The Social Aspects of Music

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Most music is social unless you are all by yourself performing a piece of music that you wrote yourself, right? Rather than that. Right. So how does music in this sort of social aspect help us make the world better? Well, I think it engenders empathy. It allows us to experience someone else's humanity in a way that maybe we wouldn't have in another medium. That plays out in a million different ways.

It doesn’t mean much to say music affects your brain — everything that happens to you affects your brain. But music affects your brain in certain specific ways, from changing our mood to helping us learn. As both a neuroscientist and an opera singer, Indre Viskontas is the ideal person to talk about the relationship between music and the brain. Her new book, How Music Can Make You Better, digs into why we love music, how it can unite and divide us, and how music has a special impact on the very young and the very old. Support Mindscape on Patreon or Paypal. Indre Viskontas received her Ph.D. in Cognitive Neuroscience at UCLA. She is currently a Professor of Sciences and Humanities at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and an Adjunct Professor of Psychology at the University of San Francisco. She is also Creative Director of the Pasadena Opera, Director of Vocallective, and host of the Inquiring Minds and Cadence podcasts. She served as the co-host for the documentary series Miracle Detectives, and has produced lecture series for The Great Courses. Her opera performances include roles in Mozart, Puccini, and others. Web site UCSF web page Wikipedia How Music Can Make You Better Great Courses professor page TEDx talk Twitter See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.