I see that this month's Scientific American Mind has an article on music. An excerpt from "Why Music Moves Us":
Emerging evidence also indicates that music brings out predictable responses across cultures and among people of widely varying musical or cognitive abilities. Even newborn infants and people who cannot discern pitch enjoy music’s emotional effect. “Certainly music seems to be the most direct form of emotional communication,” opines renowned neurologist Oliver Sacks of Columbia University, author of the recent book Musicophilia (Knopf, 2007). “It really seems to be as important a part of human life and communication as language and gesture.”
At MedlinePlus we learn that "Music Can Make the Heart Beat Faster." Excerpt:
Loud music made hearts beat faster and blood pressure go up, while softer passages lowered both heart rates and blood pressure, a new study shows.
It's the latest word on how music affects the cardiovascular system, from researchers at Pavia
University in Italy. Their earlier studies found that music with quicker tempos had people breathing faster, with increased heart rate and blood pressure, while slower tempos produced opposite effects.
The findings "increase our understanding of how music could be used in rehabilitative medicine," study author Dr. Luciano Bernardi, a professor of internal medicine at Pavia, said in a statement. The report appears in the June 22 online edition of Circulation.
It's a lesson that already is being put to medical use, said Dr. Michael Miller, director of the Center for Preventive Cardiology at the University of Maryland Medical Center, who has done his own research assessing the cardiovascular effects of music.
And from the University of Maryland Medical Center's Web site: "Joyful Music May Promote Heart Health, According to University of Maryland School of Medicine." Excerpt:
Listening to your favorite music may be good for your cardiovascular system. Researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore have shown for the first time that the emotions aroused by joyful music have a healthy effect on blood vessel function.
Music, selected by study participants because it made them feel good and brought them a sense of joy, caused tissue in the inner lining of blood vessels to dilate (or expand) in order to increase blood flow. This healthy response matches what the same researchers found in a 2005 study of laughter. On the other hand, when study volunteers listened to music they perceived as stressful, their blood vessels narrowed, producing a potentially unhealthy response that reduces blood flow.
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