How does this present a more viable solution to traditional therapy?

• Music therapy is a technique that is already used in therapy, but is very underused. This type of therapy is becoming more common every year, but few people actually know about it. 

• Music can be a better alternative to expression; music can be a non-verbal expression for people who find it hard to express themselves. 

• Music is also a great tool for people who need to emotionally regulate and stabilize their mood. This can be a good alternative to traditional therapy for those who are overwhelmed by it.

• A study shows that music therapy usually has higher rates of success in treating depression, anxiety, and even neurological disorders, such as regaining body integrity after a stroke episode. 
• Music therapy is easier and doesn’t involve the hassle of getting ready, travelling, and waiting to meet a therapist. These activities can induce more anxiety and dark thoughts in the brains of people with these mental health issues, especially if it’s their first time.
• Music therapy can be done over video call and is thus accessible to everyone, no matter what conditions they might be in. It also reduces the anxiety of your information being leaked to other people when you share information with your therapist. 

General topic  (How does music affect the brain?)

• The appreciation of music is connected to a theory that suggests some of our ancestors, who were likely nocturnal, had to rely on their sense of hearing and smell for defence against predators.
• The acoustic cues that the human brain recognizes, for example, footsteps, travel through the ear and into the temporal lobe, which parses the soundscape, identifies sounds, and tags their components as familiar or unfamiliar. 
• The salience of these sounds - whether the human responds to them emotionally and motivationally- influences the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS). This system controls involuntary processes such as breathing and heart rate. The valence of the music, which signals whether the music feels positive, negative, or somewhere in between, influences the ANS, too. This is why our heart rate might spike up when we’re listening to fast, accelerating music as compared to slow, calm, jazz music or lullabies.

Specific topic: “How music affects different types of mental health issues and parts of the brain.”

• Music nearly lights up almost all parts of our brain - including the hippocampus and amygdala, which activate emotional responses to music through memory; the limbic system, which governs pleasure, motivation, and reward; and the body’s motor system. This is why “it’s easy to tap your feet or clap your hands to musical rhythms,” says Andrew Budson, MD’93, chief of cognitive and behavioural neurology at the Veterans Affairs Boston Healthcare System. The brain’s elaborate receptivity to music means that “lots of different things are going on simultaneously,” Budson adds, so music “ends up being encoded as a rich experience.”
• Studies show that music tends to light up, activate, or stimulate the entire brain, including the following:
  • Auditory Cortex (Temporal Lobe)
  • Limbic System

→ Amygdala → Hippocampi

• Reward System: areas such as the nucleus accumbens and ventral striatum.
• Motor Cortex and Cerebellum
• Prefrontal Cortex and,

• Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas

• One research study held in 2019 even found that college students who listened to classical music every day for two months had decreasing levels of depression and anxiety. 

• Another 2016 study looked at the connection between music and anxiety by studying people who have a fear of heights. Participants were put in a virtual reality simulation of riding up nine floors in an elevator. One group listened to music during the experiment, and the other didn’t. The researchers found that those who listened to music recovered faster from the stress of the experience than those who didn’t. And many studies suggest that listening to music can lower stress hormones as well as blood pressure and heart rate (both spike when you’re stressed).

Music can be considered as a medicine to some extent for people with anxiety and depression disorders because it has an ability to change our brain chemistry, help in emotional regulation and also it can calm our stress response. When you listen to your favorite music or something that you find relaxing, it activates your brain's reward center, which leads to the release of neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin. These chemical messengers are usually at very low levels in patients with depression. Moreover, music decreases the activity of the amygdala, which is the part of the brain that controls fear and anxiety, and it also helps lower the levels of the stress hormone (cortisol), heart rate and blood pressure which all play a role in moving the body out of the fight or flight stage. Furthermore, by connecting the prefrontal cortex and the limbic system, music helps us to be able to face and express our emotions in a healthy way thus it also has the ability to break the pattern of intrusive negative thoughts that typically happen in both anxiety and depression. In this way, music can give us an emotional outlet, some mental comfort and a lift in our spirits. Therefore, we can also say it is a very helpful tool for supporting a person with anxiety or depression. How does music help individuals that suffer from schizophrenia, or reduce symptoms? Music plays an important role in helping people with schizophrenia as it helps them regulate their emotions, lowers their stress level, and boosts their cognitive and social abilities. For example, simply listening to soothing or personally significant music can decrease anxiety and stress since it triggers the reduction of cortisol and the calming of hyperactivity in the limbic system, thus possibly lessening the severity of symptoms like agitation or paranoia. Moreover, music stimulates the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for attention, emotional control, and thought organization, functions that are often impaired in individuals with schizophrenia. During music therapy, the patients through making or listening to music can be helped in expressing their feelings even without words, communicating better, and becoming socially more connected, that is the main reason why their feelings of loneliness decrease. Of course, music is not a substitute for medicines or other clinical treatments and, therefore, should be used only as a complementary tool, but it certainly can help in symptom management, in lifting the patients spirits, and in making their everyday life more pleasant and fulfilling.

