'Your brain on music' is subject at Wooster Music Club meeting
The Wooster Music Club met in Wesley Hall at the Wooster United Methodist Church on Tuesday for its program meeting Oct. 3.
Pianist and scholarship recipient, Hannah Lamp, performed two pieces on piano to begin the evening’s program. Hannah is 15 years old and has been studying piano over the past two years under the instruction of teacher, Stephanie Musselman. Lamb performed “Fur Elise,” originally composed by Beethoven, and arranged for piano by Allan Small. Her second piece was Hava Nagila an Israeli folk dance.
Following this pianist, Mary-Marie Deauclaire, and celloist, Jack Pomfret, a senior at Wooster High School performed. The duo has been playing together at various occasions around Wooster for the past year. The first piece was “Vocalise” Opus 34, No. 14 by Sergei Rachmaninoff. “Variations on Holy Manna” followed this; a hymn tune from the 1820s and arranged by Deauclaire.
Your brain on music
Dr. Dennis Helmuth, MD, gave a fascinating slide presentation entitled “Your Brain on Music.” Helmuth is interested in what performing and listening to music does to our brains and recently attended a conference in Boston on this very subject. This lecture focused on various regions of our brain and how our brains process music.
Humans have the most advanced sense of rhythm of all the species. The temporal lobe is the region of the brain where sound and music are first processed. Among other regions within the temporal lobe, music and sound are hard wired to the motor spread or motor cortex that controls our arm and leg movements. This hard-wired connection is what makes humans want to dance when they hear particularly rhythmic music or familiar tunes.
Music, particularly music we enjoy listening to, produces two chemicals in our brains. One being oxytocin, known as the love chemical, and dopamine, known as the reward chemical. Music enhances socialization, group cohesion, physical movement, and abstract reactions such as emotions like joy and tears. Music Therapist’s use music as a way of helping rehabilitate neurological conditions such as Parkinson’s disease, autism, stroke victims, and people who suffer from PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder to name a few. Music can improve our mood, soothe our soul, or motivate us to get moving and be productive.
The evening program continued with Louie Miller reciting three poems. The first two poems recited were “The Morning I Watched the Deer” and “Invitation” written by Mary Oliver, a National Book Award winner and Pulitzer Prize recipient for poetry. Dressed in costume, Miller then recited Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky,” from “Through the Looking Glass” Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
The program ended with refreshments and sharing memories of the Wooster Music Club (formerly MacDowell Club,) in celebration of 103 years of continuous membership.
The Wooster Music Club meets the first Tuesday of the month at 6:30 p.m. from September through May, except for January and February, in Wesley Hall at the Wooster United Methodist Church. Guests are welcome.
This article originally appeared on The Daily Record: Wooster Music Club meeting includes lesson on your brain on music
