Human Brain Waves Sync To Music, Study

This human brain is a tiny organ, just the size of a fist. But it's secrets are amazing.

New York University researchers find that human brain waves sync to the music that the ears are listening to, according to their press release.

Hence, the synchronization can help people to process the music in a way that is similar to our brain breaking down "words, phrases and syllables" that enable us in absorbing, understanding and analysing what people say to us.

With magnetoencephalography, the study abstract could assess small magnetic fields in the brain and check the activity between musicians as well as non-musicians. Musicians are "better at synchronizing to slower pieces of music and better at identifying distortions in pitch", according to HNGN.

"We've isolated the rhythms in the brain that match rhythms in music," said Keith Doelling, lead author of the study. "Specifically, our findings show that the presence of these rhythms enhances our perception of music and of pitch changes."

There are four types of brain waves, and each one is typical of a different state of mind. Even as there is one "dominant brain wave" at a specific activity, they are all "present at any given time to different degrees".

"For any rhythmic sound, the brain seems to align its own rhythms to that of the sound so that they are both 'on the same wavelength,'" said Doelling.

Hence, the findings show that our brain waves attempt to mimic sounds and enhance our understanding, which enables us to analyse them more accurately.

"We seem to use rhythm as a type of carrier signal to facilitate the transfer of information... that can be decoded in the brain further down the processing pathway," said Doelling.