Music affects the brain in a matter of minutes. A faster tempo can speed up breathing and heart rate. A familiar song can shift mood. Anticipating a favorite musical moment can engage the brain before that moment even arrives. Those effects are immediate, and they matter. But they are not the whole story. The more interesting question for parents and professionals is what happens when music is used repeatedly to train the systems that make listening possible. These are two different uses of music. One is about state. The other is about training. A child who becomes calmer with music has gained something valuable. That is not the same as becoming better at following spoken directions, understanding speech in noise, holding auditory information in memory, or tolerating a busy sound environment. Music can support both kinds of goals. The way it is used is different. Two uses of music How music affects the brain depends on how it is used. Change the state Train the system Time scale The next few minutes Weeks and months How it is used Music chosen for the state it helps create Repeated listening sessions that build in a progression The question it asks What changes while the music is playing? What may still be different later? Example Sound Health The Listening Program® How music affects the brain in the moment A 2006 study published in Heart offers a useful example. Researchers played several styles of music while recording breathing, blood pressure, heart rate, and other body measures. Tempo was strongly related to what happened in the body. Faster music was associated with faster breathing, higher blood pressure, and a higher heart rate. Slower music was associated with greater relaxation. Then came the most interesting part. The strongest relaxation response occurred during a two-minute silent pause between selections. Heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing dropped below their resting levels. Silence brought the deepest relaxation Bernardi, Porta, and Sleight, Heart, 2006 1234Resting level 1RestingThe starting level 2Faster musicBreathing, heart rate, and blood pressure rose 3Slower musicAll three eased 4Two minutes of silenceAll three fell below the resting level The dashed line is the resting level. The study reports the direction of each change, not its size, so the heights here show direction only. That finding helps explain why musical design matters. Music is made up of many features. Tempo, rhythm, the range of high and low sounds, changes in volume, predictability, the choice of instruments, and complexity all shape the listening experience. This principle has influenced music developed by Advanced Brain Technologies. Poco adagio, from the Music to De-Stress album, uses a tempo that moves between roughly 30 and 60 beats per minute. It is arranged from Mahler’s Fourth Symphony and blended with ocean sounds. The broader Sound Health collection uses a wider range, from slower music intended to support settling to faster selections designed to create a more activating experience. Hear the difference in tempo Two albums from the Sound Health collection, each designed for the state it helps create. Longer waves, slower music. 30 to 60beats per minute 120 to 140beats per minute Music to De-Stress Poco adagio, arranged from Mahler’s Fourth Symphony Slow arrangements of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, blended with ocean sounds, at the gentlest tempos in the collection: 30 to 60 beats per minute. 0:00 Music for Motivation Presto from Mozart’s Divertimento No. 1, K. 136 Bright, rhythmic Mozart, Handel, Mouret, and Campra, at 120 to 140 beats per minute. Made for school mornings, workouts, and getting moving. 0:00 One tempo does not always produce one response. Human beings are far more complex than that. The point is that music contains features the brain and body respond to, often before a listener has consciously decided whether they like what they are hearing. The brain is predicting what comes next Tempo is only part of the story. In a 2011 Nature Neuroscience study, researchers watched the brain’s reward system while people listened to music they loved. One part of it, the caudate, became more active while listeners waited for a favorite moment in the music. Another part, the nucleus accumbens, became more active when that moment arrived. The brain was responding to the music that was playing and to the expectation of what came next. The brain responds before the moment arrives Salimpoor and colleagues, Nature Neuroscience, 2011 Anticipation Waiting for a favorite moment in the music. The caudate, part of the brain’s reward system, is more active. The peak The moment arrives. The nucleus accumbens, another part of the reward system, is more active. That is one reason music is so useful for thinking about listening. Music unfolds across time. The brain tracks patterns, compares what is happening now with what came before, and forms expectations about what may happen next. Speech works across time too. Sounds arrive in sequence. Words have to remain in order. Meaning depends on what came before and what follows. The brain is constantly doing more than simply hearing. The first use of music: Change the state Music can be used to change how someone feels and functions in the moment. Research on exercise has shown that music can influence emotional response, perceived effort, and physical performance. Most people have felt some version of this. One song makes movement easier to sustain. Another seems to take the energy out of the room. The same principle appears in everyday life. Music can help someone settle, increase alertness, make a transition easier, support movement, or create enough focus to begin a difficult task. For a child who arrives