Music and the Brain

Plato once said “I would teach children music, physics, and philosophy; but most importantly music, for in the patterns of music and all the arts are the keys of learning.” Man's history has been closely related to music and we all know the emotional impact music has on people's moods and how moods influence the impression or interpretation of music. So what is it that makes people emotionally respond to music? What parts of the brain fire when listening to certain types of music? Why is it that when you hear a particular song it strikes up a distant memory? Can music help restore some of the abilities in neurological patients? These are some questions that the cognitive neuroscience of music is beginning to address.
First one needs to understand what music is. Essentially, music is a vibration. When one speaks sound waves are produced by the mouth, compressing air molecules as they travel out. If our naked eye could observe sound waves moving, an individual could observe the molecules come together and then push apart. An example of this would be the ripples in a pond. When the stagnant pond is disrupted by a stone being dropped into it or a boat pushing through it, waves are created and then the water molecules push back. This back-and-forth movement is the vibration. A Swiss scientist Hans Jenny coined the term Cymatics which in Greek means wave. Cymatics is the study of sound waves. Jenny’s experiment showed what happens when one takes various materials like sand, water, and viscous substances, and places them on vibrating metal plates and membranes. What then appears are eloquent shapes and motion- patterns which vary from the nearly perfectly ordered and stationary, to those that are turbulently developing, organic, and constantly in motion (Jenny, 1967). Elena Mannes wrote a book called The Power of Music: Pioneering Discoveries in the New Science of Song, in her book she interviewed several scientist in order to get down to the heart of music, and