The benefits and effects of music
Music is essential for the human condition and has had influence on us since our birth causing different effects. According to Jauset (2018), music as a therapeutic medium meets the following characteristics:
- It has effects at the level, physical, psychological, social and emotional.
- It is very flexible because you can adapt to each patient according to their mood.
- It is an instrument that facilitates communication and socialization.
According to Giráldez (2014), music, in addition to favoring cognitive processes is favorable for the development of interpersonal skills and contributes to reaching the following achievements:
- Active participation and motivation of patients.
- Respect towards others instilling values of equality, tolerance and pluralism.
- Favors cultural diversity and education in values.
- Identification of personality and knowledge of oneself.
- Improves the quality of life and personal well -being.
Jauset (2018), points out that one of the main objectives of music therapy is that people reach a better intrapersonal and interpersonal training that will favor a better quality of life. The German Music therapy Research Center exposes five key ideas for this discipline to be effective:
- Attentional factor: music has the power to capture attention and serves to distract people with high levels of stress.
- Emotional factor: music causes different emotions in people and its use would be favorable in emotional disorders such as post -traumatic stress, depression and anxiety.
- Cognitive factor: music has certain cognitive functions that associate memory of music.
- Behavioral factor: music can be used as a means to stimulate rhythm in patients with difficulties to move or with brain damage.
- Interpersonal Factor: Music can be the means to improve nonverbal communication skills, such as autism patients.
KOELSCH (2009), points out that to these five key ideas we must add the perceptual modulation that indicates that training with music favors acoustic perception and compression of language (cited by Jauset, 2018).
Poch (1999), states that both music and sound produce a series of effects on people attending to four levels (cited in Ocaña, 2014, P. 47):
- Physiological level: music causes changes in blood pressure, pulse and heart rate, breathing, brain waves, motor responses, ..
- Psychological level: music develops relaxing effects, motivating causing emotions and feelings on people.
- Cognitive level: helps us maintain attention, memory, order and analysis. Stimulating imagination and creative capacity, being necessary capabilities for good learning. According to Armstrong (2008), “music also activates automatic memory causing us to remember song lyrics without even being aware that we know them;They leave our mouth as a reflection ". (Cited in Tobar, 2013, P. 3. 4).
- Social Level: It favors the construction of personal image favoring the development of interpersonal relationships. It is a social phenomenon.
On the other hand, it is demonstrated that in people with aphasia of language great progress has been obtained thanks to the melodic intonation, because as Glausiusz (2009) points out, “music is in a deeper place than language, it reaches places whereLanguage cannot enter ”(cited in Tobar, 2013, P. 35).
In conclusion to the above, we can expose the following characteristics of the therapeutic use of music: it favors discrimination and auditory perception, activating the sense of the ear, favors attention, memory and verbal fluency, improves coordination and motor rhythmAnd to be taught, qualified personnel are needed.
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