Benefiting at work from Brain Based Insights

There been a great deal of talk in the past few years about the power of music on concentration and focus.

And new facts about different kinds of music that enhance different operations of the brain leave us whilslin’ more while we work. In every case – some adults tell you that silence works more in their favor – especially while they learn new skills at work or in college.

Now a Stanford study show how the brain gets going when the music stops. Is it possible that all these finding can be true – at the same time?

In this recent study, Mercury News writer Lisa Krieger claims that … Silent pauses len clues on mental processes.  In Krieger’s words … “While music may soothe the savage breast, the brain thrills to the sound of silence.”

 

Stanford and McGill University researchers observed brain images of 18 volunteers listening to a series of movements within symphonies, each having frequent pauses.

It seems that to the brain - "A pause is not a time where nothing happens." No wonder composers create space for silence – as a way to build a sense of anticipation. Pauses are “used by the brain to take a stream of sensory information and parcel it up into more easily comprehended pieces.”

The study found that silence awakens the human brain. How so?

“In all 18 subjects, brain response was most powerful during the periods of silence between the total of 20 movements in Boyce's eight symphonies.” Similarly when the music resumed, mental action shifted to a second site in the brain, called the dorsal fronto-parietal network. This area is responsible for maintaining attention and updating the memory.

You could say … the power of silence to the brain has just become less silent to those interested in optimizing its benefits at work.