A new study from Aarhus University and the University of Oxford has found that music has an influencing effect on how your brain’s networks function.
According to the study, when presented with music, the brain does more than just listen – it actively reorganises itself in real time. But then most of us ravers knew that anyway… 😉
The researchers developed a method for measuring activity in the brain’s network, FREQ-NESS, which stands for Frequency-resolved Network Estimation via Source Separation. This method allowed them to measure brain activity by identifying overlapping networks based on their dominant frequencies, tracking how these networks spread across the brain.
“We are used to thinking of brain waves as fixed stations – alpha, beta, gamma – and of brain anatomy as a set of discrete areas,” commented Mattia Rosso from the Center for Music in the Brain at Aarhus University. “But what we see with FREQ-NESS is far more complex. It has long been known that brain activity is organised via different frequencies, which are tuned both internally and in relation to the environment.
“Based on this principle, we have designed a method that finds how each frequency expresses itself across the brain.”
Read more: The underlying neuroscience behind Spotify ‘Wrapped’
The study is part of a growing area of research that examines how the brain’s rhythmic structure shapes everything from musical understanding to general perception, attention, and altered states of consciousness.
“The brain doesn’t just react – it reconfigures itself at lightning speed. And now we can see it,” added associate professor Leonardo Bonetti Leonardo Bonetti, “And it could change the way we research how the brain responds to music and other things, such as consciousness, mind wandering and the world around us.”
The researchers are now working, with support from an international network of brain researchers, on a larger research program based on the FREQ-NESS method. The ambition is that the method can eventually pave the way for better individual mapping of the brain. Read more here.
Check out the top tracks that the 909originals team has recently discovered through Musosoup here. To feature your music on 909originals, click here. 🙂
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