for the first two conditions in relation to the third one, meaning that third musical condition presents the biggest increase for Positive Affects (remember items where reversed). For more detail see Additional file 1 : Appendix C.

As regard pairwise comparisons of Musical Experience’s for negative affects, only the items which had a significant principal effect of the variable Musical Experience are shown here. There is a significant difference between conditions VML and MML in item Nervous ; between VML and BP for Scared ( p  < 0.05). For Jittery ; all three conditions differed significantly from each other ( p  < 0.05). Conditions MML and BP differed significantly for Hostile ( p  < 0.05) and conditions VML and BP almost differed significantly for Upset item, but null hypothesis cannot be rejected as p  = 0.056. For more detail see Additional file 1 : Appendix C. All differences were negative when comparing VML-MML, VML-BP MML-BP, except for Nervous and Jittery . So, in general, scores are lower for the first and second condition in relation to the third one.

Positive effects increased significantly during the post phase of all the music experiences, showing that exposure to any of the three music stimuli improved positive affectivity. There were also significant differences between the three experiences in this phase, according to the following order of improvements in positive affectivity: (1) the rhythm and blues performance (BP), (2) listening to Mahler (MML) and (3) listening to Vangelis (VML). As regards the effects of the musical experience x Moment interaction , all the comparisons were significant, with bigger differences in the interpretation of the blues (BP) than in listening to Mahler (MML) and Vangelis (VML). However, the comparison between both experiences, although significant, was smaller. These results indicate that performing music is significantly effective in increasing positive effects. We will explain these results in greater detail below as regards the specific affective states.

As regards Negative Affects, the comparison of the simple effects showed that these decreased after the musical experiences, although in this first analysis the VML musical experience did not differ from the other two. However, the results of the effects of the interaction between musical experiencie x Moment showed that all the comparisons were significant, with a larger difference between MML and VML than the one between BP and each of the other experiences. Listening to Mahler (MML) was more effective in reducing negative affects, compared to both listening to Vangelis and interpreting the blues (BP). These results agree with previous studies [ 26 , 32 ], in which listening to sad music helped to reduce negative affectivity. In this study, it was the most effective condition, although exposure to all three musical experiences reduced negative affects.

The analysis of the specific affective states shows that most items that belong to Positive Affect scale are the most sensitive ones to the PRE-POST change, the different musical conditions and the interpretation of both effects. However, some items of the Negative Affect scale did not differ in the different music conditions or in the music experience × Moment interaction . For example, there were two items (Guilty and Hostile) that did not obtain significance. These results are consistent with the fact that music has certain limits as regards its impact on people’s affects and does not influence all equally. For example, Guilty has profound psychological implications that cannot be affected by simple exposure to certain musical experiences. This means we should be cautious in inferring that music alone can have therapeutical effects on complex emotional states whose treatment should include empirically validated methods. Also, emotional experiences are widely diverse so that any instrument used to measure them is limited as regards the affective/emotional state under study. These results suggest the importance of reviewing the items that compose the PANAS scale in musical studies to adapt it in order to include affective states more sensitive to musical experiences and eliminate the least relevant items.

The analysis of the results in the specific affective states, allows us to delve deeper into each experimental condition. Thus, regarding the results obtained in the complete scale of PANAS, listening to Mahler (MML), causes desirable changes by raising two positive affects ( Inspired and Attentive ) and reducing 10 negative affects ( Distressed, Upset, Afraid, Hostile, Irritable, Ashamed, Nervous, Jittery, and Scared ). This shows that this music condition had a greater effect on the negative affects than the other ones. These results agree with previous studies [ 26 , 32 ], which found that sad music could effectively reduce negative affects, although other studies came to the opposite conclusion. For instance, Miller and Au [ 31 ] found that sad music did not significantly change negative affects. Some authors [ 47 , 48 ] have argued that adults prefer to listen to sad music to regulate their feelings after a negative psychological experience in order to feel better. Taruffi and Koelsch [ 49 ] concluded that sad music could induce listeners to a wide range of positive effects, after a study with 772 participants. In order to contribute to this debate. It would be interesting to control personality variables that might explain these differences on the specific emotions evoked by sad music. In this study, it has been shown that a sad piece of music can be more effective in reducing negative affects than in increasing positive ones. Although the results come from undergraduate students, similar outcomes could be obtained from children and adolescents, although further research is required. In fact, Borella et al. [ 50 ] studied the influence of age on the effects of music and found that the emotional effects influenced cognitive performance (working memory) in such a way that the type of music (Mozart vs. Albinoni) had a stronger influence on young people than on adults. Kawakami and Hatahira [ 28 ], in a study on 84 primary schoolchildren, also found that exposure to sad music pleased them and their level of empathy correlated with their taste for sad music.

Listening to Vangelis (VML) increased 3 positive affects ( Excited, Inspired and Attentive ) and reduced 8 negative affects ( Distressed, Upset, Afraid, Irritable, Ashamed, Nervous, Jittery , and Scared ). Surprisingly, two positive affects were reduced in this experimental condition ( Alert and Attentive ). It could be explained due to the characteristic ostinato rhythm of this piece of music. It was found a similar effect in the study by Campbell et al., [ 26 ] in which sad music reduced both positive and negative affects. This musical condition also managed to modify negative affects more than positive ones.

Performing the blues (BP) increased all 10 positive affects, indicating that performing is more effective in increasing positive affects than listening. These results agree with the study by Dunbar et al. [ 29 ], who found that music performance significantly increased positive affects.

Performing the blues (BP) reduced 6 negative affects, although it was more effective in increasing positive affective states. Vigorous rhythmic music was also found to be positively associated with the use of all the forms of regulating emotions, which suggests that this type of music is especially useful for emotion modulation [ 51 ]. It was found an exception, since Jittery increased after the blues performance. It could be explained by the negative experience that is sometimes associated with music performance. Therefore, it should be taken into account that music performance could increase some negative effects. For example, Dimsdale et al. [ 52 ] found that a strong negative emotional response to a certain type of music in adolescents was related to risk behaviour, indicating that research into the repertory of music experiences needs to be broadened to diverse styles in different age groups to identify all the types of emotional response and their psychological consequences. However, this result should be taken with caution and further research should focus on whether the effect of increased agitation is usual after music performances.

To sum up, this study contributes to the scientific field on the following points: (1) all the musical experiences had significant effects on improving emotional states, increasing positive affects and decreasing the negative ones, which shows the importance of musical experiences on improving the affective sphere; (2) the specific affects that increased, decreased or did not change for each musical experience were identified, providing specific and useful keys for the design of future interventions; and (3) the differences between various types of musical experiences were analyzed, finding more improvements in the performing conditions than in the listening ones.

Limitations and future directions

Limitations.

The sample, made up of university students with a very homogeneous profile in terms of age and sociodemographic characteristics, could limit the generalization of the results. In addition, the low percentage of men in the sample could also affect the generalizability of the results, although no previous studies have reported gender-based differential effects on the positive and negative affects after musical experiences.

Besides, the choice of the pieces of music was based on theoretical criteria and students’ music preferences were not taken into account. This will be included in future research, since the specific choice of the pieces could affect the positive or negative valence of participants’ emotions. However, the goal of using pieces of music not chosen by participants was to elicit new musical experiences for them. Furthermore, no participant was a musician and none of them had previous knowledge of any of the pieces, which may lead to a bias in the results.

In relation to this, the huge amount of available pieces of music, all of them influenced by their cultural and historical context, make it difficult to generalize that certain music parameters correlate with specific emotions. It would be necessary a cross-cultural approach to reach that conclusion.

Future directions

It is recommended to introduce the variables of music preferences and music history to control their effect on the results and to be able to compare the different musical parameters of the pieces together with participants’ preferences.

Likewise, it would be interesting to identify the affects with a greater or lesser degree of influence by music, to adjust the psychological evaluation instrument to the characteristics of the experiment, including items of emotions that can be modified after exposure to a music experience.

The PANAS manual [ 39 ] indicates that a wide variety of affective states (60) and eight different temporal instructions were included in its construction, showing its great versatility. In further research, this instrument should be adapted to for a more specific application to music studies. For instance, by including other emotional states that could be related with the influence of music (e.g. Tranquility , Gratitude , Elevation ), in order to measure more exactly the effects of music on people’s affective experiences.

