How Music Affects Us Mental

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JAKARTA - In recent days, the community was shocked by a 15-year-old boy who killed a friend of his five-year-old sister. Reportedly, the perpetrator often expresses his feelings in the form of pictures and writing where one of the strokes is a quote from Billie Eilish's song All The Good Girls Go To Hell .

It's no secret that music can affect how the brain works. Not only from the positive side, but also from the negative side. A number of studies also agree on how negative feelings are influenced by music that sounds 'sad' and can lead to depression.

This research was conducted by the Center for Interdisciplinary Music Research at the University of Jyväskylä, Aalto University in Finland and Aarhus University in Denmark with attention to attitudes and neuroimaging data. The research has been published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.

Based on these results, people who were accustomed to listening to sad music could think of something negative over and over. Through this study they performed functional magnetic resonance imaging or fMRI for short. As a result, men prefer to listen to music to express negative feelings while women listen to music to avoid negative feelings.

Reporting from TIME , Monday, March 9, this happens because the rhythm and character of music can change the heart rate and how our brains work. Usually, a track with a slow tempo can be calming while music with a fast tempo has the opposite effect. However, all of this is only subjective theory.

"There are people who listen to Swedish metal music normally, so for them AC / DC is soothing," said Daniel Levitin, a psychologist at McGill University, Canada.

Apart from the work of the brain, music can also increase aggressive thoughts and encourage crime. Quoted from CNN , this happens for several reasons such as economy, racism, under the wrong influence and lack of opportunities to do positive things.

Levitin said, it is quite difficult to analyze if music can create violence. Because according to him, violent attitudes that are familiar with music or art do occur but that does not mean they are always true. Although it is not wrong to say that the world perspective can be changed through music.

The person listening factor also matters here. People who are predisposed to clinical depression usually feel worse after listening to music that sounds sad. Music is responsible for relationships, trust, and intimacy and triggers the hormones oxytocin and serotonin. As in general, music has both positive and negative sides.

Apart from the murder cases committed by a 15 year old child in Indonesia, there are many cases claimed to have been caused by listening to certain songs. One of them, Christopher Watts killed his wife, Shan'ann who was 15 weeks pregnant, and his two daughters, Bella and Celeste in early 2018. The father allegedly listened to the song Battery from Metalica before launching his sadistic action.

In 1984, the McColumns family sued singer Ozzy Osbourne after his son, John Daniel, committed suicide to the song Suicide Solution by vocalist Black Sabbath. The McColumns say the song likely contributed to the child's decision to end his life. Osbourne also voiced that it was about the negative effects of alcohol. "This is just a case of misinterpretation," he said.