1. Improve vocabulary.According to a recent review published in the journalNature Reviews Neuroscienceby Nina Kraus, Northwester University (USA), during musical training to play an instrument they establishneural connections that also improve other aspects of human communication. Hence, children with musical training have better vocabulary and reading ability. It also explains why musicians are better able to hear a conversation when there is background noise than ordinary mortals.
2. Background music?Whether we play a Lady Gaga song through a loudspeaker or opt for a classical music record, listening to music while performing a cognitive task – such as studying or writing a report – reduces performance, according to an article recently published inApplied Cognitive Psychology. The best thing in these cases, say their authors, is silence.
3. Rhythm for sports.Who has not exercised accompanied by their headphones and their favorite playlist? Scientists from Brunel University showed in 2008 that listening to certain types of music, mainly of the rock and pop genres, we can increase our resistance to intense physical exercise up to 15 %. The study was published in the journalJournal of Sport & Exercise Psychology.
4. Music, on the left.According to a study carried out a few years ago at the universities of California and Arizona (USA) and published inScience, the right ear picks up speech sounds better, while the left ear responds better to music. “Even at birth, the ear is structured to distinguish between different types of sounds and send it to the right place in the brain,” concluded one of the study’s authors, Barbara Cone-Wesson.
5. Music and alcohol.Loud music in bars encourages you to drink more alcohol in less time, according to a French investigation released in 2008 by the magazineAlcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research. Also, the louder the volume of the music, the faster the drink is consumed.
6. Good for circulation.Scientists at the University of Maryland Medical Center have shown that listening to music can benefit the cardiovascular system just as much as exercising or taking certain medications. Specifically, by analyzing the response of blood vessels with ultrasound while listening to music, Michael Miller and his colleagues found that el diameter of vessels, measured at the top of the arm,increase 26% with our favorite music. In contrast, music that we rate as stressful causes vessels to contract by 6%. The experiments also showed that listening to songs that invite you to laugh blood vessels dilate by 19%, while relaxing music produces an expansion of 11%.
7.With your eyes closed.Studying the brains of 15 subjects with the help of functional magnetic resonance imaging, Yulia Lerner, from Tel Aviv University, showed last year that closing our eyes increases the emotional effect that music produces on us. Specifically, Dr. Lerner used scary music in the style of that used by Alfred Hitchcock in his films, and thus found that the activity of the amygdala, an area of the brain linked to the feeling of fear, increased much more with closed eyes than if they were kept open.
