What’s New in Psychology
Listen to Music for Brain Health
Jim Windell
I may not possess the most conventional taste in music, but the music I listen to has served me well for many decades.
I get into moods when I crave to hear the music I have loved for most of my life. Feeling happy, I want to listen to the big band music of the 1930s and 40s. Or I want to revisit the classic records Billie Holiday and Lester Young did for Columbia in the 1930s. The lyrics sung by Lady Day may be inane, but the collaboration between Holiday and Young is pure magic and always enhances my mood.
Feeling down, I’ll turn to classic New Orleans bands that were still around in the 1950s and 60s. Old fashioned, you say? No problem. They still give me a lift – particularly George Lewis, Billy and DeDe Pierce, and Wild Bill Davison.
You probably have your favorite music that suits your moods. Your favorites may run along more conventional and contemporary paths, but most of us have tunes that give us a needed emotional boost or convey how happy we feel.
If music plays an important role in your life, then you have a sense of how music has an influence on the brain. That actually has been documented in conditions ranging from dementia to epilepsy. Research has shown that both music participation and appreciation are tied to improvements in executive function and memory,
But how close are we to harnessing music as a targeted therapeutic tool?
Edward Large, Ph.D., is a researcher at the forefront of this kind of work. Large is a professor at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, Connecticut, and director of its Music Dynamics Laboratory. He said recently that he is optimistic about research suggesting that music can help, “not just with depression and anxiety but with more profound neurological and psychological disorders.” However, Large added that music’s benefits aren’t yet fully understood.
Robert Zatorre, Ph.D., founding co-director of the International Laboratory for Brain, Music, and Sound Research in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, cautions against overstating music’s therapeutic power.
“Music is not a magic pill; it’s not a panacea; it doesn’t cure everything,” says Zatorre, who is also a professor at the Montreal Neurological Institute at McGill University in Montreal.
Zatorre indicates that research right now is at the stage of trying to determine under what circumstances music could be beneficial and in what ways.
One challenge in this research, though, is music’s deeply personal nature. Zatorre says that what resonates with one person may leave another unmoved. Variables such as culture, age, personal history, social context, and even the nature of the neurological condition can influence how someone will respond to music-based interventions.
Large, a former president of the Society for Music Perception and Cognition and a musician himself, believes that one of the most important messages from current research is the effect that music has on the rhythm of the brain.
Brain rhythms or waves, also known as neural oscillations, are patterns of brain activity associated with various cognitive processes and behaviors. In healthy brains, slow theta waves (4-8 Hz) and fast gamma waves (30-100 Hz) work together (coupling) to encode and retrieve new memories. Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is characterized by disruptions in gamma waves and atypical cross-frequency coupling.
“Music is really the most powerful stimulus we have for synchronizing brain rhythms,” says Large. Large’s group is testing whether stimulating synchrony in the gamma frequency can help treat Alzheimer’s disease. “That’s the frequency at which neurons in the hippocampus synchronize when they’re retrieving a memory,” he says. He points out that noninvasive, gamma-frequency, auditory-visual stimulation has been shown to improve AD-related biomarkers and memory in animal models.
Large is CEO of Oscillo Biosciences which is developing music-based interventions for humans. He explains how such interventions might work: The individual listens to self-selected music and watches a rhythmic light stimulus that is synchronized to the music as their brain waves are monitored via electroencephalography. The light show works in concert with the music to stimulate theta and gamma neural rhythms and phase-amplitude coupling.
Zatorre’s view is that while the idea of a music prescription is appealing, what works best for a patient seems to be highly individualized. “It’s not like there is a single healing song or a list of healing songs,” he says. Instead, brain scans show that different types of songs can produce “almost identical” brain activity in the limbic system, which is closely involved in experiencing pleasure.
The pleasure that music brings may be the source of its positive effects. “I’m convinced that a lot of the benefits of these musical interventions act via the reward system,” says Zatorre who has conducted several related studies and authored a chapter on “Musical Enjoyment and the Reward Circuits of the Brain” for the book “Music and Mind: Harnessing the Arts for Health and Wellness,” edited by opera singer Renée Fleming.
Zatorre theorizes that music heard by a patient with a memory disorder will activate the reward pathway and simultaneously enhance the retrieval of certain memories. “That’s something that has been observed anecdotally in many patients with neurodegenerative disorders,” he says.
Could music be used as a preventive intervention to stave off, say, dementia in younger at-risk individuals?
“I think the answer is [that] we don’t really know,” Large says. Although there are still questions about whether amyloid beta (Aβ) plaques are a cause or a symptom of AD, it’s been shown that there is a desynchrony of rhythms in the gamma frequency band before a buildup of Aβ plaques occurs, he explains.
“I think that offers some hope that these rhythm-based therapies might have a preventive impact,” he adds.
Zatorre acknowledges that research on music as a preventive intervention is “quite scarce,” but noted that adding music can still improve quality of life. “Music is an important art form that almost all people are sensitive to. If you’re having a better quality of life, that will enhance everything. Even if it doesn’t prevent the formation of plaques in your brain, you will still have a happier existence. And then if you do develop any type of degenerative disorder, you’ll have more tools in your toolbox to help you cope,” he says.
To read the original article, find it with this reference:
Brauser, D. (2025). Music strikes a chord for brain health. Medscape. Retrieved from: //www.medscape.com/viewarticle/music-strikes-chord-brain-health-2025a1000faa