Accordingly, it would be interesting to evaluate participants' affective traits to establish a baseline and control personality variables, helping to delve into the different levels of the hierarchical structure of affectivity and its relationship with the various music parameters.

Finally, it is recommended that the psychology of music include objective psychophysiological measurements together with self-report evaluations, so that conclusions arising from the experiments have greater robustness and can increase the impact of the contribution to the scientific community.

This study have shown how different music experiences, such as listening and performing, influence the changes in positive and negative affects in student teachers. The results show that the three musical experiences studied are effective in improving the affects by comparing the emotional states before and after the music experiences. It was also showed that there are differences between the effects obtained in each of the music experiences. Besides, improving both types of affects will depend largely on the selected music for the purpose. Although further evidence is required, the results support the importance of music in education, since it provides tools to increase positive affects and to decrease the negative ones, which is important for emotional intelligence development [ 53 , 54 ].

The three music experiences studied are more effective in reducing negative emotional states than in increasing the positive ones. This finding provides useful clues for music teachers to provide strategies that favor emotional regulation. For instance, in order to reduce hostility, irritability and nervousness, students could be exposed to musical auditions of both sad and solemn pieces, choosing musical pieces with similar characteristics to those described in this study. These auditions will be a resource for stress management in the classroom, as well as a tool that students can adopt and generalize to other contexts. Moreover, it is highly likely that students have not heard this type of music before and this experience could increase their repertoire of musical preferences, enhancing their emotional regulation.

The blues performance had a greater impact on participants' positive affects than listening to the other two pieces so, if any teacher wants to increase them (e.g., enthusiasm, interest, etc.), students could be asked to perform simple pieces such as Rhythm's Blues. In this way, musical performance could increase students' resources, contributing to higher levels of motivation, concentration and interest, which promotes learning [ 55 , 56 , 57 , 58 ]. Likewise, it could be very useful for elementary and secondary music teachers, who will be able to contribute to socio-emotional improvement and personal development of their students. Particularly, musical experiences could be a valuable resource for secondary teachers, since music is important in adolescents' lives and can be an interesting tool for meeting their emotional needs [ 59 ]. This is supported by Kokotsaki and Hallam [ 60 ], who consider that performing music helps students feel like active agents of a group, develop a strong sense of belonging, gain popularity, make "like-minded" relationships, improve their social skills and foster a strong sense of self-esteem and satisfaction.

This study shows that experiencing with various unknown musical pieces can have positive effects on emotions. According to this finding, university professors of Teaching grade in music education should encourage future teachers to experience various musical styles, rhythms and tonalities, avoiding prejudices. Thereby, future music teachers will be able to use a diversity of musical experiences that broaden the emotional effects and fulfill the socio-emotional function of music education. In relation to Fredrickson's 'broaden‐and‐build' framework of positive emotions [ 30 ], music can become a mean of widening other positive emotional states, constructing personal resources and transforming people, and contribute to an upward spiral of positive emotions. Taking into account the underlying psychological mechanisms of the impact of music on the emotional states it will be possible to use it to improve emotional area and other aspects of the personal sphere, as Chang et al., [ 10 ] maintain. Therefore, music education is an important resource to improve the emotional development of students.

Availability of data and materials

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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José Salvador Blasco-Magraner, Pablo Marín-Liébana & Ana María Botella-Nicolás

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How Does Music Affect Your Mood: The Benefits of Music

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The effect of music on your mood.

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How Does Music Affect Your Mood Essay Sample

Through the years, music has played a huge role in society and culture. In this essay, I will try to explain just how music can improve our mood, enhance learning, and help people with various mental disorders.

Studies show that seniors who sing, play an instrument, and dance are more likely to benefit from these activities than those who are not. Studies show that classical music can help people improve their academic performance and relieve stress. Johann Sebastian Bach said that music is meant to touch hearts(“Music Affects Mood”). It can also improve their memory and help them mentally prepare for tests. There are also studies suggesting that music training can improve a child's academic performance. This isn’t surprising considering how music can be “background enhancing”(Lehmann 1). Music in the womb can improve the mental and physical development of unborn infants. Music can help you feel happy, calm, and relaxed. Music can help you feel happy, calm, and relaxed.

According to How music affects Humans, “Music is known to help people with memory and language problems by helping them remember and learn how to speak again”. Songs that make me feel this way are Dark red by Steve Lacy and Some by Steve Lacy. Every time I listen to them, they make me feel this type of way like if I'm bored, I'm not any more or when I'm having a bad it makes me feel better and makes me feel good. It reminds me of some movies I like and have seen before. When I'm in the car and this song comes on it makes me feel good and have a good day. If I'm ever working on something, travelling on the road, or skating and I want to listen to music, these 2 songs are first on my Essay Three playlist. Music has the power to stimulate strong emotions in us. It is also likely are not common to be able to completely affect our emotional state.

Music has been known to trigger various emotions. There are various mechanisms through which music can do so. From this project, we will be able to improve our understanding of the various effects of music-listening on our bodies and minds. Music is more than just entertainment, it’s a way of life. It can help one feel better, or it can make one feel worse. Music can help one feel better or worse, depending on how it affects one's mood. Music can also help people communicate and make them feel better. It can also help them get through tough times. There are times when music can be used to lift a person's spirits.

By listening to music, a person can feel their emotions and show them exactly how they are. Being able to do this helps one to communicate with others. Music can affect your mood and behaviour. When we hear a rhythm beat, our heart begins to sync with it. This is because the brain interprets the rhythm as telling us that something is happening.

Overall, it’s clear that music has a direct and measurable impact on the mood which we are in.

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How Do Music Activities Affect Health and Well-Being? A Scoping Review of Studies Examining Psychosocial Mechanisms

Genevieve a. dingle.

1 UQ Music, Dance and Health Research Group, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

2 School of Psychology, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD, Australia

Leah S. Sharman

3 School of Human Movement and Nutrition Sciences, University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

Emma Beckman

Mary broughton.

4 School of Music, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

Emma Bunzli

Robert davidson, grace draper, sheranne fairley.

5 University of Queensland Business School, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

Callyn Farrell

Libby maree flynn, sjaan gomersall.

6 School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD, Australia

Mengxun Hong

Joel larwood, chiying lee, jennifer lee, lewis nitschinsk, natalie peluso, sarah elizabeth reedman.

7 Child Health Research Centre, University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

Dianna Vidas

Zoe c. walter, olivia renee louise wright, associated data.

Background: This scoping review analyzed research about how music activities may affect participants' health and well-being. Primary outcomes were measures of health (including symptoms and health behaviors) and well-being. Secondary measures included a range of psychosocial processes such as arousal, mood, social connection, physical activation or relaxation, cognitive functions, and identity. Diverse music activities were considered: receptive and intentional music listening; sharing music; instrument playing; group singing; lyrics and rapping; movement and dance; and songwriting, composition, and improvisation.

Methods: Nine databases were searched with terms related to the eight music activities and the psychosocial variables of interest. Sixty-three papers met selection criteria, representing 6,975 participants of all ages, nationalities, and contexts.

Results: Receptive and intentional music listening were found to reduce pain through changes in physiological arousal in some studies but not others. Shared music listening (e.g., concerts or radio programs) enhanced social connections and mood in older adults and in hospital patients. Music listening and carer singing decreased agitation and improved posture, movement, and well-being of people with dementia. Group singing supported cognitive health and well-being of older adults and those with mental health problems, lung disease, stroke, and dementia through its effects on cognitive functions, mood, and social connections. Playing a musical instrument was associated with improved cognitive health and well-being in school students, older adults, and people with mild brain injuries via effects on motor, cognitive and social processes. Dance and movement with music programs were associated with improved health and well-being in people with dementia, women with postnatal depression, and sedentary women with obesity through various cognitive, physical, and social processes. Rapping, songwriting, and composition helped the well-being of marginalized people through effects on social and cultural inclusion and connection, self-esteem and empowerment.

Discussion: Music activities offer a rich and underutilized resource for health and well-being to participants of diverse ages, backgrounds, and settings. The review provides preliminary evidence that particular music activities may be recommended for specific psychosocial purposes and for specific health conditions.

