How music helps people with autism interact with others, why use music therapy for postpartum depression, and why do we enjoy listening to our favorite songs? Let’s get to know.
Listening and playing music reduces stress
Music can not only reduce stress levels psychologically – distract from everyday troubles, suppress or defuse negative emotions – but also regulate biological response. There are two main biological systems associated with a stress response. One of them is the sympathetic nervous system, which quickly reacts to stress and affects the work of many organs: our pulse quickens and blood pressure rises, as well as adrenaline.
The second system is the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis. It is part of our endocrine or hormonal system that triggers a cascade of hormones in response to a stressful situation or event. One of them is cortisol, a well-known stress hormone.
We often go to concerts to relax. Cortisol levels decrease similarly after attending different types of concerts, both pop, and classical music, although the psychological mechanisms of stress reduction work in different ways.
Stress can be reduced when playing music, but this is highly context-dependent. When professional singers play music for each other in a relaxed environment, their cortisol levels decrease, but when they do it in front of a huge audience, on the contrary, it increases.
Music is a brain gym
Music perception is the process in which we try to interpret musical information in order to get an image of it. Music is complexly organized: it is based on many components, such as tonality, instrument timbres, rhythm, melody movement. The brain processes this information, and on its basis, an image of the composition is created.
We enjoy listening to music, although it is useless for survival. But there is a theory that such a complex structure of music helps our brains develop. While listening to the song, predictive mechanisms are triggered, which make assumptions about how it will develop, where the melody will turn, what kind of break at the end of the chorus the drummer will make. When we judge the accuracy of our guesses, reward systems kick in in the brain, and we experience pleasure. Listening to music is a great opportunity to train predictive mechanisms to better predict possible scenarios in real life.
Music can be used in perinatal care
Singing and music are useful in intensive care for premature babies: babies become calmer, move less, and eat better, which is important for weight gain. In addition, music helps to develop language skills in babies, since the music is easy to perceive and the language is contained in simple melodic phrases.
Music has a positive effect on mothers too. Listening to music during pregnancy is associated with lower levels of stress and anxiety, as well as lower levels of depression in mothers. Women who listen to music during labor need less pain relievers, and some studies have shown that labor is faster. In addition, singing and listening to music can help cope with postpartum depression. A study by British psychologist Daisy Fancourt and her colleagues found that group therapy, in which young mothers sing, helps to recover faster than conventional group therapy. The respondents from the singing group noted that after singing, they felt a closer connection with the child; in addition, songs helped them to throw out the accumulated negative emotions. Their cortisol levels declined more strongly than those of women who received conventional group therapy.
Music influences brand perception
In many everyday situations, our decisions are irrational: we often do not think about spending money when it comes to small purchases. We can take an absolutely unnecessary small item that is on sale or get a chocolate bar of a famous brand while standing in line at the checkout. It is these quick fixes that are prone to cognitive biases.
The purchase decision can be influenced by music, which brings emotional context to any information. Nice music from the ads creates a positive mood associated with the brand. These associations are stored in long-term memory. When choosing a product, they float to the surface and influence your choice. This happens subtly: associations are often associated with very rapid emotional processing of information that we are not critical of. If information from ads can be disputed by comparing it with data from other sources, then there is no cognitive defense against music that you like.
Music helps people with autism interact with the world around
The perception of music in autistic people is very diverse, and it cannot be said that it differs from the perception of music in neurotypical people. But music therapy can be effective. Art can help people with autism spectrum disorder learn to interact with others and understand their emotions. They often have alexithymia – difficulty in distinguishing between emotions and bodily sensations and in describing their condition.
Even though they know they are emotionally aroused and are aware of the cause, they cannot associate it with anger as an emotion. In addition, people with autism find it difficult to recognize other people’s emotions by their facial expressions and voices. But they distinguish emotions in music much better. Psychologists are trying to figure out if this ability can be used so that they learn to recognize emotions in other contexts – for example, in themselves and in other people.