home overwhelmed after school, music may help lower the intensity of the moment. For another child, rhythmic music may help create the energy needed to get moving. Familiar music may provide predictability when the environment feels chaotic. State matters because performance depends partly on the condition of the nervous system at that moment. A child who is overwhelmed may have difficulty accessing skills they already have. Helping the nervous system reach a more useful state can make participation easier. But state support and skill building are not the same thing. If music helps a child become calmer before homework, the child may be better able to start. That does not necessarily mean the child has become more efficient at processing spoken language, separating a teacher’s voice from background noise, or remembering a multistep direction. That is where the second use of music begins. Listening is more than hearing Hearing tells us that sound reached the ears and the pathways that carry it to the brain. Listening asks what the brain was able to do with it. Everyday listening is remarkably demanding. The brain has to locate sound, distinguish one voice from another, separate speech from background noise, recognize rapid changes in speech, hold information in sequence, connect sounds with meaning, and decide what deserves attention. Between hearing and listening Some of what the brain does after sound arrives HearingSound reaches the ears and travels to the brain. ListeningThe brain has done something with it. Locate the sound Tell one voice from another Separate speech from background noise Catch quick changes in speech sounds Hold information in order Connect sound with meaning Decide what deserves attention When those processes are efficient, listening can feel easy. When they are not, the effects often show up somewhere else. A child may hear every word a teacher says and still lose part of the instruction. Someone may communicate easily in a quiet room and struggle when several people are talking. A child may appear inattentive when too much sound is competing for attention. Another may become exhausted or unable to stay calm in a busy environment because listening requires so much effort. Auditory processing describes how the brain interprets what the ears hear, including distinguishing speech from background noise, following multi-step directions, and understanding spoken language in challenging environments. For parents and professionals, this is where auditory processing becomes relevant to everyday life. Listening affects learning, speech and language, memory, attention, social communication, classroom participation, tolerance for noise, emotional regulation, and independence. The ears may detect the sound correctly while the brain still has much more work to do with it. Sound is also connected with emotion and with how alert or on edge the body feels. A sound that seems ordinary to one person may trigger a strong defensive response in another. The visible reaction comes at the end of a process in which the brain has already received the sound, evaluated it, connected it with context and prior experience, and assigned it significance. The second use of music: Train the system The Listening Program® uses music differently from a playlist chosen to improve mood, help with a transition, or support concentration. TLP uses music that is neuroacoustically modified, which means the sound of each recording is adjusted to stimulate specific listening skills. Each listening session is part of a larger sequence that unfolds over weeks and months. The goal is to give the ears and brain repeated opportunities to process and respond to changing patterns of sound. Hear what training music sounds like Two TLP programs. A sample gives you the sound. The training happens across months of sessions. TLP Classical Music Original recordings by the Arcangelos Chamber Ensemble, captured in high definition, with neuroacoustic modifications applied. TLP music is organized into modules that move through a warm-up, a workout, and a cool-down. 0:00 inTime World Music Original world music by composer Nacho Arimany, blending percussion with string and wind instruments. The recordings capture more than 100 instruments, from West African drums to Tibetan bowls. 0:00 Use headphones and start at a low volume. This is closer to training than to a temporary state change. The principle is familiar. Strength develops through repeated physical challenge. Reading develops through repeated experience with language. Motor skills become more efficient through practice. Listening also depends on repeated experience. The brain has to notice differences in sound, follow patterns across time, separate relevant information from competing information, and respond efficiently. Repeated listening gives those systems many opportunities to work. This becomes especially important when a person struggles with everyday listening demands. A child who consistently loses verbal directions may need more than help staying calm while directions are given. Someone who struggles to understand speech in noise may need more than a quieter environment. A person who becomes overloaded by ordinary sound may need support that goes beyond avoiding difficult places. Accommodations, therapy, and environmental supports remain important. Auditory training asks another question: can repeated listening experience strengthen the abilities those supports depend on? The 456-participant study at a glance Butler, Schueler, and Lucker, International Journal of Listening 456 participants whose records were reviewed 5 to 50 age range, in years 4 of 4 parts of the SCAN auditory processing test improved by a statistically significant amount No control group, so