The Thoughts of We

If you want to know why humans love music, I’d like to direct you to the Russian government. A group of Russian scientists recently conducted a massive experiment which demonstrates for the first time that listening to music is one of the most important human actions we can perform. In fact it is more important than any other, yet surprisingly few people here in the West ever take the time to really listen to what’s going on. Interestingly enough, the scientists behind this experiment chose two very different types of music to play, one contemporary and one classical. And they had each group playing at the same speed for eight minutes, and then gave their subjects a choice between the two types of music. When the subjects heard classical they actually performed better than when they listened to contemporary, which showed that indeed our emotions are governed by emotion and not by logic or reason.

Now this doesn’t mean that all humans, or all people around the world, are going to suddenly start dancing to Bach and Beethoven as if it was the most amazing thing ever heard. But it does show that there is a link between emotion and understanding, which is one of the foundations of what goes on in our brains when we think. When we’re angry we can find out what caused the anger and why it’s still there, whereas if someone likes certain songs we tend to enjoy them more because we understand why they make us happy. This all comes back to the basic structure of how the brain works, which is primarily built on understanding language and emotion.

All this is very exciting from an evolutionary psychology point of view, but what is much more important is whether all this can be learned from the kind of music therapy techniques being developed in New Zealand by neurosurgeons and neuroscientists. Brainwave entrainment seems to be able to turn negative thoughts and feelings into positive ones, so that you can get better results from your treatments. So why not give it a go yourself, and treat patients more effectively? I’m sure you’ll be the best doctor they’ve ever had!