“ Music tells us things – social things, psychological things, physical things about how we feel and perceive our bodies – in a way that other art forms can't” – David Byrne (2012), How Music Works, p. 101.

The body of research on music, health and well-being has developed rapidly in the past decade, yielding dozens of empirical studies, reviews (Daykin et al., 2018 ; Sheppard and Broughton, 2020 ), books (MacDonald et al., 2012 ; Bonde and Theorell, 2018 ), and journals such as the Journal of Music, Health and Well-being, The Arts in Psychotherapy , and Arts and Health . This work has been summarized in ground-breaking reports such as the UK All Party Parliamentary report on creative health (Gordon-Nesbitt and Howarth, 2020 ) and the scoping review of the role of the arts in improving health and well-being published by the World Health Organization (Fancourt and Finn, 2019 ). Despite rapid advances in the field, however, there remain some limitations in the literature which this review seeks to address. First, the term “music” has been used to refer to a range of activities, which are at times poorly defined (Kreutz, 2015 ). Consider the following examples: personalized music listening for pain management in people with fibromyalgia (Linnemann et al., 2015 ); group singing for adults with chronic mental health conditions (Williams et al., 2019 ); a hip-hop project for sexual health promotion in Indigenous school students (McEwan et al., 2013 ); and dance for Parkinson's (Shanahan et al., 2015 ). All four are examples of music and health projects yet these activities clearly engage distinct physical, social, and psychological processes to achieve improvements in participants' health and well-being. We need to better articulate what type of music activity we are referring to in studies of “music,” and to examine the evidence in relation to the health and well-being effects of specific music activities.

Secondly, research in the music, health and well-being field is often prone to risks of bias arising from methodological issues such as convenience sampling, small sample sizes, lack of control or comparison conditions, and lack of independent assessment (Dingle et al., 2019 ; Clift, 2020 ). For these reasons, we will adopt a simple measure of research quality based on guidelines from the British Psychological Society QMiP Guidance for qualitative psychologists (Qualitative Methods in Psychology REF Working Group, 2018 ) and the Cochrane Risk of Bias 2.0 guidelines (Sterne et al., 2019 ) for quantitative methods (see Methods section) to ensure that research with a level of quality informs the conclusions of this review.

Third, it is largely unclear how such music activities affect health and well-being. That is, what are the processes through which these effects are achieved? It may be the case that different music activities exert their effects through distinct processes. For example, dance for Parkinson's may improve participants' well-being through its effects on gait and synchronized movement whereas music listening for pain management might exert its effect through dampening physiological arousal or providing a distraction. The answers to this important question will help health professionals to make recommendations to individuals and their loved ones about whether a music activity or intervention is likely to help them to manage their health symptoms. Research into the biological mechanisms linking music activities with health and well-being outcomes has been summarized recently. Finn and Fancourt ( 2018 ) reviewed 44 studies that involved adults listening to music in clinical and non-clinical settings reported that 13 of 33 biomarkers tested (such as cortisol, blood glucose and immune system measures) were reported to change in response to listening to music, indicating a stress-reducing effect (Finn and Fancourt, 2018 ). Group singing in low stress conditions such as rehearsals is associated with decreased cortisol while singing in high-stress conditions such as performances has been related to increased cortisol levels (Beck et al., 2000 ; Schladt et al., 2017 ). Similarly, group drumming has been associated with a modulation of immune response (Fancourt et al., 2016 ). Given this existing evidence regarding the biological mechanisms, in this scoping review we will focus instead on the psychological (e.g., emotional, cognitive, behavioral, motor) and social (e.g., bonding, inclusion, identity, cultural) processes that might explain the health and well-being effects of music activities.

In planning the scoping review, we searched for a comprehensive theoretical model that would account for a spectrum of musical activities and health and well-being outcomes, through a range of psychosocial processes. Unfortunately, the field of music, health and well-being lacks a widely established and comprehensive framework (Dingle et al., 2019 ). Our conceptualization is aligned with the contextual model by Kreutz ( 2015 ) showing the beneficial effects of musical activities on well-being and quality of life. According to this model, engagement in a musical activity provides individuals with a new context in which to interact and the combination of individual and contextual variables evoke self-regulatory processes at conscious and/or subconscious levels. Examples of such processes shown in the model include modifying cognitions, emotions, and actions by strengthened self-regulation. The consequences are often an improvement of psychological well-being and other positive outcomes (Kreutz, 2015 ). The boundaries of how this works (to what degree, for how long, and for whom) remain unclear and subject to ongoing hypothesis-driven research.

We also drew variables from three other models in developing search terms for the review. The first was the Therapeutic Music Capacities Model (Brancatisano et al., 2020 ) which links individual properties of music to “therapeutic mechanisms,” leading to cognitive, psychosocial, behavioral, and motor benefits. Some of the therapeutic mechanisms specified in the TMCM are conceptually relevant to populations with neurological disorders for whom the model was developed but are rarely assessed as part of music intervention research (e.g., neuroplasticity, mirror neuron systems, auditory motor coupling, and neural entrainment). We adopted other mechanisms that are more commonly assessed in music research as some of our search terms, such as arousal, mood, and memory. Another model that informed the review is the BRECVEMA model (Juslin et al., 2010 ) which describes eight mechanisms by which music listening influences emotional responses, in addition to cognitive appraisal. BRECVEMA is an acronym for Brain stem reflex, Rhythmic entrainment, Evaluative conditioning, Contagion, Visual imagery, Episodic memory, Musical expectancy, and Aesthetic judgement. This model is most suitable for experimental music listening research, however, it can be argued that some of these mechanisms apply to other music activities (e.g., rhythmic entrainment may occur as part of instrumental music playing, dance, and rapping). A third model that has been applied to health interventions in groups is the social identity approach (Tajfel and Turner, 1986 ; Turner et al., 1987 ; Jetten et al., 2014 ). According to this model, to the extent that participants identify with their group, they may access psychological resources from the group such as support, meaning, control and self-esteem. This model has been shown to explain the health and well-being effects of group singing (Williams et al., 2019 ; Dingle et al., 2020 ; Tarrant et al., 2021 ) and other music activities such as dance and instrumental music groups (Kyprianides and Easterbrook, 2020 ; Draper and Dingle, 2021 ). From this model, we drew social connection, self-esteem, and identity as processes.

The scoping review was conducted by an interdisciplinary group of academics and students from the Schools of Psychology, Music, Human Movements and Nutrition, Physiotherapy, Business, and hospital based Clinical Research Centers at the University of Queensland during February to December 2020. We formed into small working parties of two to four people, each focusing on one of the eight music activity categories. Reliability was established by two or more members of each working group screening the same 50 abstracts in their category and meeting to ensure that the selection criteria were applied consistently. Following this, the remainder of abstracts were divided up among group members for screening. This process resulted in too many papers for inclusion in the full review, so the authors agreed to re-screen the “included” abstracts by applying our quality criteria to exclude all but the best quality research in each category. Importantly, studies in which the intervention was clearly music therapy or a form of psychotherapy were not included, as these bodies of research have been reviewed elsewhere. The literature search was conducted using nine search engines: CINAHL, Embase, Music Periodicals, PsycInfo, PsycNET, PubMed, Scopus, SPORTDiscus, and Web of Science. Search terms are available from the corresponding author on request. Inclusion criteria were that the papers report on empirical research (not reviews or theoretical papers), published in the English language, involving adult participants, and reporting on a health or well-being measure as well as one or more psychological or social process measures that we refer to as “mechanisms” (note that the authors of the studies did not necessarily regard their study design in this way). For quantitative studies, the following criteria were applied:

• a. The study used psychometrically validated measures of a health or well-being outcome and at least one process variable.
• b. The study had at least 20 participants per condition 1 .
• c. If a control or comparison condition was included, allocation of participants to conditions was randomized or a check was done to ensure that the two subgroups were comparable at the start of the study.
• d. Assessors were independent of the people delivering the music activity (to avoid demand characteristics on participants' responses).

For studies using qualitative methods, the following quality checks were applied:

• e. A description and explanation for the type of analysis was given.
• f. There was independence between the facilitators of the music program and those collecting and analyzing the data (or involvement of an independent coder in the analysis).

