1:00 -2:59

Jeffery A Sherman

English 2

3^rd block

October 15, 2012

“The Music Outside of Us: Impacts the Mind within us”

   Music is not just a bunch of sounds and noises but an art we humans interact with. Many people say that music these days is destroying our brains and taking our lives down a negative path. However, many aspects of music have been proven to both improve cognitive thinking skills and increase spatial reasoning. Who would have ever guessed that music could alter our behavior and change the way our brains think?  Music has and still is impacting the lives of many.

        An anger fueled argument burst out from my parents’ bedroom the sound was brain damaging. Then, all of a sudden my mother’s favorite song blared out transforming the room in a musical therapy room. The mood was almost automatically changed. It was as if my parents had abruptly lost their voices and a different state of mind. I wondered, “What power could have brought this rampant dispute to a swift holt? The power of music should be recognized and appreciated for what it really is. Music for me has been a life changer and has impacted me positively time and time again. Music has and still is impacting the lives of many. Just think of all the kids in the world that turn to music when they feel like no one cares. Just think of how many people turn to music when they become frustrated, saddened or even angry.

    As a result of reading, “Early Music Lessons Longtime Benefits,” by Perry Klass, written on people and how their lives have been changed after having had childhood music lessons, I have come to conclusion that music lessons can expand memory and improve many of the brain’s abilities. For example, studies from this article show that after an average child is given piano lessons their comprehension level raises immensely.“Musical training improves the brain’s ability to discern the components of sound — the pitch, the timing and the timbre.” This means that after learning to play the piano their ability to understand and then implement that material rises to a superior level compared to their average comprehension level. The very music we surround ourselves with is changing the human mind vastly.

      Music is a mood changer and can alter the behavior in several ways. Roberta Hershenson, the author of “Debating the Mozart effect,” argues that classical music makes the brain work more efficiently, sharpens a child’s concentration and makes them brighter as well as livelier. She claims that when young children are given piano lessons for several months to a year, their performance in Spatial reasoning test improves and last for up to two years afterward. She also adds to the argument by stating that the “Mozart Effect” is often skipped over and should be brought to attention. The Mozart Effect states that the brain’s chemical state becomes superior to an average brain after being musically trained. Still thinking that music is just a bunch of catchy phrases and lyrics?

                   Music is a powerful art and is changing people drastically. How many people do you know that can honestly say that they do not sing at least twice a week? Music should be recognized for all the amazing things it does in our lives today. Music motivates, befriends, touches, and moves people every day. Even though music is not a concrete object that you can touch , it’s an object that can touch your heart and open the many wonders of the human brain.

    The object above is called a Dopamine Receptor . A Dopamine receptor creates and excretes a substance called, "Dopamine" which is directly involved with your emotions. Dopamine receptors are implicated in many neurological processes, including motivation, pleasure, cognition, memory, learning, and fine motor control, as well as modulation of nueroendocrine signaling.

Essential Questions

 How does the brain interact with the art of music ?
 Why does music sometimes seem to changes a persons behavior ?
 Who is affected most by these changes ?
 Should music be implemented into schools ?
  What specific parts of the brain are react when music in being played ?

Explaination - The questions above will help me focus as well as guide my research . Many of the question above were questions that were floating around in my head when i decided to reasearch music's affect on  the human brain and emotions.

Citation of Annotated Articles

Citation of my 3 Annotated Articles

 Hershenson, Roberta “Debating the Mozart Theory”.www.nytimes.com 26 Sept. 2012. The New York Times .12 Aug. 2009 http://www.nytimes.com/2000/08/06/education/debating-the-mozart-theory.html?gwh=19A8BEA4584B0155E2E56D4A3DDCC2F8.

Klass, Perri. “Early Music Lessons Longtime Benefits”. http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/10/early-music-lessons-have-longtime-benefits/http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/10/early-music-lessons-have-longtime-benefits/.

Thompson, Clive. “Music’s Neurological effects”.www.nytimes.com 26 Sept. 2012. The New York Times .17Feb.2010.http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/31/arts/music/31thom.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0&gwh=EE19BB41056264E5A8EEB3B7BDEC9DA1.