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The Best Music to Play for Happiness, Productivity, or Deep Thinking, According to Neuroscience
What kind of headspace do you want to be in today? Focused and productive as you tick through routine to-do list items? Dreamy and creative? Happy and social? Contemplative? Analytical? Whatever mood you’re aiming for, neuroscience says music can help.
Music as “emotion regulation machine”
Neuroscientist Ethan Kross recently explained to The New York Times that he uses his car radio as an “emotion regulation machine” to manage his mood and shift his mindset.
One study of 30,000 people conducted by Daniel Levitin, another neuroscientist and author of the 2006 book This Is Your Brain on Music (Penguin), found listening to music at home made people 11 percent happier and 24 percent less irritable.
“An emerging body of research allows us to take what had been anecdotes and place music on an equal footing with prescription drugs, surgeries, medical procedures, psychotherapy, and various forms of treatment that are mainstream and evidence-based,” writes Levitin, recently summing up the current science of music for Wired.
This is a fascinating scientific confirmation of something many of us realized back in high school when we cranked our favorite sad song to get…