the study cannot show that TLP alone caused the change. The Listening Program uses neuroacoustically modified classical music, in short daily sessions, to support how the brain processes sound over time. You can begin at home with TLP Online. Try TLP Online free for 7 days Read the research behind The Listening Program® What parents and professionals care about most A test score matters only if it helps us understand the person behind it. Parents are usually not looking for better auditory processing scores for their own sake. They want a child who can follow a conversation, understand the teacher, cope with a noisy room, complete a direction, communicate more easily, participate with other people, and move through the day with less effort. Professionals are often working toward the same outcomes through speech and language, occupational therapy, education, reading instruction, sensory support, executive function work, which builds skills like planning and self-control, or other interventions. For clinicians and educators, TLP Provider Certification is a self-paced online course covering all four TLP Core Programs. Listening sits underneath many of those activities. Six kinds of work that depend on listening Speech and language Occupational therapy Education Reading instruction Sensory support Executive function work Listening Many interventions depend on spoken information. When listening takes excessive effort, less capacity may remain for the work built on top of it. If the brain has to devote excessive effort to figuring out what was said, less capacity may remain for remembering it, responding to it, organizing an answer, staying regulated, or learning from it. Auditory processing won’t explain every difficulty. Listening deserves attention when challenges repeatedly appear in situations that depend on spoken information, background noise, fast speech, or tolerating sound and other sensory input. Can the brain become more efficient at what it does with sound? That is the question behind The Listening Program. Why repetition matters The published TLP studies involved many months of listening, not a few sessions. A person may begin with only fifteen minutes once a day. Over time, those sessions accumulate. Fifteen minutes becomes hours. Hours become weeks and months of repeated auditory experience. For parents, this helps set realistic expectations. The first week is a starting point, not a full training dose. For professionals, it keeps TLP in the correct category. It is a neuroscience-based music listening therapy built around progression and cumulative experience. Common questions How does music affect the brain? Music affects the brain in two different ways. In the moment, features like tempo can shift breathing, heart rate, mood, and alertness within minutes. Used repeatedly as structured auditory training, music gives the brain ongoing practice processing sound, with the goal of changes that may remain after listening stops. What does the research show about The Listening Program? The Listening Program has more than 25 years of clinical use and more than two decades of independent, peer-reviewed research behind it, and it is included in ASHA’s Evidence Maps. One of these studies, by Butler, Schueler, and Lucker, reviewed records from 456 participants ages 5 to 50 and found statistically significant improvement on all four parts of the SCAN, a standardized auditory processing test. That study had no comparison group, so it cannot show that TLP alone caused the change. Where to start 1 Decide what kind of effect is needed Research has already shown that music affects the brain. The more useful question is which of these you are after. Short termSometimes music is there to change the next few minutes. Long termSometimes it is being used to train what the brain can do over the next few months. 2 Start with fifteen minutes once a day That is a common starting point. Someone interested in TLP does not need to begin with the amount of listening used in research. 15 minutesOne session 1 hourFour sessions 10 hoursForty sessions 3 Watch how the listener responds Listeners differ. Some tolerate progression easily. Others need more time. 4 Work with a TLP Certified Provider TLP Certified Providers are therapists, educators, and other professionals trained in The Listening Program. A provider can help determine an appropriate schedule, progression, program, and equipment. Webinar replayYour Brain Is Better on Music: Two Ways Music Helps You Perform at Your BestAlex Doman and Mandy Doman show both ways music affects the brain, side by side, including what one father noticed in his son twelve sessions in.Watch the replay Start with fifteen minutes a day. The free 7-day trial of TLP Online includes the full listening experience. Start your free 7-day trial References Bernardi L, Porta C, Sleight P. Cardiovascular, cerebrovascular, and respiratory changes induced by different types of music in musicians and non-musicians: the importance of silence. Heart. 2006;92(4):445-452. doi.org/10.1136/hrt.2005.064600 Salimpoor VN, Benovoy M, Larcher K, Dagher A, Zatorre RJ. Anatomically distinct dopamine release during anticipation and experience of peak emotion to music. Nature Neuroscience. 2011;14:257-262. doi.org/10.1038/nn.2726 Terry PC, Karageorghis CI, Curran ML, Martin OV, Parsons-Smith RL. Effects of music in exercise and sport: a meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin. 2020;146(2):91-117. doi.org/10.1037/bul0000216 Butler T, Schueler J, Lucker JR. Changes in Auditory Processing After Completing The Listening Program Training. International Journal of Listening. 2022;36(1):44-52. doi.org/10.1080/10904018.2020.1772071
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