--- title: How Music Affects Your Brain description: Susan Magsamen explores how music has the power to transform and enhance our brains. canonical: https://time.com/6275519/how-music-affects-your-brain/ author: Susan Magsamen article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2023-04-28T17:46:31.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:51:15.095Z article:section: Ideas og:title: How Music Affects Your Brain og:description: Susan Magsamen explores how music has the power to transform and enhance our brains. og:url: https://time.com/6275519/how-music-affects-your-brain/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt7e7f759b1949e870/698a3c6386f68e3dbc6f262d/Music-Brain-Effects.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1808 og:image:height: 1017 og:image:alt: Music-Brain-Effects og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: How Music Affects Your Brain twitter:description: Susan Magsamen explores how music has the power to transform and enhance our brains. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt7e7f759b1949e870/698a3c6386f68e3dbc6f262d/Music-Brain-Effects.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # How Music Affects Your Brain > Sponsored content. 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A paid TIME subscription is separate and available at time.com/subscribe-agent. ## Video: John Legend Reflects on Trailblazing Performer and Civil Rights Activist Harry Belafonte [Watch (HLS stream): John Legend Reflects on Trailblazing Performer and Civil Rights Activist Harry Belafonte](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/Qyj5RYPd.m3u8) (4:11)  _Published 2023-04-25. Artist John Legend Legend candidly reflected on the role Belafonte has played in his life, both personally and professionally at the TIME100 Summit._ by [Susan Magsamen](https://time.com/author/susan-magsamen/) ## Susan Magsamen Apr 28, 2023 5:46 PM UTC  Music listening concept with side view human head silhouette and vinyl disc inside. Musical poster or banner concept. Isolated on red background. Minimalistic vector eps 10 illustration. Music listening concept with side view human head silhouette and vinyl disc inside. Musical poster or banner concept. Isolated on red background. Minimalistic vector eps 10 illustration. Getty Images by [Susan Magsamen](https://time.com/author/susan-magsamen/) ## Susan Magsamen Apr 28, 2023 5:46 PM UTC The other morning, I woke up with Dobie Gray singing [“Drift Away”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnDu1HHOo78) swirling around in my head, and tears in my eyes. “Day after day I’m more confused, yet I look for the light in the pouring rain…Oh, give me the beat boys and free my soul, I want to get lost in your Rock ‘n’ Roll and drift away.” I stumbled upon the song on YouTube and started to listen along, playing it through a couple of times. Almost instantly, the words and music shifted something in me. Just before, I was feeling a sense of melancholy, but as the song came on, I felt my spirits lift, transporting me from sadness towards a more hopeful feeling. It’s a song that I have loved since I was a teenager, and maybe it was the unexpected tenderness of the singer’s voice, or the longing I felt just sitting underneath words, but I was moved. --- ### More from TIME --- As a translational researcher at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, studying how the arts help us to heal, learn and flourish, I’ve read thousands of studies that offer foundational findings about how music and sound impact many parts of our brains and bodies. This day, I was comforted once again by the power of music to support my mental wellbeing. The simple act of listening to a favorite song can alter your mood, triggering long-ago memories. And when we remember to use this knowledge for prevention, wellness practices and interventions, it can significantly enhance your daily life. **_Read More:_** [_You Asked: Is Listening to Music Good For Your Health?_](https://time.com/5254381/listening-to-music-health-benefits/) The song “Drift Away,” unleashed a cascade of neurobiological responses, initiating increased blood flow to different regions of my brain including the limbic system and igniting a flood of emotions and memories. It also activated my reward system, and I started to feel better. Music has an immediate effect on us. It soothes us, inspires us, makes us happy, guides and directs us, validates our feelings and connects us to our deeply human needs and nature. The structure, rhythms, melodies, syntax, genres, lyrics of songs, a particular instrument, or even the voice of the singer speak to us in the language of humanity_._ We are wired for music. We bring the world into our bodies and brains through our senses. On a biological level, when I was listening to “Drift Away_,_” the music and sound activated my eardrums, which caused fluid in my inner ear to move. The fluid bent hairs on my cells, which converted to nerve impulses that traveled to my brain. These impulses moved through my brain’s neural networks, evoking strong emotions and memories—and altering my mood and outlook almost instantly. At its core, we _feel_ music—and now we are closer than ever to understanding why. One reason music has such an immediate impact on us is due to the way it is processed rapidly in