Research Assessment #8

Reagan Rasmussen

ISM: Music Education

26 November 2018

“Music and Health.” Harvard Health Blog, Harvard Health Publishing, July 2011,

www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/music-and-health.

Assessment:

The fact that I choose this article, stemmed from the inspiration and want for knowledge

that I gained from the last article that I did, “The 10 Benefits of Children Learning Musical

Instruments”. That article had some interesting psychology aspects of music education that I

wanted to do more research into. Then, I found this article, that I am going to split over two

Research Assessments, because of its length. For this Research Assessment, I am doing the first

half of it, and it is about the relationship between music and health on the physical, mental, and

spiritual levels of a person. Despite how in-depth this article goes with technical terminology,

scientific explanations, and specific study data to back up every claim, I was able to learn a very

large amount from it. The first section is spent detailing how the brain processes sound, and

furthermore, music. When music is played, it uses a remarkable part of a person’s brain

function, using many different areas of the brain. The next section is “Music and the Mind”,

talking about brain functions in a less physical way; in a way that focuses more on IQ and

mental capabilities. An interesting fact that the article did share was music “acts as an ‘exercise’

that warms up [the] brain”. This is because music is processed with the right part of the cerebral

cortex, that also controls higher functions. Other sections were “Music and Stress” and “Music

and Mood”, that both discussed some emotional effects of music on one’s health. Then the last
sections were “Musical Medics”, that discussed the relationships between the professional

medical and musician positions (and how many doctors are musicians), as well as “Music and

Movement”, which was a study about how older people could reduce their risk of falling and

injury by practicing movement/dancing to music. By far, this is the most factually-sound article

I have discovered yet, but it did provide much unneeded detail. Once I deciphered what

information was useful, I realized how much I did not know about everything that has been

researched on the benefits of music on the body. I thought it was extremely interesting how

patients undergoing surgery felt a lot less stressed and had a lower blood pressure and heart rate

while listening to music versus those who were not. However, I do have a questions about any

of the studies that the article presented as information: what kind of music was used? Only in

one study did they specify what type of music was used, and for that one it was “slow

movements from Mozart piano sonatas”. Would the genre make a difference? During the

“Music and Stress” paragraph, the article acknowledges the fact that upbeat music was more

stimulating, but it doesn’t say anything about upbeat classical versus rock and roll. Another

question I have is: why include the “Music and Movement” paragraph? My assumption is to

show that music has a wide variety of uses to help human health. All of this information is

prevalent in the music education community today, because music educators need to understand

the way that human brains work in relation to music and to be able to educate students on how

music can help them release stress in their everyday lives. I am in awe after reading this article

because of how much research various institutions have put into the topic of music’s effect on

human quality of life.