How often have you turned to music to bring you even further in happy times, or sought the comfort of music when melancholy strikes?

Music affects us all. But more recently, scientists have sought to explain and quantify the way music impacts us at an emotional level. Indicates understanding the links between melody and the mind that listening and playing music actually can alter how our brains and our bodies to function.

It seems that the healing power of music is about the body and mind to understand only gradually, even though music therapy is not new. For many years therapists have been for the application of music in both listening and study for the reduction of anxiety and stress, to alleviate the pain. And the music is also as an aid for positive change in mood and emotional states is recommended.

Michael DeBakey, who in 1966, the first surgeon to successfully implant an artificial heart is reported, said: Create and play music, self-expression and provides masturbation, while others make it a joy to promote. In medicine show increasing published reports that music has a healing effect on patients. "

Doctors now believe that with music therapy in hospitals and nursing homes not only makes people feel better, but makes them heal faster. And throughout the country, medical experts apply at the beginning of the new revelations about the effect of music on the brain to treating patients.

In one study, researcher Michael Thaut and his team detailed how victims were from stroke, cerebral palsy and Parkinson's disease, the music became more balanced progress than those whose therapy had no accompaniment.

Other researchers have the sound of drums may influence how bodies found work. 2001 in an article in USA Today, Suzanne Hasner, chairwoman of the music therapy department at Berklee College of Music Quoted in Boston, says the reserve with dementia or head injuries musical abilities.

The article reports results from an experiment in which researchers tracked down from the Mind-Body Wellness Center in Meadville, Pa., 111 cancer patients who played drums for 30 minutes per day. They found strengthened immune system and increased levels of cancer-fighting cells in many patients.

"Deep in our long-term memory is rehearsed music," Hasner said. "It is the emotional part of the brain, the amygdala processes. Here you can enjoy the music on your wedding, the music of your first love, the first dance. These things play can remember to remember even in people with progressive diseases. It is a window, a way to reach them. "

The American Music Therapy Organization claims music therapy may allow for "emotional intimacy with families and caregivers, relaxation for the whole family, and meaningful time spent together in a positive, creative way."

Scientists have progress in the research, why music should have this effect. In 2001 Dr. Anne Blood and Robert Zatorre of McGill University in Montreal, used positron emission tomography or PET scans to find out to see if certain brain structures are stimulated by music.

In their study, Blood and Zatorre asked 10 musicians, five men and five women, to choose stirring music. The subjects were then given PET scans as they listened to four types of audio stimuli – the selected music, other music, general noise or silence. Each sequence was repeated three times in random order.

Blood said when the subject of the music that they "chill" is one that the PET scans are detected activity in the parts of the brain that are stimulated by food and sex.

Just why humans developed such a biologically based appreciation of music is still not clear. Develops appreciation of food and the desire for sex to help the survival of the species, but "music did not develop strictly for survival purposes," Blood told Associated Press at the time.

She also believes that because music activates the parts of the brain, which proposes to make us happy, they can take advantage of our physical and mental well-being.

This is good news for patients in whom surgical intervention, experience anxiety in anticipation of those procedures.

Polish researcher, Zbigniew Kucharski, at the Medical Academy in Warsaw, studied the effect of acoustic therapy for fear management in dental patients. Observed in the period October 2001 to May 2002, 38 dental patients were 16 to 60 years. The patients received variations of acoustic therapy, a practice where music is received via headphones and also vibrators.

Dr Kucharski discovered the negative feelings were fivefold for patients who received 30 minutes of acoustic therapy both before and after dental treatment. For the group, heard and felt music only prior to the operation, the fearful feelings reduced by a factor of 1. 6 only.

) For the last group (control group, which received acoustic therapy only during the operation, there were no changes in the degree of fear felt.

A 1992 study identified music listening and relaxation instruction as an effective way to relieve pain and reduce anxiety in women undergoing painful gynecological procedures. And other studies have proved music can reduce other 'negative' human emotions like fear, anxiety and depression.

Sheri Robb and a team of researchers published a report in the Journal of Music Therapy in 1992, outlining their findings that music assisted relaxation procedures hear (music, burn deep breathing and other exercises) effectively reduced anxiety in children, surgical patients on a device .

"music," says Esther Mok in the AORN Journal in February 2003, "has become an easily administered, non-threatening, non-invasive and inexpensive tool to calm preoperative to fear."

So far, according to the same report, the researchers can not be sure why the music has a calming effect on many medical patients. One school of thought believes music may reduce stress because it can help reduce patients to relax and blood pressure. Another researcher claims music allows the body's vibrations to synchronize with the rhythms of those around him. For example, when an anxious patient with rapid heart beat slow music stops, the heart rate to slow down and synchronize with the rhythm of the music.

Such results are still a mystery. The incredible ability that music to influence and manipulate emotions and the brain is undeniable, and yet still largely inexplicable.

In addition to the activity of the brain that affect the music on the hormonal balance in the human body can be quantified, and there is clear evidence that music can lower levels of cortisol in the body (with arousal and stress) as well as raising the level of melatonin, the sleep (can cause). It can also precipitate the release of endorphins, the body's natural painkillers.

But how successful musical called emotions in us? And why are these emotions often so powerful? The simple answer is that nobody knows. So far, we can do something by the emotional responses that quantify damage caused by music, but we can not explain it. But that's okay. I did not understand electricity to benefit from light when I switch on a lamp when I come into a room, and I do not understand, make music, why I feel emotionally better. It's simple – we have our Creator in this way.