The Art of Music and the Mind

The speaker introduces a topic about how music can help and provides personal anecdotes about memories associated with music. They discuss how the brain processes music similarly to reading and how emotions enhance memory. They mention a study showing that listening to music can improve verbal memory and cognition for stroke survivors. The speaker emphasizes that music can enhance life experiences and announces that the next episode will focus on how music helps cope with pain. It was just two lovers, sitting in the car, listening to Blondes, falling for each other, Thinking orange skies, feeling super childish, from Donald Glover, Missed call from my mother, asked where you at tonight, I don't know what I'm buying, love is all I know, It's the love of her life, she's got me lit up again, My way of thinking's alive. Hello, and welcome to another episode. I'm your host, Sofia, and in today's episode, we'll be talking about how music can help you, and a little more information on why. Today we'll be talking about how music affects the mind, and how it affects our memory, and things like that. If that's what you're interested in, then please stay tuned. If it's not, then I hope you will have a nice day or night. And maybe you can listen to another episode that piques your interest. So, again, like always, I will start with a small fact about myself, and then we will get into the episode. So, one fact about myself is that when I was younger, I used to have grey eyes and dark, dark black hair. And when I was about two or three years old, I had curly brown hair and blue eyes. But once I got into maybe kindergarten or first grade, I still had brown hair, but now I have green eyes, and I have since I was younger. Now, today's topic will be about memory, so we'll start off with a little story. I remember one time I was in my mom's car, listening to music with her and driving through Eden Prairie. I think we had just gone shopping that day, and on the radio came on the song Golden Hour, which is what I just had for my intro. Ever since then, whenever I drive through that area, I always think of that song, and when I hear the song, I always think of the time I spent with my mom that day. And it's not just me. Studies show that the mental processes involved in knitting individual sounds together into the overall perception of a song is quite similar to the process the brain goes through in reading, which involves first recognizing individual letters and sounds, and then ultimately gleaning meaning from sentences and paragraphs. Working memory is involved in both processes, and scientists believe there's a great deal of overlap between working memory for musical stimuli and for verbal stimuli. Emotions, of course, enhance memory. Most adults can still recall every single word for the songs they loved in high school, largely because adolescence is a time of heightened emotions. Evidence also suggests that listening to music may help brain cells process information more efficiently and may facilitate the brain's ability to adapt. According to a study published in the scientific journal Brain, adults who suffered a stroke and listened to music daily experienced significantly greater gains in verbal memory and cognition after two months, more than stroke survivors who didn't listen to either music or audiobooks on the daily. So you see, listeners, music can not just help you live and enjoy life, it can also help you keep your memories alive, keep your emotions alive, and overall, music is just an amazing way to get through life. You know, you can put it on when you're with a special person, or when you're in the car, or cleaning, whatever you're doing. Music helps us in a lot of things, and that is also what my next episode will be about. It will be about how music helps us cope with pain and other things like that. Thanks for listening, I hope you enjoyed this episode, and I hope you'll tune in to my next episode. If not, that's okay. Thank you for listening, I hope you have a good day, afternoon, or night. © transcript Emily Beynon