The awareness of one's emotions
One of the most significant “side-effects” of making music at an in-depth level is surely the fact of becoming aware of one's interiority, knowing how to listen: this doesn't just involve a more acute sense of hearing, but above all the capacity to be able to look inside oneself in order to recognize and experience one's emotions with awareness.
This is well known to many musicians, but it is now further confirmed by a study published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, which investigates the effects of studying a musical instrument on brain development in adolescents.
Learning to control the complex movements necessary to play a violin or a piano, in fact, enhances one's mental capacities. According to this study, which used magnetic resonance to monitor 232 students aged between 6 and 18 years, the areas of the cerebral cortex dedicated to the working memory and mental organization are thicker in young people who study a musical instrument.
As also confirmed by other studies reported in the Journal of Neuro Science, the practice of music makes our brain more reactive and flexible, with positive effects that last throughout our entire life span.
Not by chance, many Anglo-Saxon agencies often consider individuals whose curriculum includes a music diploma more favorably, since the study of music facilitates our relational capacities, the management of the emotions and the organization of work: all qualities that are indispensable in many professional areas, also outside of the world of music.
