Neuropsychology as a Magnifying Glass of Music Education for Health-Education Research

Everyone can sing a melody, follow a rhythm and needs to listen to and accompany music. Music arose spontaneously and out of necessity in all cultures. Archaeological evidence shows musical instruments dating back approximately 30,000 years according to Dérrico et al. [1]. Music, language and emotions have been refined over time, place and societies. If so, we conclude that there is an essential impulse in our brain that encourages us to listen to or produce music. Thus, there is a neurobiological substrate that supports the function and justifies the supposed musical ability of the human brain.

If the maternal language evolves and consolidates, the non-verbal musical language from birth also expresses and evolves, being the sounds emitted by the baby prerequisites of language. The infant’s perceptual and attentional response to hearing a familiar sound and attending visually and auditorily, conforms the integration of the sound and visual stimulus in a sustained manner. The infant’s communicative interaction is imitation through sounds and gestures, for early imitation. (.....) These facts will lead to the recognition of development in an effective way and as a model of care for the family. In fact, everyone can sing a melody according to Dalla Bella et al. [2] and dance to music. Music appears naturally as language.

The exploration of the brain through music has led to important advances in the study of children’s abilities by Trehub [3], demonstrating that it is necessary to stimulate musical abilities as soon as possible. Also, Bigand et al. [4], compared the differences that exist between musicians and non-musicians, and Peretz et al. [5] explored the musical brain and provided the importance that any musical experience, even just hearing music, is enough to provoke changes in the cerebral cortex. And Juslin et al. [6], found that while listening to music, the function of emotions was activated.

Nowadays, the advance of experimental neurology and music has reached hospitals with Music Therapy and schools. However, it is still not considered sufficient as the other areas of knowledge, not having the same or similar weight in the schedule.

At present, scientific evidence continues to demonstrate that there is a neurophysiological change that occurs with the musical experience and that its application leads us to stimulate brain areas.

It is a fact that music also has an adaptive value and especially at group level, it is contagious and helps to communicate, it makes us more sociable, it offers effective solutions to the problem of the human being, because it provides individualism for the benefit of the group, achieving effective and applicable answers at all times. For example, according to Barucha et al. (2006), music can change our mood.

Finally, it cannot be understood that, if the scientific literature does not stop providing new studies that allow its application in education and health, it is crazy that, in the training of teachers specializing in music, as well as Music Therapy in hospitals, opportunities are not offered to provide training or intervention programs and to be able to continue researching and advancing in the field of health-education as an improvement in the quality of life.

1. D´Errico F, Henshilwood C, Lawson G, Vanhaeren M, Tiller AM, et al. (2003) Archeooogical evidence for the emergence of language, symbolism, and music an alternative multidisciplinary perspective. Journal of World Prehistory 17: 1-70.
2. Dalla BS, Giguère JF, Peretz I (2007) Singing proficiency in the general population. Journal of The Acoustucal Society of America 121(2): 1182-1189.
3. Trehub S, Hannon E (2006) Infant music perception: Domain-general or domain-specific mechanisms? Cognition 100: 73-99.
4. Bigand E, Poulind-Charonnat B (2006) Are we “experienced listeners”? A review of the musical capacities that do not dependo n formal musical training. Cognition 100(1): 100-130.
5. Peretz I, Zatorre RJ (2005) Brain organization for music. Annu Rev Psychol 56: 89-114.
6. Juslin P, Sloboda J (2001) Music emotion: Theory and research. Oxford University Press, UK.