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7 benefits of listening to music

Listening to music can be good for you. Here are 7 benefits right off the bat just in case you didn’t know:

Mood enhancer: When we listen to music we feel good. Music helps the brain to release a feel-good neurochemical that results in feelings of pleasure. As we listen to our favorite tunes being played, the striatal system of the brain which includes the caudate nucleus, putamen, hippocampus, and cerebellum lights up and that results in the same same rush of pleasure as that experienced when we eat good food or engage in physical intimacy.

Stress reliever: Music relieves stress. A song you love or one that evokes pleasant memories will instantly reduce levels of cortisol which is the stress hormone that harms the body. Listening to music activates the release of other chemicals such as dopamine and serotonin that cancel out cortisol to make us feel better.

Altruism agent: Listening to music generates feelings of goodwill and connectivity because the love hormone, Oxytocin, gets released when we listen to music and that, in turn, increases feelings of intimacy and trust.

Memory activator: The areas of the brain that process music and memory are interconnected. Music can open up memories in people suffering from amnesia. Music activates the auditory cortex, at the same time stimulating the hippocampus, which is the home and birthplace of memories.

Intelligence booster: Music helps us think faster. In order to interpret music, both hemispheres of the brain need to communicate. When we listen to music, the corpus callosum grows stronger and develops more neuronal connections, which in turn results in a faster connective processing speed that makes it possible for us to connect ideas and concepts more quickly. Further, when we listen to music we improve language and vocabulary as musicians use both of these to evoke widely different emotions and ideas.

Performance enhancer: Research has revealed that school-going children attending music lessons often demonstrate greater verbal and vocabulary skills. Listening to music also improves spatial intelligence, which is highly used in solving problems in math and science.

Creativity booster: Finally, when we listen to music, that increases our productivity and creativity. Writers often get rid of their creative blocks by switching on their favorite playlists.

The hummingbird wind chimes produce sounds that are very pleasant to the ear and calming on the brain. Check them out.