Overview of the Studies

The number of papers at each stage of the scoping review are shown in Table 1 . Detailed descriptions of the participants, design and intervention, process measures, health or well-being outcomes, and a summary of the results of each study are presented in Supplementary Table 1 . As would be expected, the health and well-being outcomes varied across the musical activity categories. In the receptive music listening studies, pain and indicators of post-operative recovery were common outcomes. In the studies of intentional music listening, pain was again a common outcome, as well as health behaviors such as exercise, symptom checklists and measures of well-being, health related quality of life, and patient satisfaction. In the music sharing studies, outcomes included pain, fatigue, agitated and aggressive behavior, quality of life, and well-being. The instrument playing studies reported health outcomes including cognitive health in older adults, health behaviors, social determinants of health (housing stability and criminal behavior), and well-being. In studies of group singing, the outcomes included mental and physical health, cognitive health, well-being, and quality of life. Studies of movement and dance reported outcomes for cognitive health, healthy weight, mental health, and quality of life. Studies of lyrics and rapping reported outcomes such as mental health and cognitive health. Finally, the studies of music composition, songwriting and improvisation included outcomes such as well-being and cultural determinants of health.

Flow of decisions about papers through the abstract screening, quality screening, and full text review process.

Process measures included arousal, emotion or mood, cognitive measures (e.g., memory, attention), self-esteem/achievement, physical activation, social connection, and identity. Most of the studies in the receptive music listening category and some of the intentional music listening studies reported on psychophysiological measures of arousal, such as blood pressure, heart rate, respiratory rate, and skin conductance. Although these could be viewed as biological measures (which was not the focus of the review or search terms), they are also commonly used in experimental psychological research as indicators of emotional arousal. For this reason, we kept these studies in the review. A summary of the process variables supported by the literature in each musical activity category is presented in Table 2 and explored in further detail in the following sections.

Summary of available evidence about the psychosocial mechanisms by which music activities affect health and well-being.

Key: +, studies reviewed showed positive evidence; +/–, some studies reviewed showed positive evidence some studies found no evidence; –, studies reviewed found no evidence; blank means the studies reviewed did not measure this .

Receptive Music Listening

There is some conceptual overlap between receptive music listening and intentional music listening (next section). We divided studies into the two categories based on the idea that receptive music listening involved participants being in places where music is playing but they were not involved in the music selection process whereas intentional music listening involved some degree of participant engagement in the choice of music they listened to. Among the receptive listening studies, there were 1,922 abstracts screened, 78 selected for full-text review, of which 11 met the criteria for inclusion (see Table 1 ). Nine studies were conducted in a medical setting and investigated the effects of music listening before, during, or after a medical procedure. These included dental procedures, elective surgery, and breast biopsy. Two studies examined the impact of background music on patients with severe dementia (Götell et al., 2002 ; Gotell et al., 2009 ). Methods of receptive listening generally utilized assorted ‘background music’ that was played for participants. These were described as instrumental or classical (Calcaterra et al., 2014 ; Franzoi et al., 2016 ; Kipnis et al., 2016 ; Seinfeld et al., 2016 ; Çetinkaya et al., 2018 ), new age (Kipnis et al., 2016 ; Téllez et al., 2016 ), relaxing (Twiss et al., 2006 ; Nilsson, 2009 ), or participant selected music (Twiss et al., 2006 ).

Across the studies in medical settings, health outcomes primarily focused on pain, recovery from operations, and patient satisfaction. The mechanism of these effects appeared to be the reduced levels of anxiety, distress, and increased relaxation among patients listening to background music compared to the control groups, who were generally in silence. Reductions to pain were less clear among children in one study where there were some age-based differences in pain reports, where older children showed more pain amelioration (Calcaterra et al., 2014 ). This may also have been due to older children being better able to understand the pain scale. In the two studies of older adults with dementia, both publications reported from the same study observing nine patients and carers undertaking a morning routine over three conditions: usual morning care, morning care with familiar background music, and caregiver singing. Results found that background music was related to patient functioning, well-being and decreased aggressive behaviors through its effects on physical activation, increased bodily and on sensory awareness, and a strengthened ability to carry out daily living tasks. Patients showed more agency and playfulness in their interactions with their carers, demonstrating improved social connection and interactions.

Intentional Music Listening

Following screening of 1,226 abstracts, 12 studies met the inclusion criteria for the review of intentional music listening research (described in Table 1 ). Methods of intentional listening across all studies utilized either researcher provided music and/or participant preferred music during the music listening interventions. Intervention lengths varied for each study and ranged from a single session of music listening (e.g., Särkämö et al., 2008 ) to 6 months (e.g., Clark et al., 2016 ). The way in which music listening was applied as an intervention was also mixed with some research emphasizing music listening during periods where participants were undergoing treatment or experiencing symptoms (O'Callaghan et al., 2012 ; Mercadíe et al., 2015 ), during recovery from health procedures (Särkämö et al., 2008 ; Drzymalski et al., 2017 ), or during specific daily activities, such as walking or relaxing (Clark et al., 2016 ; Helsing et al., 2016 ).

Health outcomes included pain, fatigue, health behaviors such as exercise, symptom checklists and measures of well-being, health related quality of life, and patient satisfaction. Music listening appeared to produce such outcomes through its effect on emotions regulation where several studies reported a reduction in feelings of distress, including specific measures of depression, anxiety, stress (Särkämö et al., 2008 ; Helsing et al., 2016 ; Sorensen et al., 2019 ); greater feelings of relaxation and nostalgia (Clark et al., 2016 ; Helsing et al., 2016 ; Kulibert et al., 2019 ; Sorensen et al., 2019 ); improved mood and reduced agitation (Clark et al., 2016 ; Ihara et al., 2019 ) (see Supplementary Table 1 ). The duration of these effects is difficult to ascertain due to the varying lengths of follow up across measures and studies. However, one study found that reduced levels of anxiety and pain were sustained for at least 12 h after music listening (Fernando et al., 2019 ). Several of these studies reported positive emotional effects of music listening compared to a control (no music listening group). However, two studies compared music listening with other active sound or meditation conditions and neither found differences between active conditions (Mercadíe et al., 2015 ; Sorensen et al., 2019 ). These studies lacked a no-music control condition, making it difficult to form robust conclusions about the efficacy of intentional music listening in these studies. Similarly, a study of 169 young people with at least mild psychological distress using a music and emotion regulation mobile phone app showed no differences on emotion regulation, distress, or well-being between the music listening and the waitlist group at 1 month follow up (Hides et al., 2019 ).

Cognitive mechanisms measured in the intentional music listening studies included measures of attention and verbal memory among stroke patients, which were better amongst music listeners compared to those who listened to audiobooks or controls (Särkämö et al., 2008 ) (see Supplementary Table 1 ). Another study took behavioral observations of music recognition and ability to follow rhythm among people with dementia (Ihara et al., 2019 ). Evidence for physical activation was limited to two studies. One used behavioral observations of people with dementia (Ihara et al., 2019 ) and revealed that intentional music listening increased expressions of joy, eye contact, eye movement, engagement, talkativeness, and moving/dancing. Similarly, a study of participants with cardiac disease (Clark et al., 2016 ) reported that listening to music while walking made them feel more energized and the music tempo influenced them to walk faster or maintain an enhanced pace, motivated them to move and some found it helped them to walk for longer periods.

Sharing Music

1,478 abstracts were reviewed with only five studies about music sharing meeting the inclusion criteria for full review. Only one study did not use live music, instead utilizing scheduled Radio programs to initiate music sharing across people's homes (Travers and Bartlett, 2011 ). These studies tended to report outcomes on well-being, quality of life, pain and agitated behavior. The processes by which shared music listening appears to achieve these outcomes was through emotion, cognition (memory), physical activation (synchrony), social connection, and a sense of identity (see Table 2 ). The strongest results were for improved mood and/or emotions, which were found to improve for shared music listening across all studies. Improved social interaction and communication also appeared to show consistent effects, which were particularly marked among participants with dementia, though less so for those with more severe dementia (van der Vleuten et al., 2012 ; Clements-Cortés, 2017 ; Shibazaki and Marshall, 2017 ; Toccafondi et al., 2018 ). As part of this, sharing music stimulated participants' memories and facilitated reminiscing and storytelling that were shared with musicians, staff, and family members. In contrast, music sharing through community radio programming found no changes to loneliness among this shared listening group, likely indicating that less social interaction was facilitated (Travers and Bartlett, 2011 ). These results imply that there is something unique about sharing music when in the physical presence of others.

