The Healthy-Unhealthy Uses of Music Scale (HUMS)

Discuss about the Impact of Personal Music Use on Cognition and Emotion.

Healthy-Unhealthy Uses of Music Scale (HUMS) is used to assess an individual’s state of wellbeing and fitness with respect to the response on the presence or absence of music. Personally, music does not make me stop embracing it just because of its retrieval of unappealing past events like death and funerals thus indicating the unhealthy lifestyle. Whenever I tune into music even repetitively, I rarely get depressed or discouraged despite the life situations like poverty or sickness which I happen to go through. As much as music occasionally induces happiness in my heart, it also makes me come to a close of being pessimistic especially when I play the motivational genres like gospel and rock (MacDonald, Kreutz& Mitchell, 2013). I never take any kind of soothing music more personal just because of my introversive behaviors of nonchalance and anti-socialism. Likewise, not ever do I lower my self-esteem nor get influenced by opera to live in a world of fantasy and act unethically or illegally in reality. On the contrary, I am always placid in the presence of singing thence indicating that am leading a productive life even when I do not associate myself with my kind of people just because of it. I often times feel much more contented after concentrating on a particular piece like soul music especially after experiencing strenuous working conditions. Sometimes music motivates me to live positively. Reflecting on the HUMS scale provided and calculating the score of each item on the healthy subscale results to five points out of the thirteen points which is below half of the maximum points thus indicating an unhealthy life conditions from music play (McFerran, 2015). The analysis of all the items shows that I am likely to get affected by any physical complications and diseases like hypertension and sclerosis due to listening to unhealthy music.

Music greatly influences the entire nervous system including cognitive performances and developments. As much as most people in the society listen to music perhaps for entertainment and self satisfaction, many lack the concept of effect diversities like active learning, imaginations, or anhedonia that music possesses on their cognition. The significance of music to individuals involves the initiation of innovativeness, extroversion, cultural interaction, and joy. To the society, it helps to elevate life expectancy by improving the levels of psychical fitness and wellbeing. It also educates the public about the environment thus enhancing the learning operations and results. It is dependent on the hearing process that begins sound passing through the external auditory meatus, and the tympanum. It is then directed to the brain sensory nerves through malleus, incus, and stapes. Then the brain identifies and analyses the information to prepare a response mechanism for the stimulus. The Eustachian tube regulates pressure levels in the internal ear for efficient transfer of sound waves. Musical activities involve various cognitive functions those of highly trained musicians show increased plasticity as compared to untrained musicians (Fiske& Taylor, 2013). Based on neuroimaging evidence, various review papers have shown effects of musical training on neuroplasticity (Bermudez, 2013). Reports have shown the brain structural grey matter differences between musicians and non-musicians by which the singers have got a larger and bilateral grey matter similar to somatosensory areas (Corrigall, Schellenberg& Misura, 2013). Further studies have also indicated a relationship between the period of training as musicians and the volume of structural changes in the described regions, where the corpus callosum of musicians trained for longer periods differed from those trained for a shorter duration.

The Significance of Music to Individuals and Society

Although many differences are evident in the primary regions of musicians and non musicians, there are also other differences. Findings have shown that plasticity either occurs in regions that serve as multimodal integration regions or those that have got control over non secondary musical purposes thus enhancing the integration of musical training into other skills. Research shows that long durations for musical training have got an influence on functional brain connectivity in multi-sensory areas even in some research where individuals are not given any tasks (Chanda& Levitin, 2013). Music greatly aids in linguistic skills, music training translates to language-related skills(Kung, 2014). For instance enhanced neural differentiation of similar sounds aids in the ability to distinguish sound in speech (Strait et al., 2013). Childrenundergoing musical training have got the ability to distinguish sounds as opposed to those not undergoing training, they also develop syntax ability both in music and language faster than their counterparts, given the fact that music and language share the same auditory substrate learning music greatly aids in linguistic skills. Music training also aids in second language acquisition, reading abilities and verbal fluency.

