Music’s power over your brain, explained | Michael Spitzer

Humans are musical animals 4 million years in the making, explained by music expert Michael Spitzer.

The oldest record of notated music, the Hurrian "Hymn to Nikkal," is more than 3,000 years old. But in a sense, our relationship with music is far more ancient than that.

As Michael Spitzer, a professor of music at the University of Liverpool, told Big Think, humans have been making and learning to recognize music from the moment our species learned to walk on two legs, creating a predictable beat.

Music affects the brain in profound ways. It eases stress by lowering cortisol. It floods the brain with pleasurable neurotransmitters like dopamine. And it serves as a conduit through which we can process emotions that otherwise might not be describable in words.

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About Michael Spitzer:
Michael Spitzer is the author of The Musical Human and professor of music at the University of Liverpool, where he leads the department’s work on classical music. A music theorist and musicologist, he is an authority on Beethoven, with interests in aesthetics and critical theory, cognitive metaphor, and music and affect. He organized the International Conferences on Music and Emotion and the International Conference on Analyzing Popular Music and currently chairs the editorial board of Music Analysis Journal.

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Read more of our stories on music:
10 of the greatest classical composers alive today
Here’s what your music preferences reveal about your personality
10 of the greatest classical composers of all time

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[moodeet]

The best feeling is listening to music no one else around you listens to. And then going to a concert where thousands others who you have never seen connect to the same music and sing along with you.

[francescosavian]

"Music is violence without the danger". A lovely quote to describe how visceral and powerful it is to our spirit.

[realleftover]

The fact that we just start having the urge to move when we hear rhythms is so adorable 💀

[isaakvandaalen]

Music can be written down and stored as data, but it only really exists when its felt. Music is pure emotion given auditory form.

[sokkaoaf]

If I didn't have music, I wouldn't remember as much of my life. I love the feeling I get when I hear a song and it takes me back decades and flood me with memories forgotten. Each year Spotify notifies me that I listen to music more than 99% of their subscribes. Music IS my sanctuary.

[Danledz]

"Music is a mantra that soothes the soul. It's therapuetic. It's something our body has to have. It's very important to understand the power of music." - Michael Jackson

[antonego]

Loved this. I’m 39 years old and for just the past year, I’ve been discovering the joy and raw emotion of playing an instrument for the first time in my life. There’s nothing like it.

[savagevidz]

Music is EVERYTHING for me.
It changes people.
It changes my entire mood.
It helped save my Mom's life..I believe this.
She had a brain aneurysm, a bad one, and the Dr gave her 10% chance to live.
I played music everyday..while she was hooked up to life support. All her favorite dance music, and her favorite Alaskan Native traditional songs.. I literally brought in my hand drum...and sang to her.
Music saved my mom's life

[UrAWizard]

WOW this video has changed the way I think about music.
My life purpose is to make music because when I was a kid I was very depressed and the only thing that made me feel not alone was music.
The way you explained these concepts was perfect and genuinely opened my mind to a deeper understanding.
I feel more inspired than ever to create music now.
THANK YOU

[highrfreeqncs]

music does all this, imagine knowing exactly what sounds evoke what emotion, and being able to create music that makes u feel exactly like u want to feel every time

[DRCRS]

it's incrdible how when I listen back to a song I've heard in the past, I relive the same emotions from the past whether they are bad or good

[voldlifilm]

I study anthropology and history, and this is a wonderful take on the relationship between humans and music.

[remusciuciu]

I've been saying this for a while and I'll say it again. Music is one of humanity's greatest inventions

[fuferito]

What is eerie about music is that it circumvents, somehow, regular memory routes so that people suffering from severe dementia will recall the tune and lyrics of a song while not remembering the name of their own child.

[Stella_Blue]

As someone on the autism spectrum, music is very important to me as therapy. I have so many tabs open in my brain at once, and music is always playing in there somewhere. It also helps me feel more connected to a world which seems very alien. Music is the universal language.

[vt]

I don’t pretend to know about all of the science that was explained in this video, but I have used music listening to help me through illnesses. I’m just referring to common colds or flu, but music really seemed to help speed-up my recovery. The funny thing is how even sad songs can cause people to feel good.

[okayfinejuan]

“Music is too precise for language” is BASED, and I love it.

[rickemmet]

That was short and sweet! This reminded me of a video I watched a year or so ago about celestial navigation which allowed the Polyneseans to navigate the entire Pacific Basin. At one point the teacher, a man known as Papa Mau, had his pupils sitting on the beach with various shells arranged in positions representing the planets, stars and constellations. He then had them stand up and taught each of them in turn different dance steps. As the students began to learn their parts in this dance, it became apparent to one of them, Nainoa Thompson, that Papa Mau was teaching them the movements of the heavenly bodies through the seasons. This method of teaching - and music likely accompanied the dancing - would make it almost impossible to forget the patterns of movement.

[danlightened]

At first, I was suggested by the doctor to walk. I then started enjoying it when I paired it with music, and walk 4 kms a day which is way more than I even walked before.
It was at this time, when I started realising the relationship between music and walking. Also, you can enter a beautiful flow step if you music beats match your foot steps.
The slap in genres like Synth pop or deep house music suit my walking. Something like hip hop can help with a nice confident strut.

[Marilyn]

I’m going through and have been going through probably the roughest time of my life in the last 2 1/2 years and it hasn’t let up at all and my constant my love and my constant love of music is always there. It does help in the ways that you said it did. Thank you for sharing this.