Synchronized movement and physical activation increased during live music sharing alongside the ability to remember, cognitively perceive, and anticipate auditory musical elements (Clements-Cortés, 2017 ; Shibazaki and Marshall, 2017 ). Participants were reported to be clapping, singing, and generally moving to the music. Shibazaki and Marshall ( 2017 ) noted that these physical responses were even evident for people with mobility issues and among those who had suffered strokes. Finally, for people with dementia, even when dementia was advanced, carers and researchers observed clear cognitive effects while sharing music, such as participants being able to predict, anticipate, and expect different musical patterns and changes (Shibazaki and Marshall, 2017 ).

Instrumental Music

From 1,701 abstracts screened, nine studies of instrumental learning and playing met selection criteria for full review. These focused on health and well-being outcomes from musical instrument playing, such as cognitive health in older adults, health behaviors, social determinants of health (housing stability and criminal behavior), and well-being. Instrument playing was associated with these outcomes via its effects on cognitive, mood, and/or social processes (see Supplementary Table 1 and Table 2 ). Collectively, the research found that playing an instrument resulted in several positive outcomes, including improved mental health and quality of life and well-being (Perkins and Williamon, 2014 ; Seinfeld et al., 2016 ). Music instrument learning also resulted in improved enthusiasm, happiness, relaxation, and tolerance of uncertainty among people with learning disabilities (Wilson and MacDonald, 2019 ). Being part of a band or music group improved perceptions of social support and actual participation in social activities, interpersonal communication, self-esteem, and self-confidence among long-term musicians (Knapp and Silva, 2019 ), new musicians (Perkins and Williamon, 2014 ) and people with learning difficulties (Wilson and MacDonald, 2019 ). This latter study found that people who were socially isolated were more difficult to engage in music groups, with participants reporting lower levels of confidence and self-esteem (Wilson and MacDonald, 2019 ). Self-efficacy scores among children learning a musical instrument were also higher among those learning compared to those not learning an instrument, with this effect higher for girls, compared to boys (Ritchie and Williamon, 2011 ). This self-efficacy was related to greater levels of well-being and higher pro-sociality, with self-efficacy heightened particularly for girls.

Physical activation was found to be related to self-efficacy among children, where self-efficacy for music learning was associated with less hyperactivity, emotional symptoms, and behavioral problems (Ritchie and Williamon, 2011 ). Among older adults with higher SES, those learning to play a musical instrument reported a greater increase in the frequency of behaviors promoting physical activity and spiritual growth than older adults in the comparison condition (a U3A shared learning project) (Perkins and Williamon, 2014 ). Cognitive mechanisms were measured across several studies and found that for older adults, playing instruments was related to improvements in cognitive processing speed and attention, verbal fluency, executive function, visual scanning, and motor ability (Bugos et al., 2007 ; Bugos and Kochar, 2017 ), as well as letter fluency, learning, and short-term memory (Mansens et al., 2018 ). One study used fMRI in people with mild traumatic brain injuries following 8 weeks of piano lessons and found that there was a change to activation of the medial orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) (Vik et al., 2018 ). The OFC network regulates higher order cognitive processing, such as executive functions, including attention, decision-making, impulse control, and social behavior.

Group Singing

A total of 1,455 abstracts were identified in the initial search from which 14 studies met selection criteria for the full review, including six qualitative and eight quantitative studies (see Table 1 ). Prominent outcomes included mental health and well-being, cognitive health, and lung health. Group singing appeared to produce these health and well-being effects through the social, emotional and physical processes. Choral rehearsals have been found to increase feelings of social inclusion and connection over the duration of a singing rehearsal (see Supplementary Table 1 ). Studies involving both small and large group choirs of up to 232 members found that singing fosters social closeness, even in large contexts where individuals are not known to each other (Weinstein et al., 2016 ). Even after a single session of singing, a large group of unfamiliar individuals can become bonded to the same level as those who are familiar to each other within that group. These social inclusion effects are particularly important for various marginalized groups. For instance, 50 minority African Canadian women living in Nova Scotia identified choir singing and listening to spiritual music as spiritual activities that helped protect against the psychological effects of racism (Beagan and Etowa, 2011 ). The women described how singing supported their physical and mental health through a spiritual connection with the Lord and through their cultural connection with the African Christian community. In another study, women from nine different nationalities living in the UK who experienced postnatal depression participated in a 10-week singing group and reported that the sessions provided an authentic, social and multicultural creative experience (Perkins et al., 2018 ). Two Australian studies involving adults who were marginalized due to chronic mental and physical health problems described how choir singing helped them to develop social connections within the choir (Williams et al., 2019 ) and later with audiences (Dingle et al., 2013 ). Furthermore, a reduction in loneliness and an increased interest in life was reported by an ethnically and racially diverse group of seniors participating in a Community of Voices choir in San Francisco (Johnson et al., 2020 ).

Cognitive, social, and mood effects of group singing are prominent in older adult studies (Lamont et al., 2018 ). For example, in retirement village residents in Australia, those who attended an 8-session group music program called Live Wires showed significantly improved cognitive performance and identification with the retirement village compared with the control group (Dingle et al., 2020 ). Similarly, in the Singing for the Brain project in the UK, interviews with 20 people with dementia and their care givers indicated that important mechanisms were cognitive (accepting the diagnosis, positive impact on memory), social (a shared experience, feeling included and supported), and improved mood (Osman et al., 2016 ). Similarly a study in Finland assessed people with dementia and their caregivers before and after a 10-week program of either singing or music listening together, designed to coach the caregivers to incorporate music and singing into their dementia care (Särkämö et al., 2014 ). Music listening temporarily improved overall cognition, attention and executive function, and a longer-term improvement in orientation, while singing enhanced short-term and working memory. Music listening had a long-term positive effect on Quality of Life for both the patients and caregivers.

In terms of physical mechanisms, participants of the Sing for Lung Health choir described improvements in breathing, sputum clearance and exercise tolerance, as well as a general sense of improved well-being. Again, social connections and a shared purpose were key mechanisms, as well as physical activation (McNaughton et al., 2017 ). This 12-week program featured deep breathing, vocalization exercises and singing rounds of familiar songs.

A sense of achievement and a new identity as a member of a choir were mechanisms revealed in several studies (Dingle et al., 2013 ; Perkins et al., 2018 ; Williams et al., 2020 ), particularly during performances (McNaughton et al., 2017 ). Singing, however, is not necessarily better than other arts-based group activities in terms of health and well-being effects. A study 135 adults involved in seven different adult education classes in singing, creative writing and crafts found that mental and physical health, and satisfaction with life, improved in all groups (Pearce et al., 2016 ). In the study with marginalized adults, mental well-being improved for members of both a choir and a creative writing group as long as participants formed a sense of identity with their group (Williams et al., 2019 ).

Music, Movement, and Dance

This search retrieved 743 articles of which four studies met criteria for full review. The health outcomes measured differed widely across the four studies. These included improved measures of cognitive health in the participants with mild cognitive impairment (Doi et al., 2017 ); healthy weight measures (BMI and % body fat) of African American women (Murrock and Gary, 2010 ); improved cognitive health among stroke survivors (Jeong and Kim, 2007 ); and mental health of new mothers (Vlismas et al., 2013 ).

While social connection was acknowledged as an important process across most of these studies, only two measured types of social connection. Interventions were found to improve the quality of interpersonal relationships for stroke survivors compared to people who did not participate in movement interventions (Jeong and Kim, 2007 ), and to improve interactions between mothers and their infants (Vlismas et al., 2013 ). Specifically, mothers felt that they enjoyed interactions with their infants more and reported increases in dyadic reciprocity between them. Similarly, physical activation, while acknowledged as a driving mechanism, was only measured in two studies. For African American women, participating in a dance group meant that they were more physically active than those not participating in dance (Murrock and Gary, 2010 ). However, for adults with mild cognitive impairment, there was no difference in physical activity levels whether they were part of the dance group, playing instruments, or in a health education group. For one study, cultural identity was made salient for the participants, where African American women reported that the dance intervention and choreography incorporated the importance of their church, spirituality, values, and beliefs and provided a positive space for them to talk about their health concerns (Murrock and Gary, 2010 ).