Music training also enhances task performance on spatial skills. Though musical training possibly leads to the development of spatial skills in children, this might not be the case with adult musicians. Children with musical training also tend to score higher in vocabulary due to their ability to learn linguistic skills faster than those not taking music classes. Research has been carried out to try and illustrate how music increases intelligence. The music lessons for children aids in memorization and mastery of technical skills which in turn translates to better scores in other subjects and eventually leads to higher scores of general IQ (Schellenberg & Weiss, 2013). This testlooks into cognitive performances such as the definition of words, visualization of diagrams which normally indicate good mental arithmetic skills. Although there is a relationship between educational achievement and family background, research also shows a relationship between music involvement and academic achievement as seen in mathematics and reading skills. Engagement in music has a benefit on brain plasticity and physical abilities during an individual’s adult life (Oechslin et al., 2013). At adult ages, there are a decline in cognitive functions and neuroplasticity, physical and cognitive abilities (Blakemore, 2013). The study also shows that fluid intelligence is affected by the volume of the hippocampus in musicians thus music classes should be adhered to in order to be able to reduce the decline of fluid intelligence due to old age. Melodies influence the behavior of individuals and groups of people in any society since their beginnings and endings.

The Relationship Between Music and Emotions

The relationship between music and emotions involves stimuli, body physiology, affections, personalities, muscular conformations, articulate transmissions and reckoning. Evaluation of the emotional responses require the incorporation of techniques like self-assessment reports, psycho-physiological judgment, sensory expressions, operational neuron-imaging qualitative analysis and implied intellectual, ideological and active learning method. People can also elicit mixed reactions towards a given type of song( Skinner, 2014). For instance, when individuals listen to songs that have cues to happiness, they end up being happy. This happens because this kind of songs normally has lyrics that bring about sadness.Music can also be used to manage stress. Research has demonstrated that music is indeed effective in improving individual’s moods. Music affects psychological states by influencing the immune system and neuroendocrine functions which play an important role in managing stress, thus music which is appealing to the listeners can aid in stress management in case the person is under stress (Thoma, La Marca, Brönnimann, Finkel, Ehlert& Nater, 2013). Of course, this depends entirely on the type of music that one is listening to.Music composers normally manipulate their songs in order to able to elicit the kind of emotions that listeners want, they do this by varying the different features of the song ranging from the tempo, lyrics in order to be able to capture and influence the emotions of their audience(Thaut, 2013). This kind of manipulation is what brings about the chills that are part of this kind of songs.

Singing is associated with the scientific concepts of the reflex system, cadenced entrainments, judgmental programming, adoption, fantasy, anecdotal recollections, and musical potential. The brain stem operations deal with the urgency in music as it affects the central nervous system as well as the physiological activities like sweating to respond faster to a given stimulus by enabling quick decision making processes on the content, and message of the music. The integration of the singer and listener’s rhythms create a emotional coordination thus maximizing on the task performance and message delivery levels. To determine the favorable and unfavorable results of music on both the audience and artisans require evaluative programming. For example, if a certain genre like rap is exposed to the gospel listeners, the response from the audience would base on stress or denial due to unethical issues of aggression and violence expressed in most rap music (Thoma, La Marca, Brönnimann, Finkel, Ehlert& Nater, 2013). The contagion process involves assimilating and putting into practice the music’s meaning by individuals. The imaginary perspective considers the listeners diverse creativity as he or she makes up a new image that corresponds to the music tuned in. The intermittent memory is where a person remembers certain past events based on the mood swings of happiness or sadness. The music incorporated initiates nostalgic states due to the vivid remembrance. Any kind of music possesses the power to change the type of responses as seen in the cases where most of the hip-hop fans encourage brutality and aggression traits as a response to an unfit environment or when introduced to controlled systems because they advocate for freedom of speech and action.

