Listening to music could be affecting your mental health.

According to a study published in Frontiers in Human 

Neuroscience, read more 

= http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fnhum.2015.00466/full

 listening to sad songs could be making us anxious and 

neurotic. 

Many of us play music to reflect our mood: a bit of Drake to 

get us dancing, Sam Smith when we want to cry.  

But most of us have no idea how this might actually affect 

our health.

Emily Carlson, a music therapist and author of the study, 

said: ‘Some ways of coping with  negative emotion, such as 

rumination, which means continually thinking over negative 

things, are linked to poor mental health.’

‘We wanted to learn whether there could be similar negative 

effects of some styles of music  listening.’

The researchers tested the neural responses of participants 

while they listened to happy, aggressive and sad music 

and compared this to markers of mental health including 

depression, anxiety and neuroticism.

They found that listening to music affected the medial 

prefrontal cortex (mPFC), with those using sad and 

aggressive music to reflect on their emotions having higher 

levels of anxiety and neuroticism than those who didn’t.

This was particularly true for men.

Elvira Brattico, the senior author of the study said: ‘These 

results show a link between music  listening styles and 

mPFC activation, which could mean that certain listening 

styles have long-term effects on the brain.’

READ http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fnhum.2015.00466/full