Lyrics and Rapping

From 1978 abstracts reviewed, four articles focusing on rapping or other lyric-focused music activities met our inclusion criteria. The outcomes from these included mental health, well-being, and cognitive health. The effects of lyrics and rapping appeared to act on emotional and social processes, self-esteem and identity (see Supplementary Table 1 and Table 2 ). For instance, for children and adolescents, sung or spoken lyrics (including rap), resulted in improvements to measures of emotional well-being on the Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire (Uhlig et al., 2019 ) and teacher-rated emotional symptoms, empowerment, and fewer depressive symptoms (Travis and Bowman, 2012 ). Further, those least likely to report depressive symptoms were those who felt rap music inspired them to better connect with others, consider the experiences of others, and want to make a difference in their communities. Young people listening to rap and hip-hop showed that their sense of cultural identity was associated with music-based empowerment (Travis and Bowman, 2012 ), and physically engaging in rap and song among children influenced their levels of physical activation (Uhlig et al., 2019 ). This included reductions in hyperactivity and inattention, and improved goal-directed behavior (Uhlig et al., 2016 ). Sleep time also showed changes among this group those in the rap and sing group slept significantly more than children who did not participate in this program.

A study in university students found that exposure to lyrics related to suicide were associated with remembering more nihilistic lyrics than were present in the song (Peterson et al., 2008 ). However, after exposure to this music, many participants responded with stories that exhibited altruistic themes. Higher endorsement of lyrical messages around risk (e.g., violence, substance use, and derogatory treatment of women) was related to high self-esteem among young males (Travis and Bowman, 2012 ). For people with Alzheimer's disease and healthy older adults, memory was positively affected when they were exposed to lyrics that were spoken or sung (Simmons-Stern et al., 2012 ). For these older adults, both types of exposure to lyrics resulted in equal memory of a songs content.

Song Writing, Composition, and Improvisation

This search retrieved 1,280 articles, of which only three studies met the inclusion criteria for the review. Music composition was found to be an important tool for supporting healthy aging and well-being of older adults learning to compose music collaboratively with a string quartet and a professional composer. For these participants, composition also created more opportunities for creativity and feelings of control and self-efficacy (Habron et al., 2013 ) (see Supplementary Table 1 ). In the study by Bartleet et al. ( 2016 ), jamming and music making between Aboriginal and non-Indigenous musicians provided opportunities to develop deep, transformative, intercultural engagement and connection. For these groups, music making was a way to cross boundaries using music as a shared language and to understand and share in diverse experiences. Music students found that the simple act of jamming helped to build a strong rapport, sense of mutual respect, and life-long friendships. Identity making and relationships were very clear among the group-based song writing and composition studies. For example, older adults felt composition led to self and social identity making, and meaningful social engagement with other participants and musicians with some relationships enduring after the program ended (Habron et al., 2013 ).

In Fallon and colleagues' experimental study (2020), 105 university students were asked to complete a stressful task and were then randomly assigned to one of three recovery conditions: control, music listening, or music improvisation using a xylophone. The physiological measure (electrodermal activity) showed greater stress reduction during recovery for those in the music listening condition compared to the improvisation and control groups (Fallon et al., 2020 ). The improvisation group showed a significant improvement in self-reported levels of calmness, irritation (decrease), and satisfaction during the recovery phase.

This scoping review of 63 studies revealed that all eight categories of music activities demonstrated some benefits to health or well-being, although it is difficult to make generalized statements due to the diversity of study designs and measures across studies. An abundance of studies of music listening, group singing, and instrument playing met criteria for inclusion, but relatively few focused on music sharing, dance or movement to music, lyrics or rapping, or songwriting, improvisation and composition. As the descriptions in Table 1 indicate, some music activities featured in more than one category (e.g., music listening was involved to some extent in all eight types of activity, apart from some kinds of lyrics/rapping), while other activities were found in only one or two categories (e.g., movements to music were a key part of the movement and dance category, while movements to create music were characteristic of the instrument playing, group singing, and songwriting, composition, and improvisation category). The eight activities also represent a spectrum of engagement with the selection and creation of music, from very low levels in the case of receptive music listening through to very high levels in the case of songwriting, composition, and improvisation. The purpose of the music activity and the measures assessed in each study reflected this spectrum of engagement. By considering this full spectrum of music activities, the current review extends on previous reviews that had a narrower focus such as music listening (Finn and Fancourt, 2018 ), group singing (Williams et al., 2018 ), or instrument playing and dance (Sheppard and Broughton, 2020 ). It also highlights the need for future research in the field of music, health and well-being to clearly articulate the type of music activity under investigation (Kreutz, 2015 ).

In regard to the mechanisms by which these music activities produce effects on health or well-being, Table 2 summarizes the evidence drawn from the 63 papers reviewed. Receptive music listening tended to be used in health or medical spaces for the purpose of decreasing perceptions of pain and anxiety and for acute post-operative recovery, or in aged care settings for increased activation and improved mood among older adults with dementia. Many of these studies showed that decreased physiological arousal was a key mechanism by which music listening was related to effects on pain and anxiety. The most consistent results were lowered blood pressure, increase in oxytocin, and decrease in cortisol during music listening. Interestingly, music listening was associated with increased arousal, activation , and social interaction in the studies of people with dementia and their carers (Götell et al., 2002 ; Gotell et al., 2009 ). Of the 13 studies in this category, four measured pain outcomes, and three of these reported lower pain in the music condition (Calcaterra et al., 2014 ; Téllez et al., 2016 ; Çetinkaya et al., 2018 ) while one study did not find any effect of music listening on pain (Chantawong and Charoenkwan, 2017 ). It is possible that in this study, the researchers' selection of Western or New Age instrumental music did not align with the Thai women's personal preferences during the cervical excision procedure. These findings align with an earlier review showing how music listening can enhance medical treatments and can be used as an adjunct to other pain-management programs (Bernatzky et al., 2011 ). This review concluded that musical pieces chosen by the patient are typically more effective for pain management than music chosen by a staff member. Interestingly, a recent study found that the music people chose to manage pain was commonly high energy, danceable music with lyrics (Howlin and Rooney, 2020 ) so it should not be assumed that people select soft, slow tempo, instrumental music when in pain.

Positive effects on mood or emotion regulation were reported in studies across all music activity categories ( Supplementary Table 1 ). In the music listening categories, reductions in anxiety were commonly reported. These positive effects on anxiety and pain were not confined to music listening since comparison conditions also produced benefits. For example, a comparison hypnosis condition was associated with decreased anxiety and increased optimism in women undergoing breast tissue biopsy in a hospital clinic (Téllez et al., 2016 ) while silent relaxation was as effective as music listening for lowering cortisol and pain in knee replacement surgery patients (Finlay et al., 2016 ). Similarly, the 14 studies on intentional music listening commonly focused on the role of music in reducing distress, particularly in preparation for, during, or recovery from, significant health events. These studies revealed that actively listening to music showed effects on cognition, emotion, physical activation, and physiological arousal . These findings are consistent with an established body of research on music listening and affective responses on the two dimensions of arousal and valence (e.g., Juslin et al., 2010 ; Eerola and Vuoskoski, 2013 ). The mood enhancing effects of group music activities such as singing, dancing and instrument playing is consistent with the findings of a systematic review of the effects of social group programs (music groups and others) on depression (Dingle et al., 2021 ) and an earlier longitudinal study of 5,055 UK older adults showing that more group memberships measured in the first wave was associated with a decreased likelihood of depression up to 4 years later (Cruwys et al., 2013 ).