How can music help individuals who have PTSD?

Music offers various benefits to people suffering from PTSD such as soothing the nervous system, facilitating emotional release and lessening the severity of trauma symptoms. A common characteristic of PTSD is an excessive stress response. Through mechanisms like lowering cortisol levels, decreasing heart rate and reducing hyperarousal, relaxing music can be a great aid for stress regulation. Besides, the amygdala and limbic system, which play a key role in fear and emotional memory, are also impacted when individuals engage in music; thus, music can help patients feel less scared and more grounded. Furthermore, within the context of therapy, music can serve as a medium for expressing emotions that are too overpowering and thus difficult to verbalize, on the other hand, the use of familiar or loved songs can lead to feelings of security and control. Besides that, listening to music can be a distraction to thoughts of harm and flashbacks since it reduces attention.

How can the type of music affect a person's mood?

The kind of music one listens to has a great influence on the mood, particularly those with depression, anxiety, PTSD or schizophrenia. Slow and soothing music can be very effective in decreasing anxiety and stress because it relaxes the body and creates a feeling of safety that is very beneficial for people with PTSD. Cheerful or positive tunes can uplift the mood and help with motivation in cases of depression by giving people the energy and emotional boost they need. Deeply moving or emotionally charged music might be a way for people to come to terms with the pain of their lives and realize that they are not alone which is good for many mental health issues. Also, lyrics have a significant impact as comforting or uplifting messages can help with emotional control while exaggerated music may increase distress in some individuals. In general, making the right choice of music can be of great help in the management of symptoms as it facilitates emotional balance, relaxation, and mood stability.

Thing

Music activates various parts of the brain at once, which is why it has such a strong effect on our mood and mental health. The first brain area to handle sound is the auditory cortex, whereas the emotional responses to music are mainly linked to the limbic system which includes the amygdala and hippocampus that play a role in emotion and memory. Also, the prefrontal cortex, which is in charge of emotional regulation, attention, and decision making, is triggered and plays a part in music's impact on mood and stress levels. Moreover, music can activate the brain's reward circuit that results in the secretion of dopamine, a neurotransmitter that is linked to pleasure and motivation. One study shows that music that calms the mind can quiet the amygdala in people with anxiety, thus decreasing their fear and stress reaction. People with depression fall into the same category in a way that they might get their dopamine release increased as well as activation of the emotional processing areas from music. Such processes can bring about short, lived elevation in their mood. When it comes to post, traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), music can engage memory, related regions such as the hippocampus, which might be of help in emotional regulation, but music certain parts can also trigger traumatic memories. For people with schizophrenia, research shows that music can affect the neurons tightly connected with emotional expression and attention, and through this, it may help the individual's mood and social functioning. However, the brain reactions to music might be different from those of healthy subjects.

