INGLÉS

"Music is a type of language aimed at communicating, evoking and reinforcing different emotions" Cano. M (2017)

The RAE (2001) defines music as "The art of combining sounds from the human voice, sounds of different instruments, or as a mix of both at the same time, in a way that they produce delight touching the sensibility, whether joyful or sadly".

Thus: the singing of a person, the sound of a guitar, a violin, or a whole orchestra is considered music. If we reflect a little, it is interesting to discover how music directly influences our emotions, for example: listening to our favorite song, a classical melody or a specific musical genre which is not exactly into our liking, will make us react differently in each case, therefore this will evoke us happiness, calm, anger or some other emotion. Surely you have in mind a song that at first taste makes you dance or maybe you have found yourself moved into tears in a live concert: These are some examples of what music provoke immediately in the brain. Probably you already knew it, but if you don't, let me tell you that in music we can find indicators like: "allegro"; "moderato"; "andante"; etc. that make it sound sad, cheerful, distressed and mysterious, this is especially remarkable in Mozart, Beethoven, Bach and Chopin scores. The fact is that the brain has different pathways to process the different parts of the music, producing, for example, that a quick song can raise the heart beating, breathing rate, and blood pressure; while slow music tends to have the opposite effect.

According to the researchers and experts: music could also have positive impacts on the development of cognitive skills. Some neuroimaging studies have shown that both, listening and playing music stimulate a wide range of cerebral connections which are commonly involved with emotions, reward, cognition, and movement impulses (Manes 2015). For example, in recent years the "Mozart effect" has become very popular among people: it refers to the supposed benefits that are produced when listening to Mozart´s music. In 1993 the researchers at the university of California: Frances H. Rauscher, Gordon L. Shaw &; Catherine N. KY wrote an article entitled «Music and Spatial Task Performance» in this work they shared the results obtained from 36 university students in which the project was carried out. Their job was to perform three task sessions of spatial reasoning, under three preconditions: the first one was listening to Mozart's sonata for two pianos in D Major (K.448), the second was to be under relaxation and in the third one they had to stay in silence. It must be noted that the subjects scored significantly higher in the first test, observing a lasting effect of approximately 15 minutes.

Why do we relate music to feelings?

As we have seen, music can evoke powerful emotional responses such as chills and various sensations in listeners. We learned that pleasant music can lead to the release of reward associated neurotransmitters such as dopamine; evidence shows that an aesthetic stimulus such as music, can target the brain's own dopamine systems that are typically involved in highly reinforcing and addictive behaviors. 

There is also an intellectual component to music appreciation; dopamine systems do not function in isolation and their influence will largely depend on their interaction with other regions of the brain our ability to enjoy music can be seen as the result of our human emotional brain and itsi most recent evolving neocortex and their influence will largely depend on their interaction with other regions of the brain, that is, our ability to enjoy music can be seen as the result of our human emotional brain and its most recent evolution.

The study has been replicated, with results for and against it. Among the research that did find similarities, we got the study of Wilson and Brown (1997), these researchers observed a higher score in spatio-temporal reasoning after listening to Schubert's 4-Hand Piano Fantasy in F Major (D940) or Mozart's 23-Piano Concerto in A Major (K.488). but 100 percent and scientifically proven we do not have so much evidence.

Unfortunately, the role of music in improving intellectual functions has no solid proof, there are still important questions surrounding the role of music as a potential mechanism to exalt some the cognitive abilities, but without so much science we invite you to test it by yourself listening to some of the musical pieces mentioned in this article; if you do not figure it out, at least you will get a pleasant and very relaxing experience. Make it sure!

Below we share the links that will direct you to listen to these musical pieces. Lend an ear and enjoy them! Recommended Links: 

 Evidence shows that people who respond emotionally to aesthetic musical stimuli possess a stronger white matter connectivity between their auditory cortex and the areas associated withemotional processing, which means the two areas communicate more efficiently (Sachs et al., 2016).

Memories are one of the important ways in which musical events evoke emotions; as the late physician Oliver Sacks pointed out: Musical emotions and musical memory can survive long after other forms of memory have disappeared. Part of the reason for the lasting power of music seems to be that listening to music involves many parts of the brain, triggering connections and creating associations; music is a language: the language of emotion.

Music has structure, progression and syntax, just like language, the brain even processes music syntax using the same area it uses to process language syntax; certain chords sound nice because of how we divide the tones: Harmonically simple chords, consonants, like the major chords, are easy to make, but harmonically complex chords, like the tritons, are more difficult to distinguish and so we find them dissonant.

But these automatic brain mechanisms are just the beginning of how we read the meaning of music, much of the emotional meaning we find in music comes from our own life experience: while we're still in the cradle, we learn to associate the music we listen to with the emotional environment in which we listen to it, so a mother's lullaby could imprint quiet memories for us major tones, while a lover's lament in. Although it wasn't always like that, then why did we become the musical species? No other animal does this, this is an evolutionary issue that puzzled Darwin and is still being discussed today, it could be a great and fortunate accident, a happy peculiarity of the development of our brain that can appreciate this complex integration of sound waves; or maybe there's something else. Music is exceptionally good at provoking emotions, much more.