Enhanced social bonding and connection was found in studies across many of the music activity categories. For example, shared music listening in the form of live music concerts enhanced social connections and mood in older adults and in hospital patients, yet was featured in few studies, which suggests this is an underutilized approach within aged care and hospital services. Group singing was associated with health and well-being of older adults and those with mental health problems, lung disease, stroke, and dementia through its effects on cognitive functions, mood, social connections, and identity. Both music listening and carer singing decreased agitation and improved posture, movement, and well-being of people with dementia. These findings indicate that singing is not only beneficial for the identified patients but also for their caregivers and loved ones (Forbes, 2020 ). Social and cultural identity was another mechanism highlighted in relation to some music activities. The finding that identification with a music group is associated with the satisfaction of various psychological needs has been noted in several recent studies (Williams et al., 2019 ; Kyprianides and Easterbrook, 2020 ; Draper and Dingle, 2021 ). Singing, dancing, and hip-hop can help ethnic minority group members to connect with their culture (Murrock and Gary, 2010 ; Beagan and Etowa, 2011 ; Travis and Bowman, 2012 ).

Cognitive mechanisms such as improved memory or attention were noted in several music activity categories. For instance, group singing was associated with improved cognitive health in older adults and those with dementia. Learning to play a musical instrument was associated with cognitive performance, self-esteem, and well-being in diverse populations including school students, older adults, and people with mild brain injuries. Dance and movement with music programs were associated with improved health and well-being in people with dementia, women with postnatal depression, and sedentary women with obesity through various cognitive, physical, and social processes. Clinicians and care workers planning to introduce a musical activity to enhance the cognitive health of their participants should consider the level of musical training and capability of new learners. It may be necessary to develop innovative ways for participants to engage with music that do not require an ability to read sheet music or to have a high level of fine motor skill. Group singing can be conducted using lyric sheets and a call-and-response style for learning the various vocal parts, as has been used successfully with marginalized adults (Dingle et al., 2013 ; Williams et al., 2019 ). Furthermore, innovative work is in progress adapting musical instruments so that they are simpler for older adults to create music with (MacRitchie and Milne, 2017 ).

Finally, self-esteem, empowerment, and sense of achievement were mechanisms by which rapping, choir singing, musical instrument playing, and composition, songwriting and improvisation produced positive effects on the health and well-being of participants. Rapping, songwriting and composition helped marginalized people to find their voice and increased social inclusion, intercultural connections, and empowerment.

Although the field of music, health and well-being requires further development, there is emerging evidence that specific music activities may be recommended for specific psychosocial purposes and for specific health conditions. Music activities offer a rich and underutilized resource for health and well-being to participants of diverse ages, backgrounds, and settings.

Author Contributions

GD designed the scoping review and led the write up. LS generated the search terms, conducted the library searches, assisted with the tabulation of results, and the write up. All authors contributed to the screening, reviewing, and summarizing of papers in their sections and contributed to the final manuscript.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher's Note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

1 This was based on power calculations showing that a sample of 24 is required for a within subjects (pre-post design) ANOVA to find a small effect size with a power of 0.8; while a total sample of 34 (17–18 in each condition) is required for a two-group comparison ANOVA with two assessment points to find a small effect size with a power of 0.8. Our guideline of 20 per condition was chosen to balance the pragmatics of fitting groups of people into halls and spaces where music activities typically take place with the need to design studies with sufficient power to detect an effect if one existed.

Supplementary Material

The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.713818/full#supplementary-material

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Music Effects on the Brain

The study of how music affects the memory, motivation, and confidence has been the theme of interest for many researchers in this field. The interrelation of music to the mental and physical health of individuals has been the subject of debate aimed at improving scientific research. Many studies by Cardena (2011, p. 143) have maintained that music has positive effect on our memory, motivation, and confidence.

Music, as Thiam (2006, p. 97) notes, has the power of healing our frequent ailments as human beings. In addition, research validates that the classical forms of music has had an impact on individuals, reporting impressive results on the power of healing particularly ( Effects of Music on the Mind and Brain 2014). Music has a calming effect on the human mind, and an inspiring zeal on the general composure of the body.

Besides, music is an exciting element that hastens human recovery from health illnesses, given its ability to inspire motivation to feel better. More than that, music helps in fighting nervousness, especially due to the comforting impact it has on the mind, the muscles, and the body. Music helps to reduce the impacts of depression.

For instance, when individuals are under depression are gloomy or feeling inadequate, music can offer soothing effects that can raise their composure to normal levels ( Effects of Music on the Mind and Brain 2014).

Dejection has the capacity to moderate the actions of the brain, inhibits the ability of brain to think consistently, and perform certain responsibilities. In this aspect, music induces in individuals an aura of strong will that reverses the impact of depression and autisms in the body (Volkmar 2013, p. 48).

Deficiency of neurotransmitter and serotonin in the brain, according to Koelsch (2014, p. 172), may result in depression. However, listening to music has the ability to inspire the hormones and raise the levels of these elements to equilibrium, making the brain to work optimally.

Soothing musical sounds inspires the production of serotonin levels in the brain, thereby helping in the alleviation of mental depression (Larson 2010). Soothing music has a natural way of making the brain relaxed, creating an aura of confidence in individuals, as well as motivating people in very effective ways.

Among the tried, tested, and trusted benefits of listening to music includes a broad spectrum of ideologies and practicalities that research has sought to validate. To begin with, music has the capacity to relieve anxiety and make the brain more at ease with the body and the environment (Cardena and Winkelman 2011, p. 120).

Anxiety has a unique way of making individuals to degenerate to the lowest ebb of their lives given that it inspires a feeling of fear of the unknown to weigh the body and brain down ( Effects of Music on the Mind and the Brain 2014). The outcome of the unknown makes individuals worried, and this might lead to temporary brain malfunction with probable greater consequences in the event that this trend escalates.

Increased levels of anxiety, according to Hallam, Cross, and Thaut (2009, p. 62), may lead to stress, and, further, culminate into insomnia. Additionally, lengthy instances of worry may lead to ailments related to nervousness. Though if noted in time, making such individuals to listen to music can be instrumental in checking the menace (Koelsch 2014, p. 175).

Introducing music to individuals undergoing extreme levels of anxiety can help in relaxing their brain and raise their hormones back to normal levels ( Effects of Music on the Mind and the Brain 2014).

Used in this way, music can help in calming the body nerves and, finally, sooth the mind to easiness. Flat musical notes can also be instrumental in inducing sleep in individuals with sleep-related disorders, thereby helping in their brain development.

Music has the capacity to motivate individuals as it affects both the learning and the thinking processes (Jensen 2005, p. 309).Studies in sciences suggest that soft background music stimulates the mind and the brain to absorb knowledge and retain data ( Effects of Music on the Mind and the Brain 2014). Individuals listening to soothing beats while doing some work help them to work more rapidly.

In the process, they become more effective too. Music used in this way, therefore, helps individuals to feel motivated, and people become more positive about work in general. According to Cardena and Winkelman (2011, p. 127), research in this area indicates that music makes individuals more consistent in learning as it brings about remarkable progresses in fast tracking motivation in individuals.

Students can also find meaningful motivation in their respective studies while listening to music given that music breaks the monotony of everyday classroom work. As Hallam et al. (2009, p. 65) note, students who attend classes that prescribe certain kinds of musical notes while studying in the laboratory record greater progress results as they become more involved in their tasks than those with no musical notes.

Listening to some pleasant music, while doing some boring work or difficult task will eventually spur motivation to make the work look easier (Curtis 2008). Normally, an individual working while listening to some soft music at the background usually records least interruptions from other environmental hitches.

Due to least interruption, such people concentrate more on what they do, thus making them produce quality results in their tasks.

Research in this area also holds that music has the capacity to boost confidence, especially in individuals with low self-esteem (Hallam et al. 2009, p. 72). Music has an affirmative influence in developing the interactive skills of entities. Lack of sureness as well as no aspiration to comprehend is one of the attributes to letdown.

Accordingly, it is not always the inability of people to learn, rather, it is due to lack of confidence in what one does (Avanzini 2003, p. 296). Individuals have every endowment to learn given motivation and chance to do so.

Indeed, it is only that the prevailing situations in different settings may make some people to own up and let their low self-esteem weigh them down. Learners attaining poor grades in learning institutions, for example, are not essentially devoid of the required intellect.

Most educators agree that musical involvement advances students’ self-discipline, coordination, dexterity, thinking skills, self-esteem, creative abilities, listening skills, and personal expression, each of which supports learning in very profound ways. Most music educators, though, are not aware of specific research that will support such feelings and observations ( Music and Student Development 2014).

