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Are We Born to the Tune of Different Pipers?
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20429 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
3 / 1992 |
4,772 Words |
| Author
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Rita Robinson
Rita Robinson writes for national and international magazines
and is the author of eight books. |
We're musical creatures from the tips of our toes to the tops of our heads. Our genes emanate lively rhythms, our muscles constantly produce inaudible sounds, and our brains operate to musical beats. Sounds, seemingly unheard vibrations, and music bombard the fetus in the womb, just as they do us throughout our lives until we die. Certain sounds are capable of adding richness or dullness to our spirits and, perhaps, years to our lives. Professional musicians are believed to be among the longest living individuals. The pianist Mieczyxlaw Horszowski, though in his nineties, still tours the world. Opera singers, too, join ranks with the hearty, possibly because of well-developed heart and lung muscles.
Playing a musical instrument, not just listening to music, enhances a person's skill to deal with mental abstract Pattern relationships, germane to mathematical and scientific ability. The ancient Greeks were among the first to recognize the intellectual influence of music and included it in education. They also noted that all motion produces sound. The use of music, melodies, and rhythms in their healing practices was common. The Greeks so esteemed music that the invention of instruments such as the lyre, kithara, and the pipes are attributed to their gods Hermes, Apollo, and Pan.
Given music's long history, plus recent findings on how music affects us intellectually, physically, and aesthetically, scientists are rediscovering the melody of life.
How Music Affects The Brain
When you hear certain music and like it, it's because music excites certain existing structures in the brain," say physics professor Gordon Shaw at the University of California, Irvine's Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory. We're born with inherent natural patterns of excitation of the brain's neurons, like an internal language of the brain. These patterns can be translated electronically to music and to certain instruments and pitches.
"Even before we learn how to speak, we can learn some kinds of music. For example, infants… enjoy hearing music. Kids appreciate music because it excites these inherent brain patterns. Early music education may help kids develop higher cognitive processes, especially if they perform," says Shaw.
"Music at any age may be education for the brain. We think music can help in math and science studies. For example, we recognized
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