Music and the Brain

The oldest record of notated music, the Hurrian "Hymn to Nikkal," is more than 3,000 years old. But in a sense, our relationship with music is far more ancient than that.

As Michael Spitzer, a professor of music at the University of Liverpool, told Big Think, humans have been making and learning to recognize music from the moment our species learned to walk on two legs, creating a predictable beat.

Music affects the brain in profound ways. It eases stress by lowering cortisol. It floods the brain with pleasurable neurotransmitters like dopamine. And it serves as a conduit through which we can process emotions that otherwise might not be describable in words.

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