As Thiam (2006, p. 117) notes, the students’ disinterest in the subjects in question leads them to record poor grades. However, music classes can help the learners to regain composure and fight out their low-esteem lag that makes them perform dismally. Music, therefore, helps in boosting learner confidence, encouraging them to explore new ideas.

In so doing, they venture in new fields giving them the basic orientation of people, places, and ideas that they previously felt was impermeable. From this perspective, music increases people’s ability in believing in themselves and in increasing their capacity to think big.

The effects of music in the recovery of physiological difficulties experienced after a stressful aperture induced by aversive visual stimuli are equally great.

Studies show that the relaxing nature of music is effective in regulating the spectral of the frontal temporal lobe, rejuvenating the skin conductance, moderating the heart beat variability, creating the respiration ambience, as well as encrypting the facial capillary blood current (Cardena and Winkelman 2011, p. 128).

Under normal circumstances, aversive visual stimulation evokes heart rate deceleration and decrease facial blood flow that could be detrimental in causing visual impairment. In such situations, respiration rate gets to unguided levels that may make the brain not to function optimally.

Studies show that pleasant music has the capacity to restore the baseline levels of several parameters and the recovery process of most of the body tissues (Sokhadze 2007, p. 37). Music relaxes the body thereby exerting positive modulatory effects on respiratory and cardiovascular activity.

Such activities regulate increased heart rate with the ability to balance the heart period variability, while regulating vascular blood flow, as well as respiration rate in the course of post-stress recovery (Sokhadze 2007, p. 43). In much of the research done in this area, data has been consistent to the effect that positive emotions guaranteed by music facilitate the process of neurochemistry recovery that arise from negative emotions

Invariably, music stands out as a universal feature in human development, partly due to its power and capacity to evoke strong sensations and influence moods. Investigation both in the scopes of science and art continue to develop their expanse of the richness of music to the wellbeing of man (Cardena and Winkelman 2011, p. 131).

In numerous studies, the neural correlation of music with its capacity to evoke emotions in individuals continues to be an invaluable element in the understanding and study of human emotions (Koelsch 2014, p. 177).

It is no doubt that functional neuroimaging research based on music and feeling demonstrate that music has the capacity to moderate actions in the mind much of which are critically encompassed in developing emotions.

Several brain structures such as hypothalamus, hippocampus, cingulate cortex insula, orbitofrontal cortex, amygdala, and nucleus acumens heavily rely on hormones to inspire them to perform their desired functions (Cardena and Winkelman 2011, p. 139).

The possibilities of music to inspire and control hormones to act in these arrangements have imperative inferences for the application of music in the management of neurological and psychiatric ailments.

Essentially, emotions inspire the brain and enhance the processes of memory (Norden, Reay and Leven 2007, p. 60). Since music has the ability to evoke strong emotions, it could be instrumental in inspiring the brain to rise to the occasion and perform its duties optimally. To that effect, music arouses individuals either about a particular music, an event, or about an episode or information related to a particular music.

Neuroscience studies enhance insights into the role of music in relaxing the brain to inspire memory. Playing musical instruments, according to Jensen (2005, p. 313), acts as a multi-sensory as well as a motor experience generating emotions and motion tapping of the finger to dancing. Seen in this way, music engages the pleasure while acting as the reward element in the brain systems (Norden et al. 2007, p. 61).

Moreover, music has the potential to alter brain function as well as the brain structure when done well for over a period. Accordingly, intense musical tutelage and exposure has the capacity to generate and inspire new processes in the brain, and, normally, this occurs at different stages in life (Jensen 2005, p. 314).

As Norden et al. 2007, p. 68) observe, music is instrumental in developing the brain with a range of impacts based on creativity, the learning process, and cognition among other things.

Whether the purpose of music has to be for recreation, entertainment, or enhancement of moods, Koelsch (2014, p. 178) supports Forinash (2001, p. 33) argument that many people listen to music for various reasons, especially for its inspiring value.

Because of its potent and ubiquity, music is very effective in the construction and correction of autobiographical memories while helping in building judgments about others and on oneself (Forinash 2001, p. 34). Several elements in human development factor in the role of music such as aiding in memory formation and recalling of autobiographical facets and episodic information.

From the forgoing analysis, it becomes clear that music has a vital role in developing individuals in very many special ways. In essence, music is an essential and extremely valuable tool in the way individuals learn. Music has a calming effect on individuals and, indeed, an inspiring zeal on the composure of individuals generally.

Music has the ability to incite hormones exciting and speed up human recovery from health ailments given its ability to inspire motivations ( Music and Student Development 2014). Apart from that, music’s comforting influence aids in fighting nervousness since it relaxes the muscles, the brain, and eventually the whole body.

Neuroscience, in particular, offers firsthand and profound perceptions into the function of music in composure of sentiments. Moreover, neuroscience studies enhance understandings into the role of songs in feelings, relaxing the brain to inspire retention. Moreover, music helps to reduce the impacts of depression; it is true that when individuals undergo depression, they become gloomy, making them feel inadequate.

Music, therefore, can offer the basic soothing effects that can bring the discomfits back to normal levels. As observed, depression has the capacity to moderate brain functions, inhibits the ability of the brain to think and reason with a high level of consistency, and carry out certain tasks. When played along, it induces in individuals an aura of strong will that reverses the impact of depression weighing down the body.

Finally, since deficiency of neurotransmitter and serotonin in the brain may go down because of depression, music offers itself as a correctional factor that incites the hormones needed to raise neurotransmitter and serotonin to normal levels. In retrospect, listening to music has the ability to inspire the hormones and raise the levels of the brain structures to equilibrium, making the brain to work optimally.

In conclusion, as the case may be, comforting musical sounds inspires the production of serotonin levels, thereby helping in the alleviation of mental dejection. Soothing music, therefore, has a natural way of making the brain relaxed, creating an aura of confidence in individuals, while motivating to rise to the occasion and feel better.

Avanzini, G 2003, The neurosciences and music , New York Academy of Sciences, New York.

Cardena, E 2011, Altering consciousness multidisciplinary perspectives , Praeger, Santa Barbara, California.

Cardena, E., and Winkelman, M 2011, Altering Consciousness, 2 Volumes Multidisciplinary Perspectives , ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara.

Curtis, B. W 2008, Music makes the nation nationalist composers and nation building in nineteenth-century Europe Cambria Press, Amherst.

Effects of Music on the Mind and the Brain 2014. Web.

Forinash, M 2001, Music therapy supervision , Gilsum, NH, Barcelona.

Hallam, S., Cross, I., and Thaut, M. H 2009, The Oxford handbook of music psychology , Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Jensen, E 2005, Teaching with the brain in mind (2nd ed.), Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, Alexandria.

Koelsch, S 2014, ‘Brain correlates of music-evoked emotions’, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, vol. 15, no. 17, pp. 170–180.

Larson, D 2010, The effects of chamber music experience on music performance achievement, motivation, and attitudes among high school band students, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Music and Student Development 2014. Web.

Norden, J., Reay, A., and Leven, J 2007, Understanding the brain , Teaching Co., Chantilly, VA.

Sokhadze, E 2007, ‘Effects of Music on the Recovery of Autonomic and Electrocortical Activity After Stress Induced by Aversive Visual Stimuli’, Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback , vol. 32, no. 1, pp. 31-50.

Thiam, P. B 2006, Effects of school band experience on the motivation of high school students , Springer, New York.

Volkmar, F. R 2013, Encyclopedia of autism spectrum disorders , Springer, New York.

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IvyPanda. (2023, November 22). Music Effects on the Brain. https://ivypanda.com/essays/music-and-neuroscience/

"Music Effects on the Brain." IvyPanda , 22 Nov. 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/music-and-neuroscience/.

IvyPanda . (2023) 'Music Effects on the Brain'. 22 November.

IvyPanda . 2023. "Music Effects on the Brain." November 22, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/music-and-neuroscience/.

1. IvyPanda . "Music Effects on the Brain." November 22, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/music-and-neuroscience/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Music Effects on the Brain." November 22, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/music-and-neuroscience/.

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