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Class OverviewNeuroscience and Music can elevate your brain power to new levels never imagined. Recent studies are finding we can take human potential and the brain to the next level of evolution. Let’s dive in! (Check out the Top 10 Big Ideas from the class below!) Your ProfessorAbel James is a #1 bestselling author, award-winning talk show host, keynote speaker, professional musician, and entrepreneur. He has hosted the #1 rated Health podcast on iTunes, Fat Burning Man from 2012-2013.How to Use Music to Level-Up Your LifeMusic is everywhere. It pumps through earbuds, elevators, commercials, malls, and arenas. It’s even beamed out to space. But—despite its abundance in human history, religious practices, celebrations, marketing, and culture—music has no clear adaptive function. This begs the question: Why does music play such an enormous role in the human experience? If you’ve ever met a musician, you’ve probably realized we’re a breed apart. Countless hours spent listening to and creating music have informed virtually every aspect of our lives and have even altered our very brains. I spent my childhood nestled in the frosty backwoods of New Hampshire. We had few distractions. No cable television, few forms of culture or entertainment, and at times, not even electricity. While my classmates played Nintendo and watched MTV, my brother and I filled our quaint farmhouse with music. We jammed with abandon to The Meters, Stevie Ray Vaughan, James Brown, Bob Marley, The Clash, and Tom Waits. Armed with a $50 drum set and a shoddy electric guitar, we shook the walls with sound (provided the electricity was on!) I’ve often remarked, “If I didn’t have music, I’d be certifiably insane.” And I stand by that statement. Music taps into the brain, heart, and soul like nothing else I’ve ever experienced. Music is—and always has been—my outlet for processing and releasing deep-seated emotions. When tragedy struck in my teens, I shut myself in my room, cranked my amplifier, and played my heart out until I literally collapsed. George Harrison, who wrote “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” would surely relate. It was the only way I could cry. This begs a second question: How does musical experience influence the human brain? I spent years with my nose buried in the academic research (and my fingers on the strings) searching for answers to these questions. In this post, I’ll show you how music upgrades our brains, improves performance, and increases emotional intelligence. The Top 10 Big Ideas1Upgrade Your Brain Research shows that the study of music is linked to enhanced cortical connectivity. That means music somehow encourages neurons (brain cells) to make more connections with their neighbors. These connections are what brain processing power—reasoning, memory, creativity; the whole shebang—is all about. Certain musicians with absolute pitch—the ability to name that tone in one note—are especially likely to have this noticeably enhanced connectivity. Most experts believe people with perfect pitch learned the skill during early life exposure to music.Studies also show that people who spend significant time playing or studying music tend to be less lateralized. This means the connections between the two separate hemispheres of the brain are greater than among non-musicians. In most individuals, there is a distinct “preference” for one side of the brain or the other. But musicians appear to enjoy greater communication between the two complementary halves of the brain than non-musicians.Musicians are more likely to be ambidextrous (able to use either hand to perform complex tasks like writing), and musical ability is also associated with better verbal, mathematical and visual-spatial abilities. There’s even evidence that musicians possess more gray matter in a portion of the brain responsible for the processing of sounds.2Upgrade Your Communication Skills In jazz music, there’s a term called “trading fours.” It’s a pattern in which two musicians trade off the musical spotlight, so to speak, playing four measures at a time, back and forth. This form of music has been shown to activate Broca’s area, a specific portion of the brain where the ability to speak originates. Perhaps it’s no accident that humans have developed musical instruments with highly expressive, voice-like characteristics. George Harrison was able to make his guitar weep. Yo-Yo Ma coaxes his violin to soar, swoop and sing. I’m sure you can think of numerous other examples where musical instruments evoke the human voice. Like language, music has its own vocabulary and grammar. These language skills and music also utilize similar neural pathways. Animals are able to perceive music, even when they’ve never been exposed to it before. Research indicates that the human brain is designed to perceive the diatonic (eight-note, seven-tone) musical scale that forms the basis of all Western music. There’s evidence that humans have made music using this scale for millennia. Furthermore, musical training has been shown to produce detectable, structural changes in the brain. 3Improve Your Emotional Intelligence Music conveys emotional information. We’re not talking about lyrics, here, but melody and other aural aspects of music. Children as young as 3 can identify music that may be categorized as happy or sad, for instance, suggesting that the ability to perceive emotional information contained within music is an innate ability. By the age of 4, children can discern music that expresses anger and fear, in addition to happiness and sadness. Conversely, the full range and depth of information that can be conveyed by speech would not be possible without the use of rhythm, stress, and intonation. These are all qualities we associate with music, of course, but they’re also integral components of language and speech. Words signify meaning, but meanings can change based on how words are delivered. The simplest example is the use of rising inflection at the end of a sentence. “You’re going to the store” can be a statement or a question, depending on how the words are delivered. In print, you’d use a question mark to indicate you’re posing a question, but in speech, meaning is conveyed solely through inflection. 