Wired for Music: A Search for Health and Joy Through the Science of Sound

Gary Tomlinson, a musicologist at Yale University, points out that a human culture devoid of music “simply doesn’t exist.”

DAYS BEFORE a two-thousand-meter event in Birmingham, England, the Ethiopian track star Haile Gebrselassie convinced organizers to play his favorite song during the race—a hyperactive dance number called “Scatman.” When the gun fired, the manic refrain of “Ski-bi dibby dib yo da dub dub” blared through the PA system as he sped to the finish. That d

The Body Keeps the Score: “The capacity of art, music, and dance to circumvent the speechlessness that comes with terror may be one reason they are used as trauma treatments in cultures around the world.” Andrew Solomon, a professor of psychology at Columbia University, made a similar observation in Rwanda.

Researchers at Harvard University’s Music Lab have discovered that babies will calm down to lullabies in any language, from Hopi to Polynesian. The soothing doesn’t come from hearing a parent’s voice or a familiar musical style. Babies are wired for rhythm and song.

Some African and Indigenous languages don’t have a specific word for “singer” or “musician”; it’s a given that anyone who breathes can dance, drum, or sing. Music not only sprang from the human brain—it has the capacity to alter the structure and functioning of the brain itself. Aniruddh Patel, a music-cognition expert at Tufts University in Medfor

Music wires the brain in specific ways, depending on the instrument we play. Pianists have extra gray matter in visual-spatial areas, used to figure out where objects are in space. Drummers have hyperefficient motor areas, allowing them to perform complex movements with far less brain activity than non-musicians. And in classical string players, th

tight control over musical talent goes against our evolutionary history. Each of us comes from a long line of music-makers, even if we’ve never sung or played an instrument ourselves. And yet, inhibitions run deep.

of collisions with other runners. But after a race or workout, slow-paced music can help prompt our body’s hemodynamic response, which adjusts blood flow to depleted tissues. Ideally, said Karageorghis, the music should start at around ninety beats per minute “and gradually bring you down towards a state of homeostasis, a resting state, with a temp

Mechanical exercises don’t feel or sound musical. And when kids go on autopilot, they end up practicing the same mistakes and stiff hand positions over and over. After doing this for years, I’d argue that ossified approaches to training increase the risk of injury instead of building technique.