Does music make life richer?
What remains even if it doesn't make you smarter

"Learning music makes you smarter." Most of us have heard that at some point.

If it were true, music would be a very easy investment to explain. Take piano lessons, raise your IQ. Play an instrument, do better at school. Then music's value could be put in numbers.

But as research has piled up, that story has become much weaker.

Meanwhile, music has other kinds of value left. Pleasure, regulating emotions, connection with others, health-related quality of life. These are a different kind of richness from "getting smarter."

1. Music you love touches the brain's reward system

Have you ever felt a chill down your spine listening to a song you love?

Blood and Zatorre reported changes in activity in brain regions involved in reward, motivation, and emotion while people listened to music that gave them intense pleasure.^[1]

Salimpoor and colleagues then used PET to show that endogenous dopamine is released in the striatum during intense emotional responses to music. They also reported a functional difference: the caudate is more involved while anticipating the peak of a piece, and the nucleus accumbens while experiencing the emotional peak itself.^[2]

In other words, the pleasure of music isn't only in the moment a sound plays.

Waiting for what comes next. Knowing the chorus is coming. Tension slowly building. The reward system is involved in that anticipation too.

2. Music is a tool for handling emotions

Music is also used to change mood.

Saarikallio and Erkkilä studied adolescents' music use qualitatively and identified several patterns of mood regulation with music, including entertainment, revival, strong sensation, and mental work.^[3]

And sad music doesn't always settle the heart, either.

In a study by Garrido and Schubert, participants who listened to sad music they had chosen themselves tended to feel more depressed afterward. Its relationship with rumination was also examined, and the researchers suggested that sad music may be linked to maladaptive mood regulation for some people.^[4]

So the question isn't "should I listen to sad songs?"

It's how you feel after listening. Precisely because music moves emotions, the direction depends on how you use it.

3. Making music together brings people closer

As interesting as music's personal pleasures is its social side.

In an experiment by Kirschner and Tomasello, four-year-olds who made music together afterward showed more spontaneous cooperation and helping than children in a control condition without music.^[5]

Group singing among adults shows results in a similar direction.

In a study of community choirs, feelings of social closeness, connection, and positive emotion rose after 90 minutes of singing. In a large "mega choir," the change in social closeness was even bigger.^[6]

In research by Dunbar and colleagues, pain thresholds and positive affect rose after active music-making like singing, dancing, and drumming. Conditions where people only listened passively didn't show the same pattern.^[7]

We can't conclude directly from this that "endorphins create social bonds." But it does show that doing music with other people has social effects that listening alone doesn't.

4. How much can we say about health and well-being?

Health needs to be handled a bit more carefully.

In 2019, the WHO Regional Office for Europe published a scoping review covering more than 3,000 studies on the arts and health and well-being. It mapped out how the arts can play a role across a wide range, from prevention and health promotion to managing illness.^[8]

But it isn't a review of music alone. It's a report on "the arts" in general, including visual arts, performing arts, and cultural activities.

For music specifically, a 2022 systematic review and meta-analysis is useful. Combining 26 studies with 779 people, it found that interventions such as music listening, music therapy, and singing were associated with improvements in the mental component of health-related quality of life. Adding music interventions to usual treatment also produced significant improvements in mental quality of life.^[9]

On the other hand, the types of intervention and participants varied widely, and it doesn't tell us "what music, and how much."

For depression, a Cochrane review found that adding music therapy to usual treatment improved depressive symptoms in the short term, with moderate-quality evidence for the main comparison. But it covered only 9 studies with 421 people, and uncertainty remains about direct comparisons with psychological therapies.^[10]

5. Still, "it makes you smarter" is doubtful

Back to where we started.

In 2004, Schellenberg randomly assigned 144 children to music lessons, drama lessons, or no lessons, and reported that IQ rose more in the music groups than in the controls. The effect was small, but at the time it drew wide attention as a study showing that "music lessons raise IQ."^[11]

Later research, however, became much more cautious.

Mehr and colleagues ran two randomized trials with preschoolers and found no consistent evidence that brief music education improved non-musical cognitive skills such as spatial, numerical, or vocabulary abilities.^[12]

And a 2020 meta-analysis of 54 studies, 254 effect sizes, and 6,984 participants concluded that once study design quality is taken into account, the transfer from music training to non-musical cognitive skills or academic performance is close to zero.^[13]

6. "Musical kids are smart" is not "music made them smart"

There are correlational studies showing that people with more musical experience tend to have higher cognitive abilities.

The problem there is selection bias.

Corrigall and colleagues looked at how people who take music lessons, and keep at them, differ from others. They found that not only cognitive ability but also personality, especially openness to experience, was associated with musical experience.^[14]

In other words, children who stick with music may differ from the start in home environment, cognitive traits, personality, and more.

Observing that "people with musical experience have higher grades" can't separate whether music raised their grades, or whether those children were more likely to choose music.

7. Music has value even when it isn't useful

Reading through this research, I notice something a little strange.

When we explain music's value, we want to convert it into other outcomes: "it makes you smarter," "it makes you healthier," "it helps at work."

Studying those effects is worthwhile, of course.

But the value at the center of music may be more direct.

The moment a favorite song comes on, something in you moves. You sing the same song with someone. A single intro brings back a memory from years ago.

That's a different thing from a rise in IQ.