4Become a Better Speaker and Performer Music is flat and dull without inflection, changes in volume, and resonance. Speech is much the same. Immersing yourself in good music can teach you more than a little about becoming a more compelling speaker. Have you ever been subjected to a teacher who spoke in a droning monotone? Did he hold your attention, or allow your mind to wander? Or did you simply find yourself struggling to stay awake? Music that truly engages our attention usually features contrasts in volume, inflection and even pacing. Speech that holds the listener’s attention is much the same. It rises and falls in volume, it speeds up and slows down, and the best voices resonate. If you think about it, what’s the best way to attract a listener’s attention? Whisper. It draws the listener in like a moth to flame. Great orators know this instinctively, and you can bet their speech eventually builds to a climactic volume and tempo, before finishing with a quieter passage. These elements of compelling speech are echoed in everything from great music to well-crafted dramas. 5Improve Your Productivity Music can be used to enhance productivity, regardless of what you’re doing. Surgeons who play Bach in the operating room and artists who listen to jazz while creating paintings are well-known stereotypes, but they’re also accurate reflections of the ways people from all walks of life use music to enhance performance and productivity in the workplace. These days you can use music streaming services such as Songza to deliver music specifically chosen to enhance a particular mood or activity. Music has arguably been used by humans to alter mental states since the dawn of time. Droning, resonant humming is used to induce a trance-like state in some religions, while frenetic music has been used by others to induce a state of ecstasy. Instrumental music may be especially appropriate for increasing mental focus without creating distraction. The best part is, the possibilities are virtually endless, depending on the type of music and the mental, emotional, physiological, or spiritual state you wish to encourage. 6Alter Your Emotional State Which brings us to music’s ability to alter your mental—and even physiological—state. Have you ever felt weary and uninspired, put on a favorite tune and suddenly found yourself tapping your foot, swaying, or even dancing? You’ve just used music to change your heart rate, blood pressure, skin conductance, and mental state. Music is so intertwined with emotion that no Hollywood film is ever complete without a score. Music in film is employed skillfully to foreshadow dread, tug at the heartstrings, make your heart race, incite outrage, or even evoke tears. If you have any doubts about the power of music to affect emotion, try watching the shower sequence from Hitchcock’s “Psycho” with the sound turned down. Is the scene still as visceral without the famously screeching violins underscoring the violence of the horrific climax? Is the pulse-pounding sequence from “Jaws” a cultural icon signifying impending doom? Of course it is. It’s all but cliché now, but in the theater, that musical sequence riveted viewers with it’s building tension and mounting sense of dread.7Artistic Outlet As I mentioned in the introduction, music has been an emotional and artistic outlet for me for about as long as I can remember. Sometimes music can express what words alone cannot. Just about anyone can pick up something and use it to make music. We’re all born with a voice, for instance, and most of us are capable of using it to sing.Percussion instruments are among the most universal of musical instruments, common to cultures all over the globe. Just about anyone can bang a drum. Even those who cannot hear can feel the rhythm of beating drums. Other instruments take a little time and practice, but just about anyone can strum a guitar or blow into a recorder. Speaking of which, flute-like instruments are among some of the most ancient of musical instruments. Start with a kazoo and go from there! 8Improve Your Physical Performance Long before the iPod, the iPhone, and other MP3 players, the Walkman revolutionized portable music. The ability to listen to music while running, or whatever, was a breakthrough of sorts. But even before then, people used music to make physical tasks more enjoyable. Radio has been around for nearly a century, for instance. Doubtless many a housewife danced around the house while vacuuming and listening to Glenn Miller’s “In the Mood.”While music may help mask fatigue, it’s not just about distraction or entertainment. Recently, scientists have demonstrated that listening to enjoyable music while working out can actually increase performance and reduce perceived fatigue. One study concluded that highly trained athletes who listened to music significantly increased their power output when cycling compared with similar athletes who did not listen to music. Another study found that elite swimmers who listened to music were able to increase their performance times significantly compared to their times when swimming without music.Noting that’s it’s a legal way to increase performance, researchers recommended that professional athletes should avail themselves of the performance-enhancing benefits of music. It appears to help most at the beginning of an intensive workout. Some studies have concluded that music of a certain tempo is best for improving performance and boosting motivation. Not surprisingly, fast-paced music somewhere between 125 and 140 beats per minute (“Beat It” by Michael Jackson is one example) is considered optimal. The effect has been called almost drug-like. It can act like a stimulant that boosts endurance and decreases oxygen uptake. 9Dissociate from Challenging Tasks This is related to the benefit discussed above. Music can divert the mind’s attention away from pain, stiffness or fatigue signals that arise when performing tasks at up to 70% of an individual’s maximum capacity. After that, the benefit declines. Even so, this means that music is most likely to benefit recreational exercisers; ordinary folks like you and me.10Achieve Flow Music facilitates the attainment of “flow.” Flow is defined as a highly desirable mental state in which all distractions appear to fade away, and you feel fully engaged, focused and energized. It’s generally believed to signal a pleasurable state in which performance is maximized. Artists crave flow, because it seems to be the state during which creativity flows from its deepest wellspring. But flow applies to virtually any task that requires full attention and concentration. Athletes sometimes call this state being “in the zone,” or “zoning out.”Physiologically, flow is associated with greater alpha wave activity in the brain, and imaging studies have shown that musicians in a flow state exhibit less activity that could be called self-monitoring or self-editing. On a subjective basis, this type of music-enhanced state could be described as “letting go,” or “getting out of the way” and allowing the performance to carry the musician away. So there you have it: ten ways that music can improve your life by altering your brain, boosting mood, performance, emotional intelligence, and even the ability to tap into the subconscious while experiencing a sort of meditative state. Rock on!