Music and the brain

If you brainscan someone listening to music, the screen lights up like a firework display as the music stimulates many parts of the brain at once.

Music’s relationship with the brain is so special that there is a whole field of science dedicated to studying it. Recent research from the University of Utah shows that music reaches parts of the brain among the last to be affected by Alzheimer’s Disease.

For people with dementia, music they love can stimulate the undamaged parts of the brain and help them interact with one another in ways that research is still trying to understand.