The Influence of Music on the Brain and Nervous System

Music has the power to control the actions of the listeners throuhg their emotions. In the 30s there was a song known as the gloomy Sunday composed by a Hungarian pianist, this song was inspired by the Great Depression and the events of the Second World War. This song ended up being burned by the authorities because it made people commit suicide including the author of the song. The content of the song made arouse the feelings of the listeners making them commit suicide, thus can greatly influence what we feel and consequently our actions.Music also has the ability to influence human psyche by affecting an individual’s emotions either negatively or positively (Kawakami, Furukawa, Katahira& Okanoya, 2013). Music effects on individual depend on the type of the genre, for example, rap songs make listeners aggressive because of the aggressive lyrics. This type of songs affect brain areas that control emotional and lingual processes hence resulting in aggressive behaviors, they provide listeners aggressive enjoyment in an artistic perspective. Management of emotional behaviors relies on the antecedent and response-directed methods. Antecedent-directed technique helps in uncertainty cases as it determines the probable future activities of individuals regarding their health. Response-focused strategy deals with introversion related cases like depression and dormancy that affect the mental well-being of an individual (Garrido, 2015). Music aids in the implementation of the strategies as it also causes and determines stimuli and emotional responses.

Music enables the youth especially in adolescent stages to portray an image to the outside world and it varies according to age and  time. Melodies are normally used to enable the elderly to maintain mental fitness and overcoming confusion and social withdrawal among other effects from ailments like Alzheimer’s and dementia which comes as a result of aging (Chanda & Levitin, 2013). The aged normally listen to genres such as the blues or love songs mainly during therapy for divorce or reconciliation purposes (Thoma et al, 2013). They are also motivated by some of the rock and rap music that allows them to feel younger or conduct physical exercises well. Listening to music when one is an adolescent is normally aimed at the feeling of being independent while when one becomes elderly it’s about gaining acceptance from others (Laiho, 2014). Adolescents listen to music when alone to incorporate the feeling of belonging (Saarikallio, Gold & McFerran, 2015). The  elderly on the other hand need the feeling of unity in their respective families. As youths, sometimes we listen to elderly music together with them because they require the satisfaction of their feeling of love and completion (Blakemore, Sarah?Jayne & Suparna). As individuals settle down into home and career matters, they are frequently exhausted by work and family and would like to listen to relaxing and emotive music (MacDonald et al, 2013). This is because of the challenges one experience in terms of nurturing a family and maintenance of long-term relationships, during this period one is likely to experience robust changes in the taste and kind of music that they adopt (Argyle, 2013). This is so because as one grows the reasons for their music listening changes and they end up listening to soft music such as pop and rap (Bonneville-Roussy, Rentfrow, Xu& Potter, 2013). The elderly listen to appealing music for relaxation, unlike the youths that like belligerent melodies which captures their attention and affects the way they behave.

References

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Blakemore, Sarah?Jayne, and Suparna Choudhury. “Development of the adolescent brain: implications for executive function and social cognition.” Journal of child psychology and psychiatry 47.3?4 (2013): 296-312.

Skinner, B. F. (2014). Verbal behavior. BF Skinner Foundation.

Kang, H. J., & Williamson, V. J. (2014). Background music can aid second language learning. Psychology of Music, 42(5), 728-747.

Bonneville-Roussy, A., Rentfrow, P. J., Xu, M. K., & Potter, J. (2013). Music through the ages: Trends in musical engagement and preferences from adolescence through middle adulthood. Journal of personality and social psychology, 105(4), 703.

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Thoma, M. V., La Marca, R., Brönnimann, R., Finkel, L., Ehlert, U., & Nater, U. M. (2013). The effect of music on the human stress response. PloS one, 8(8), e70156.

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Thaut, M. (2013). Rhythm, music, and the brain: Scientific foundations and clinical applications. Routledge.

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Kawakami, A., Furukawa, K., Katahira, K., & Okanoya, K. (2013). Sad music induces pleasant emotion. Frontiers in psychology, 4, 311.