the limbic system, the part of the brain which helps us experience emotions. As I was listening to “Drift Away,” the neurotransmitter dopamine was [being released](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1811878116) in response to this pleasurable stimuli, and musical _frisson_ occurred. In other words, I had an emotional peak experience that triggered a physical reaction. Dopamine makes us feel good, and it also helps cells communicate better, as well as enhances focus, planning, and even helps us to think more clearly. Over the last 20 years advances in technology including functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and positron emission tomography (PET) have enabled us to see what is inside our heads and study the extraordinary ways the arts and aesthetics impact us, offering mind expanding gateways to whole health. Music is the most studied art forms, and researchers are now beginning to understand some of the ways they alters a [complex physiological network](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19338510/) of interconnected systems in the brain including the prefrontal frontal, visual cortex, the amygdala, hippocampus, auditory and sensory cortex, to name a few. Turns out that not only listening to music, but making it, also has significant benefits. For example, mothers [sing to their babies](https://bmcpregnancychildbirth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12884-021-03933-z) to help relieve symptoms of postpartum depression and enhance bonding by reducing cortisol, a major stress hormone. And people with dementia are singing too, [accessing autobiographical musical memories](https://academic.oup.com/brain/article/138/8/2438/330016) encoded in multiple brain regions that have not been damaged by the disease. The result is a radical presence with family and friends, if only for a short time. These are not random acts of dabbling with music, or just nice things to do. Rather, they are intentional, evidence-based approaches that help one heal physically and mentally, flourish and learn, and build strong cultures and communities. To some, it may seem overly simplified to believe that a song can soothe the soul. But like exercise, nutrition, and sleep, we are discovering how the arts are essential for our health and wellbeing. ## Transcript So I unfortunate that start with some sad news as you know, but as I'm not sure everybody else knows. I we just got the sad news that Harry Belafonte has died. And so I want it, I want to give you a moment to tell us what your reaction to that news was and how other artists can carry on his legacy God that we had Harry Belafonte for 96 years. He Inspired me so much. Personally he became a friend of mine in the last 10 years or so we spend some private time together. I learned At His Feet basically about all the great work, he's done over the years and if you think about what it means to be an artist and an activist, he was literally the epitome of what that was and I don't know if people know how much he did. So Gifted as an artist as a performer, but used his platform and almost a subversive way because he would sneak messages in their revolutionary messages. When people just thought he was singing about, Good Times in the islands, he was always like infusing messages of protest and Revolution and everything you did. And not only that, but he used his resources, he's one of the most successful artists of his time. He used those resources to fund the Civil Rights Movement. He would show up with bags of cash for dr. Martin Luther King jr. And other people who were marching with him. When people's lives are being taken for support, that movement, entertainers, lies were being taken activist lives were being taken, Jewish. Northerners would come down to the South and help with the movement and they would get killed. There were so many people who put their lives on the line for us to be able to vote for us to be able to have equal rights in this country and Mr. Bellefonte was one of those people. He saw a lot of his friends get killed. He gave so much live through so much helped us grow as a nation and as a world and we just all should be so grateful that he lived such a long powerful revolutionary life. So that leads us into something. I was planning to ask you about anyway, which is what do you think, is the role of Music in the fight for social justice today? I mean, who do you think will be remembered in fifty or sixty years? The way we remember Harry Belafonte today, we have the power to create art. That shines a light on what's happening in the world Nina Simone said, we have a duty to reflect the times in, which we live, and I believe great artists are able to do that. We're able to tell the stories I write the songs. Highlight the issues that will make the world pay attention. And I think art can do it in a Transcendent way. It's not the same as journalism is not the same as other forms of of kind of nonfiction media. It has the power to bring people together transcend boundaries and I think if we use that power for good, it can be really really important. And like I said, Harry Belafonte did it in his art but he also did it with his resources, put his life on the line. Was a great adviser great leader of protest. 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