I love music and listen to it often when I work. But I didn’t know how it affected my brain and body. Music is such an integral part of our lives that I thought it would be useful and interesting to look at how we respond to it.

Friedrich Nietzsche: “Without music life would be a mistake.”

Music has many different effects on the brain. As you can see from the image below, we are only scratching the surface. But let’s get in.

How we perceive neutral faces is affected by happy or sad music

Although we can often pick out if music is happy or sad, this is not a subjective feeling based on how it makes us feel. Our brains respond differently to sad and happy music.

Even a short piece of sad or happy music can affect us. A study found that participants were more likely than others to interpret a piece of music as either happy or sad. This was in line with the tone of the music. The most striking results were for expressions that were close to neutral.

Another interesting thing is how music affects our emotions.

Two types of emotions can be associated with music: perceiving and feeling emotions.

This means we sometimes understand the emotions in a piece of music but don’t feel them. This is why some people find sad music more enjoyable than depressing.

We don’t feel any danger or threat in listening to music. Therefore, we can perceive related emotions but not feel them. It is almost like experiencing vicarious emotions.

Creativity can be improved by ambient noise.

When tackling our daily tasks, it’s natural to turn up the music. However, when it comes down to creativity, loud music might not be the best choice.

It turns out that moderate noise is the best place to express creativity. Low levels of ambient noise are more stimulating than high noise levels.

This increases the processing difficulty, which encourages abstract processing, leading to greater creativity. This means that we can resort to more creative solutions when things are not as easy to process as they normally would.

However, creativity is affected by high levels of noise because we are overwhelmed and have a hard time processing information efficiently.

This is similar to how temperature, lighting and productivity can affect our productivity. However, living in a more crowded area can also be beneficial.

Music choices can help us predict who we will be

This one is for young adults only. However, it’s still very interesting.

A study with couples that spent time getting to know one another, looking at their top ten favourite songs, provided reliable predictions about the listener’s personality characteristics.

Five personality traits were used in the study: openness to experiment, extraversion and agreeableness.

Some traits are more accurate than others based on someone’s listening habits. Openness to experiment, extraversion, and emotional stability were the most difficult to predict. On the other hand, conscientiousness was not obvious based upon musical taste.

Here’s how they broke it down:

• Blues fans are self-confident, creative, outgoing and gentle, and they love Blues.
• Jazz lovers are self-confident, creative, outgoing, and easygoing.
• Classical music lovers are self-confident, creative, introverted, and easygoing.
• Rap fans are self-confident and outgoing.
• Opera lovers are self-confident, creative, and gentle.
• Country and western supporters are hardworking, outgoing individuals
• Reggae lovers are self-confident, creative, and not hardworking. They are gentle, kind, and easygoing.
• Dance enthusiasts are outgoing and creative but not gentle.
• Indie lovers are low in self-esteem, creative, hardworking, and not gentle.
• Bollywood lovers are outgoing and creative
• Heavy metal/rock fans are low in self-esteem, creative, not hardworking, easygoing, gentle and at ease
• Chart pop is self-confident, outgoing, gentle and hardworking. However, they are not creative or at ease.
• Soul lovers are self-confident, creative, outgoing and gentle.

It isn’t easy to generalize based on this study. However, The Science of Introverts and Extroverts show some overlap.

Contrary to popular belief, music can distract us from driving.

A second study was done on teens and young adults to see how music affects driving.

The researchers provided music options for drivers to listen to, including their music or the “safe” music. Although their music was preferable, it proved more distracting than the other options. Drivers made greater mistakes and drove more aggressively while listening to their music.

Surprisingly, the researchers found that music provided was more beneficial than any music. Safe driving is easier with unfamiliar or uninteresting music.

Music training can greatly improve motor and reasoning skills.

Although we assume that musical instruments can be beneficial to children, it is more useful than we think. One study showed that children with three years of musical instrument training did better than those without. It also revealed that children with fine motor skills and auditory discrimination skills were significantly higher.

The test scores were also higher for vocabulary and nonverbal reasoning skills. These skills involve understanding and analyzing visual information such as relationships, similarities, and differences between patterns and shapes.

These two areas are not as musically-trained as we think. It’s fascinating to see how playing an instrument can help children develop various skills.

Similar research has shown that exercise and motor skills are related. This is fascinating, too.

Classical music can increase visual attention.

Music exposure and training can be beneficial for more than just children. Stroke patients showed increased visual attention when listening to classical music.

To compare the results, the study also tested white noise and silence. It found that silence had the lowest scores, just like the driving study.

This study was small, and the results need to be confirmed. However, I find it fascinating how music and noise affect other senses and abilities, in this case, vision.

Distracting phone calls can be more disruptive than normal conversations.

Another study that focused on noise rather than music showed that phone calls in which we can only hear one side of a conversation are the most distracting.

After a survey revealed that 82% of people find the overhearing of conversations on cell phones annoying, Veronica Galvan from the University of San Diego decided to investigate why.

Participants completed word puzzles, while the other half listened to the background conversation of a simple phone conversation. Half of the volunteers listened to the entire conversation between the two participants.

The one-sided conversation over the phone was more distracting for those who heard both speakers. They also retained more of the conversation than those who only heard one side of the conversation. This indicates that they were more interested in the topic than those who heard both sides.

Unpredictability in a one-sided conversation seems to be what makes it more interesting. Listening to both sides of a conversation gives us more context, which helps us tune out distractions.

However, being distracted can be a good thing for many reasons.

Music helps us exercise.

We can return to music and see that it is not useful when exercising.

For years, research has been conducted on music’s effects on exercise. Leonard Ayres, an American researcher, discovered that cyclists could pedal faster when listening to music than they did in silence.

Because music can drown out the brain’s fatigue cries, this happens. When our bodies realize we are tired, they send signals to the brain to take a rest. Music can compete for our brain’s attention and help us overcome those signs of fatigue. However, this is only beneficial for moderate and low-intensity exercise. Music is not as effective at distracting our attention from the pain during high-intensity exercises.

Music can help us not only push through the pain and make exercise more enjoyable but can also improve our ability to use energy efficiently. A 2012 study found that cyclists listening to the music needed 7% less oxygen for the same work than those who cycled in silence.

Recent research shows that music has a ceiling effect at 145 beats per minute. Anything higher doesn’t seem motivating, so be mindful when selecting your workout playlist.

In the same way, exercising makes us happier, and it is no surprise that music contributes greatly to our success in working out.