Music - Page 3 of 6

The Musical Sign Of High IQ

This is a sign of higher nonverbal IQ.

People with musical talent have a higher IQ, research finds.

Being good at recognising a tune and having rhythm is linked to higher nonverbal intelligence, psychologists have discovered.

It doesn’t matter whether or not people have had musical training — musical aptitude is still linked to higher IQ.

People with an aptitude for music are more likely to study it and improve their skills even further, which further enhances their IQ

The conclusions come from a study of 133 people, around half of whom had had musical training.

Many studies have already linked musical skill to higher IQ, the authors write:

“Musically trained children and adults score higher on intelligence tests than their untrained counterparts.
Moreover, as duration of training increases,
so does intelligence.”

However, this study wanted to see what comes first.

All were given tests of both melody and rhythm.

The melody test involved listening to short tunes and judging whether they were the same or different.

The rhythm test was something similar, except with beats rather than notes.

The results showed that people with more musical ability had higher intelligence, even when musical training was taken into account.

So,the link between being musical and a higher IQ is down to both an aptitude for music and training.

At its root, the link between music and IQ is partly genetic, the authors write:

“…both music aptitude and intelligence have significant genetic components that overlap to an extent.
The specific genotypic structures of general intelligence and music aptitude are not well understood, but it is clear that intelligence is substantially heritable, and that the impact of genetic factors increases from childhood (heritability ≈50%) to adulthood (≈80%)”

The study was published in the journal Intelligence (Swaminathan et al., 2017).

How The Music You Love Reveals Your Personality (M)

The researchers were surprised about the type of music that neurotic people like.

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What Your Musical Taste Says About How You Think (M)

The songs that reveal whether you have an empathic or systematising thinking style.

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The Motivational Music That Fights Mental Barrier To Exercise (M)

After listening to a self-selected motivational playlist, runners who were mentally tired displayed the same performance as those who were mentally fresh.

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Why Mozart Has A Powerful Anti-Epileptic Effect (M)

Listening to Mozart reduces epileptic seizures by between 31 and 66 percent, even after just one sitting.

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5 Ways Music Activates The Social Brain (M)

Music promotes empathy and communication, lowers stress and helps release feel-good neurotransmitters.

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How Listening To Music At Bedtime Affects Sleep (M)

Around two-thirds of people use music to help them sleep, but what if the music is so catchy it causes an ‘earworm’?

Around two-thirds of people use music to help them sleep, but what if the music is so catchy it causes an 'earworm'?

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Sad Music And Movies Soothe Relationship Problems, Study Finds

Break-ups and rejection make people reach for a downbeat aesthetic experience.

Sad music and gloomy movies help to soothe the pain of relationship problems, research finds.

People having difficulties in their personal relationships are more likely to choose tearjerker dramas and downbeat music.

This is unusual, because sad people usually prefer fun comedies and upbeat music to turn their mood around.

However, there is something about experiencing relationship problems, such as a break-up, that makes people want similar emotional companionship.

The study’s authors write:

“Consumers seek and experience emotional companionship with music, films, novels, and the fine arts as a substitute for lost and troubled relationships.”

In one experiment, people recalled an experience involving a loss.

For some it was a relationship loss, for others it was an impersonal loss, like losing a competition.

Those who thought about losing a competition wanted to be cheered up with happy music.

But, those who thought about losing a relationship wanted sombre music.

The authors write:

“Emotional experiences of aesthetic products are important to our happiness and well-being.
Music, movies, paintings, or novels that are compatible with our current mood and feelings, akin to an empathic friend, are more appreciated when we experience broken or failing relationships.”

Another experiment showed that people preferred angry music when they were frustrated by being interrupted, or someone being late.

In other words, a personal hassle made people want negatively valenced music.

However, people who experienced impersonal hassles, like a loss of internet connection, wanted upbeat music to take their mind off it.

So, sadness caused by other people makes us yearn for similar aesthetic experiences.

Maybe this is because being rejected by others makes us crave emotional companionship, which sad music and movies provide.

The study was published in the Journal of Consumer Research (Lee et al., 2013).

Musical Training Boosts Attention and Focus, Research Finds

Learning an instrument enhances critical areas of the brain.

Musical training provides lasting improvements to attention and focus, research finds.

Musicians have greater control over their attention and are less distracted.

The more musical training a person has, the better they can control their attention.

Musicians also develop better memories, previous studies have shown.

Brain imaging research has even shown critical areas of the brain to be different in musicians.

Changes in the dorsolateral frontal regions (the top front of your head), in particular, are linked to better memory, error detection and goal-oriented behaviour in musicians.

Dr Paulo Barraza, the study’s lead author, said:

“Our study investigated the effects of systematic musical training on the main components of the attentional system.
Our findings demonstrate greater inhibitory attentional control abilities in musicians than non-musicians.
Professional musicians are able to more quickly and accurately respond to and focus on what is important to perform a task, and more effectively filter out incongruent and irrelevant stimuli than non-musicians.
In addition, the advantages are enhanced with increased years of training.”

The conclusions come from a study of 18 professional pianists with an average of 12 years of practice, who were compared with non-musicians.

All were given tests of their attentional systems.

The results showed that musicians were better at ignoring distractions while doing a complex task.

Dr David Medina, the study’s first author, said:

“Our findings of the relationship between musical training and improvement of attentional skills could be useful in clinical or educational fields, for instance, in strengthening the ability of ADHD individuals to manage distractions or the development of school programs encouraging the development of cognitive abilities through the deliberate practice of music.”

The study was published in the journal Heliyon (Medina & Barraza, 2019).

Surprising Music Is The Most Pleasurable, Study Finds

The brain’s response to this music is akin to money and food.

Music that is surprising or unexpected sends a burst of pleasure through the brain, a study shows.

The reason is that when listening to music, our brains appear to predict what to expect next — even when it is new.

We have learnt certain musical patterns from our lifetime’s experience of music.

So, when the musician strikes an unexpected chord, the brain’s reward centres light up.

For the study, people were played musical extracts that sounded either pleasant or unpleasant.

When people were surprised by the music, more activation was seen in the nucleus accumbens, a part of the brain linked to musical pleasure.

Mr Ben Gold, the study’s first author, said:

“This study adds to our understanding of how abstract stimuli like music activate the pleasure centres of our brains.
Our results demonstrate that musical events can elicit formally-modelled reward prediction errors like those observed for concrete rewards such as food or money, and that these signals support learning.
This implies that predictive processing might play a much wider role in reward and pleasure than previously realized.”

The study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Gold et al., 2019).