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Music Affects Almost Every Brain Region

The brain controls the body, so to understand how music impacts us it makes sense to study music’s influence on the brain

Katrina Paulson
5 min readMay 16, 2023
Photo by Elice Moore on Unsplash

Why does music captivate us the way it does? I’ve written about music several times before because while I possess zero musical abilities, I sure love it. I love singing (off tune), dancing, or just sitting still and allowing a song to course through me. It’s no wonder we long to understand our connection to it.

Music impacts us on a mysterious and biological level. It’s an alluring force simultaneously flowing within and through us. We’re learning more about how our bodies respond to music, but the brain is the body’s conductor. So understanding how music affects the brain would likely provide tremendous insight into how it affects the rest of the body too.

Music Activates Numerous Brain Regions

Extensive research already revealed that music has the ability to activate multiple brain regions and networks at the same time. So many, in fact, that participating in social activities is the only other situation that compares.

A simplified explanation of music’s journey through our brains is that listening to music first activates our auditory cortex near…

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Katrina Paulson
Katrina Paulson

Written by Katrina Paulson

I write about recent discoveries that have the power to shift our perspectives. Check it out! --> https://curiousadventure.substack.com

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