"Music is one of the very first things a person responds to at the beginning of life and one of the very last things a person can still respond to at the end. Individuals do not need to be told to respond to music or taught how to respond to music, their bodies and brains do it naturally. Because musical processing is an innate part of human biology and neurology.
As more and more research is being completed, music is being viewed not only as an enjoyable pastime or an integral part of human history, but also something that elicits response on the biological level. Dale Taylor, PhD, MT-BC (1997) writes, “Music influences human behavior by affecting the brain and subsequently other bodily structures in ways that are observable, identifiable, measurable, and predictable, thereby providing the necessary foundation for its use in treatment procedures.”
Music can alter brain chemistry and can affect heart rate, breath rate, and blood pressure in addition to changing both brain structure and the way neurons fire. In fact, more and more studies in the past three decades have been focused on music and the brain. Researchers are finding that music is the only sensory input that is processed in the entire brain simultaneously. Neuroscientists are even studying musical processing in the brain in order to gain a better understanding of how the brain functions. Music is unique in the way it is processed throughout the entire brain and can be used to change and strengthen specific neural networks."