Happiness, Creativity and Well-being in Music: The brain based/mental and physical well-being argument for music in the primary curriculum
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Neurology and the young brain
Recent strides in brain imaging and psychology have made it possible as never before to make firm hypotheses about how our brains work. Particularly important for teachers have been three recent discoveries about the brain which touch upon our sense of well-being
Research by Pinker (2002), Giedd (2002), Gardner (1999) and by Robertson (1999) among many others suggests that our brains are much more plastic and susceptible to environmental influence than we had thought. There are widely differing interpretations of what that environment consists of. Pinker, for example suggests that each of us inhabit a ‘unique environment’ (a mental, physical, social, experiential and geographical environment not even shared by an identical twin), but Gardner speaks of the cultural environment having major impact on our developing brains from ‘shortly after conception’
Neurologist Jay Giedd (1999) has demonstrated that the brain has a significant growth spurt just before puberty, between 9 and 13 years in western societies. In this period a large quantity of new brain cells are created, particularly in the prefrontal cortex responsible for attention, planning, decision making, problem solving, forward thinking, critical thinking, feeling and expressing emotions, self control, the amygdala and hippocampus, both centrally involved in interpreting and handling sensory input of emotional significance. A related finding is that there is also significant pruning of unused brain cells in this period on a ‘use it or lose it’ basis. In Giedd’s words, ‘ If a teen is doing music, sports or academics those are the brain connections which will be hardwired, if they are lying on the couch or playing video games those are the cells which are going to survive.’ (Quoted in Spinks, 2002).
Research by Antonio and Hannah Damasio (2003) demonstrates that the feeling we call ‘happiness’ or ‘joy’ positively affects the way our brains and bodies work. They have found the mental feeling of joy rapidly promotes a more generous supply of blood to the brain, the release of dopamine and other positive neurotransmitters within our brain, which send signals to the muscles and bodily organs to ensure that they work at optimum efficiency. The Damasios’ research suggests that a loop between what our mind perceives and what our body presents is closed as our brain ‘reads’ our own positive body state as a state of well being and works to prolong and build upon that sense of happiness. In earlier work (1995) they demonstrated the crucial part personal and emotional engagement played in the thinking and learning process.
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