For today’s class, you read John Medina’s Brain Rules, Music. Spend the first ten minutes summarizing your reading in your notebook, and write about the importance (or lack of importance) music plays in your life. Remember to type up your response and post it as a comment to this blog entry before our next class.
ENG1101 D340 English Composition I, SPR2015
Official site for ENG1101 D340
Reading John Medina’s “Brain Rules”, chapter 10 “Music” reminds the reader that music is vital to our life. Music is something we have to appreciate. Throughout music, we express who we are and it meets our emotions. On the other hand, musical training improves spatio temporal reasoning, allowing us to rotate three dimensional images in our head. Also, it benefit speech and provides improvements in working memory. Besides that, music lessons improve social skills, it leads to more positive social interactions like between parent and child. As Medina said, “Oxytocin plays a huge role in social bonding. This talented molecule stimulates temporary feelings of trust, orgasms, lactations and even birth.” In addition, music changes our mood and improves the recovery rates of specific cognitive abilities in stroke patients. I have a friend from highschool who always listens to Chopin and Mozart classical music and everytime I see him listening to it he jump at me saying “Feel it, imagine it, this is life!.” Absolutely, I do understand him when I’m listening to rock or romantic music. Recorded and Live music can be used as therapy as studies have shown that certain types of music reduce stress. In other words, recording music is international spread and Live Performances still have an special electricity. Thus, music is vital to our life and society.
From reading John Medina’s Brain Rules, Music. Few things I learned from the chapter is that music can improves our intellectual skills in several cognitive domains. Researchers stated that Music training can improves our reading ability. People who done music training are able to detect the emotional information in a speech better and their empathy skills are also better than the normal people. However, in my opinion, I believe music is another way for us to learn, a fun way that will help us better at understanding.
John Medina’s Brain Rules, Music chapter is a very good chapter to read, because in the chapter Medina speaks of the importance of music as it relates to our lives. According to Median, “Scientists aren’t sure how the brain defines music, in part because there is no universal agreement about exactly what music is.” However, I believe that music is the sort of entertainment that makes people feel alive. Also, it can put people into different moods. Take Henry for example, he was unresponsive and almost unalive, but as soon as he heard music, he became responsive.
On the other hand, different music puts me into different moods. For example, whenever I listen to Earth Music (House Music) it makes me feel alive and it keeps me focus, especially when I am hand drafting, designing models, exercising, cooking, or just relaxing. Moreover, whenever I hear some Rap Music, It makes me upset just by hearing the music plays. Similarly, whenever I hear certain kinds of Soul Music, it would make me depressed sometimes.
At the end, music plays an important part in our daily live. In fact, “Formal musical training improves intellectual skills in several cognition”, Median states. In addition, he believes that music boots spatiotemporal skills, vocabulary, picking, out sounds in a nosy environment, working memory, and sensory- motor skills.
In John Medina’s music chapter we learn about how music affects us. People who listen to music are most likely to get a boost in their intellectual skills. Music can help us improve our reading, people who listen to music more often tend to have better social skills and can analyze when something is wrong with someone. In my opinion music is a way for people to express themselves. I don’t find music VERY important to me in my life. There are songs that I can relate to sometimes, or songs that magically pop up that relate to my current situation, very coincidental. Music is all around, even to 10 second themes from our ringtone, and when there is no music it’s playing in our head. Sometimes when watching a movie/game trailer that has an “epic” score or song playing which gives me those good chills. Music can affect us in different ways, our mood, or life, etc.
Music is my life. I listen to the music all the time from the moment I wake up to the moment I sleep. Scientists aren’t sure how the brain defines music in part because there is no universal agreement about exactly what music is. One professor of music and science at Cambridge said “Music can be defined as those temporally patterned activities, individual and social, that involve the production and perception of sound and have no evident and immediate efficacy or fixed consensual reference.” Some scientists think we are born musical. You can certainly watch babies respond to music, swaying and responding with glee to specific intervals. They even love it when parents talk to them in musical speech. Music has been a part of cultural expression of virtually every culture ever studied. It may even extend into prehistoric time. Back in my country there are thirty six sub casts and those thirty sub casts have their own tradition, their own culture and their own cultural music. Formal musical training improves intellectual skills in several cognitive domains. Music boosts spatiotemporal skill, vocabulary, picking out sounds in a noisy environment, working memory and sensory motor skill. Formal musical Training also aids social cognition. People with music training are better able to detect the emotional information in speech. Empathy skills and other prosocial behavior improve. According to Medina Musicians score better than non musicians even when speech is being played. Musicians are better at detecting emotions too. People use music as cure. The Greek physician Hippocrates prescribed it for mentally ill patients. During world war I, hospitals in the UK employed musicians to play for wounded soldiers. It seemed not only to calm them down but also to reduce their pain.
After reading John Medina’s “Music” chapter from Brain Rules, I realized that music has more relevance in our life than we may think. Music is one of the most beautiful things the human being has invented, an art that attracts everyone’s attention, something that we can enjoy alone or share with other people in the happy or sad moments to express our feelings. Besides that, there are many things going on in our brains while we are listening to music that we might do not even know. Classical music can improve visual attention, our social skills and the ability to listen carefully to retain the information. In addition, I learned that music not only can benefit kids to improve visual attention, it can benefit stroke patients as well. Personally, I believe that if scientists continue doing researches, we can keep discovering tons of functions in our brain that are able to be improved by listening to music, even though music is particular for every culture, traditions or different kinds of personality, I think it has the same effect on most of the people. Some persons have recommended using the music as a study-supporting feature because we usually never forget songs; it might be a good source to learn faster and make our life easier while we are learning. I think that would be a great idea, because many students just memorize the information but then they forget it too easy. Music is very important for me; it brings joy to my life and makes me feel better when I have to face difficult moments. Even though music plays an important role in my life, I do not need it to survive, opposite to some folks that literally cannot live without music for 1 day. Sometimes when I am stressed out, I use to listen some romantic songs, which are my favorite ones, because they help me to calm down.
Justin Echevarria
While reading the chapter “Music” chapter of Brain Rules by John Medina, he explained how during the 90s I believe there was a study infants who listened to music written by Mozart would become smarter. Although this is can be true it doesn’t exactly mean this would happen instantly and all children would become a genius. Mozart’s music allows the a person to become more relaxed and able to distinguish different sounds at different frequencies. When I was in high school I had a U.S History teacher who would play classical music during a quiz or any assignment we were supposed to do while being silent. Multiple students assumed he just enjoyed this music which may be true, but he stated he puts on this specific type of music because he has noticed students get fairly better results in their assignments. Ever since then I always decided to listen to classical music when I was doing any academic work, its been sticking with me for so long that I learned how to play the piano on my own and play this wonderful type of music.
The music chapter by John Medina was quite interesting for me because music is part of my life even though I don’t make music I cannot live without music. Henry’s example of how dead he was before listening to music and how active he was after listening to music can relate to me sometimes. This chapter pointed out some facts that I actually see in myself because I listen to music a lot. One fact is that music improves our ability to understand different people and accents on our every days lives. I have caught myself understanding different types of professors which at first I couldn’t understand. Second fact is that music helps us identify different sounds in a nosy environment. I have a friend who’s a producer so every time he makes a new beat/sound he asks me to listen to it and rate it, since I started doing this I’ve been noticing how I now heard different cool sounds on songs I’ve Been listening for years and didn’t notice. Music run the world in my opinion, no culture can live without music.