The "The Human Brain - Part I" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Reading an article in "Smithsonian Presents Brain Matters" about some 19th century physicians who thought music could infect the brain! When it comes to music in the brain, medicine has come a long way.   The following is from a small brochure I read and found very interesting.  Today we associate music with emotion and artistry.  It's used in medical therapy and activates the same region of the brain as complex mathematical formulas.  This largely positive image has strong roots in history, as well.  But, with opponents come the naysayers.  Until the 1600s and 1700s, music had a pretty positive image, linked with a sort of universal harmony and health.  But, as scientists learned about the auditory nerves in the brain, some physicians perceived music as  threat and an over stimulant.  According to  subset of medical scholars, listening to too much music could be dangerous, inducing headaches and perhaps even death!  By the time the 1800s rolled around, music was a full-blown pathogen, according to medicine, literature and etiquette books.  Excessive music - whether in audience or performance - was associated by some researchers with moral degradation and depravity.  When American neurologist George Beard coined "nervous exhaustion" as a mental condition called neurasthenic, he cited music as a cause of the illness.  Women, of course, were continually linked to the dangers of music.  In the 17th and 18th centuries, physicians thought the fairer sex had weak nerves and were prone to fainting.  They warned that excessive keyboard playing could aggravate such issues.  Gynecologists thought music might be too sexy for women or that it could lead to heavy menstrual cycles.  On the flip side, others linked it to infertility and reproductive problems.  Victorian researchers also thought that music talent might be more prevalent among homosexuals.  Musical pathology continued into the twentieth century.  Political parties - the Third Reich in Germany and the Soviets in Russia, specifically - capitalized on the negative undertones put forth by medicine and targeted specific genres to bolster their causes.  In the U.S., listening to too much jazz came with social and moral symptoms.  Even today, psychologists have linked music to addiction and mused on how it might affect the psyche.  Needless to say, neuroscience and psychology have come a long way.  Scientists now know a lot more about how the brain processes music.  While listening to music at a high volume for a long period of time can be psychologically straining as well as damaging to the eardrum, it's not the music itself that is the damage; it's the decibel levels.  Whatever you might think about the dregs of pop music today, listening to Taylor Swift probably won't kill you.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.