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Annotated Bibliography

What are the effects of music on the human brain?

Kyle Feeney

Professor Malcolm Campbell

English 1103

February 21, 2015

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Annotated Bibliography

Allenye, Richard. "Playing a Musical Instrument Makes You Brainier." The Telegraph. Telegraph

Media Group, 27 Oct. 2009. Web. 22 Feb. 2015.

This news article tells us how playing an instrument at any age changes the shape and

power of our brains and can help improve cognitive skills. The author talks about

research that was done with people over the age of sixty-five and even they had strong

changes in their brains by just playing one hour a week for five months. Lutz Jäncke, a

psychologist at the University of Zurich, says that playing an instrument can increase

your IQ by seven points for children and adults. He also said that playing instruments can

make you better at learning other languages because you have to learn tones and sounds

in music. I will be using this article because it helps show a wide variety of different

ways playing instruments help benefit your brain.

Lehrer, Jonah. "The Neuroscience Of Music" Wired.com. Conde Nast Digital, 19 Jan. 2011. Web.

05 Mar. 2015.

In this article Lehrer talks about how the brain reacts to music in general. He talks on

how the brain is filled with dopamine which is the endorphin released in the body during

sex and is typically associated with pleasure. Scientist took a sample of people who got

“chills” when they listened to instrumental music and let them listen to their favorite

songs while recording their brain activity. Then they asked ten people who got chills

almost every time during their songs to stay for more tests. They found that people

anticipate their favorite part and when it builds up and builds and then finally plays

dopamine is released. It is sort of like classical conditioning where the song is the bell

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that makes us drool. I will be using this article to show how powerful music is on the

brain and how much we can enjoy music.

Norton, Andrea, Marie Forgeard, Gottfried Schlaug, and Ellen Winner. "Practicing a Musical

Instrument in Childhood Is Associated with Enhanced Verbal Ability and Nonverbal

Reasoning." PLOS ONE:. N.p., 29 Oct. 2008. Web. 24 Feb. 2015.

This scholarly article is research done by the three authors and the results of their

findings. In their study they tested children who had musical training to see what the

outcome would be, both those that are closely related with musical trying and those that

are not as closely related. Their finding show us different areas in which the children with

musical training excelled and also areas that they didn't do as well as people thought they

should have done. The test showed that the children did well in auditory discrimination,

fine motor skills, vocabulary, and nonverbal reasoning, but had no effect on heightened

spatial skills, phonemic awareness, or mathematical abilities. I will be using this article

because it has detailed research of how well kids did in tests because of musical training.

Toppo, Greg. "This Is Your Brain on a Musical Instrument." USA Today. Gannett, 02 Sept. 2014.

Web. 21 Feb. 2015.

This news article shows how children’s brains react differently to sounds after they have

learned to play an instrument. Neuroscientists have done research on children averaging

eight years old from low-income homes by teaching them to play instruments and testing

those kids agains kids that only listened to music. Children who listened to music only

could not distinguish between the spoken words “bill” and “pill” which are vital words to

reading. Along with this finding they have shown that the more kids play their

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instruments the more neurological benefits their are. The author quotes a few different

Neuroscientists and shows their opinions and research on the topic. I will use this article

because it shows how the brain develops faster and better when children play musical

instruments.