Music: It’s in your head, changing your brain – CNN.com

by · May 29, 2012

Michael Jackson was on to something when he sang that “A-B-C” is “simple as ‘Do Re Mi.'” Music helps kids remember basic facts such as the order of letters in the alphabet, partly because songs tap into fundamental systems in our brains …

Editor’s note: This article on CNN.com caught our attention this weekend. It’s a long read, but the science backs up what you and I already know … music impacts us. It impacts our mood, our attitudes, our emotions and in extreme cases, our choices. When you get a chance, refill your coffee cup and check out the article on CNN.com, but in the meantime here are some of the quotes that jumped out at us:

Whether it’s “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” or “Somebody That I Used to Know,” or even “Bad Romance” or “Bohemian Rhapsody,” it’s easy to get part of a song stuck in your head, perhaps even a part that you don’t particularly like. It plays over and over on repeat, as if the “loop” button got stuck on your music player. (Note: Scientists call these “Ear Worms”)

Did you know that monkeys can’t tap their feet to songs, or recognize beats? It appears that humans are the only primates who move to the beat of music.

You may associate particular songs with events in your life — Green Day’s “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)” might remind you of your graduation day, if you had a graduation in the 1990s or 2000s, for example.

“I just approach music as a language, because it is,” Victor Wooten of Bela Fleck and the Flecktones said. “It serves the same purpose. It’s a form of expression. A way for me to express myself, convey feelings, and sometimes it actually works better than a written or verbal language.”