this is your brain on music - Daniel J. Levitin

https://magazine.hms.harvard.edu/articles/how-music-resonates-brain This is a study on how the brain reacts to music, why it reacts that way, and why we feel intense emotions while listening to music. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10765015/ Another study https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=72ed8926a77c5d66&rlz=1C1FKPE_enCA1140CA1140&q=effects+of+music+on+different+parts+of+the+brain&spell=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjEnebg9oeSAxVmDDQIHexFAggQBSgAegQIEBAB&biw=1280&bih=631&dpr=1.5&aic=0&safe=active&ssui=on  Cognitive Crescendo: How Music Shapes the Brain’s Structure and Function - PMC  Your Brain on Music: The Sound System Between Your Ears The transformative power of music: Insights into neuroplasticity, health, and disease - ScienceDirect Music and the Brain | Harvard Medical School Your Brain on Music - University of Central Florida    The effects of playing music on mental health outcomes | Scientific Reports How Music Can Improve Your Mental Health - The Jed Foundation.   Influence of Music on Anxiety Induced by Fear of Heights in Virtual Reality https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10.1080/17437199.2019.1627897?needAccess=true  - a PDF with causes and reasons for anxiety and the like.    Effects of music interventions on stress-related outcomes: a systematic review and two meta-analyses  The Effect of Classical Music on Anxiety and Well-Being of University Students      https://jedfoundation.org/resource/how-music-can-improve-your-mental-health/ 

https://www.psychiatryadvisor.com/features/effects-of-music-on-symptoms-of-schizophrenia/ 

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2950004424000075 

https://www.ptsduk.org/music-therapy-for-ptsd/ 

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5744879/ 

https://www.psychiatry.org/news-room/apa-blogs/power-of-music-in-mental-well-being

We concluded that music significantly influences the brain and mental health, engaging and activating multiple areas of the brain, such as the auditory cortex (temporal lobe), the reward system (the nucleus accumbens and the ventral striatum), the Prefrontal Cortex, the Motor Cortex and the Cerebellum, Broca's and Wernicke's areas and the limbic system. It stimulates emotional responses, motivation, and memory, leading to rich auditory experiences. Studies by Harvard and the like show benefits like reduced depression and anxiety, and lower symptoms of schizophrenia.

Resources https://magazine.hms.harvard.edu/articles/how-music-resonates-brain This is a study on how the brain reacts to music, why it reacts that way, and why we feel intense emotions while listening to music. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10765015/ Another study Cognitive Crescendo: How Music Shapes the Brain’s Structure and Function - PMC  Your Brain on Music: The Sound System Between Your Ears The transformative power of music: Insights into neuroplasticity, health, and disease - ScienceDirect Music and the Brain | Harvard Medical School Your Brain on Music - University of Central Florida    The effects of playing music on mental health outcomes | Scientific Reports How Music Can Improve Your Mental Health - The Jed Foundation.   Influence of Music on Anxiety Induced by Fear of Heights in Virtual Reality https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10.1080/17437199.2019.1627897?needAccess=true  - a PDF with causes and reasons for anxiety and the like.    Effects of music interventions on stress-related outcomes: a systematic review and two meta-analyses  The Effect of Classical Music on Anxiety and Well-Being of University Students      https://jedfoundation.org/resource/how-music-can-improve-your-mental-health/ 

https://www.psychiatryadvisor.com/features/effects-of-music-on-symptoms-of-schizophrenia/ 

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2950004424000075 

https://www.ptsduk.org/music-therapy-for-ptsd/ 

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5744879/ 

https://www.psychiatry.org/news-room/apa-blogs/power-of-music-in-mental-well-being 

We would like to thank four of our teachers.

- Mr. Howey who helped us put this whole project together\, and gave us advice on how to improve. No matter what he was doing he always would take the time to talk to science fair students.

- Ms. Neitmann who has been encouraging the whole time we've been doing this project. She has been working so hard to support all science fair students by herself and that's really admirable.

- Mr. Worthington our amazing grade 9 science teacher who makes everyday more bearable and amazing\, he was the one who recommended one of our sources 'this is your brain on music'. He has been an incredible teacher over the two years that he has taught us\, and always encourages discovery and curiosity in class. There is a chance that we wouldn't have participated in science fair if we didn't have a teacher as caring and nerdy as Mr. W.

- Ms. Jessome has been teaching us band for 3 years. She has been a absolutely extraordinary teacher\, that always takes time out of her day too talk to students or explain music theory to kids who are struggling. She inspired us to start this project after giving us a presentation on what happens to the brain when you're playing music. She has also pointed us in the right direction too articles that supported our hypothesis.