Rhiwbina Living

SING
In a world where we can often feel alone, isolated, and detached from
society, Tim Riley outlines the benefits of singing with others
Do you like to sing a bit of opera in
the bath? Are you the sort of person
who turns up the radio in the car
and sings along at the top of your
voice? Or perhaps you love the idea
of singing, but are simply too afraid
to open your mouth and have a go?
One thing is for sure - you don’t
need to sing like the late, great Tina
Turner to enjoy the sense of fun,
camaraderie and well-being that
comes from singing in a choir.
Singing Is Good For Us
I think most of us already
instinctively know that music
making and singing is good for us
- after all, people have been doing
it for thousands of years. However,
in recent years, there has been a lot
of scientific research that has been
quantifying the benefits of music
making and more specifically, the
benefits of singing in choirs.
Jacques Launay, a Postdoctoral
Researcher in Experimental
Psychology at the University of
10
Oxford has this to say:
“Music has been used in different
cultures throughout history in many
healing rituals, and is already used
as a therapy in our own culture.
Song is a powerful therapy indeed.”
He then went on to sum up some
of the broader findings of research
conducted with choirs:
“Regular choir members reported
that learning new songs is
cognitively stimulating and helps
their memory, and it has been
shown that singing can help those
suffering from dementia, too. The
satisfaction of performing together,
even without an audience, is likely
to be associated with activation of
the brain’s reward system, including
the dopamine pathway, which
keeps people coming back for
more.”
Singing Helps Our Brains
Jacques Launay isn’t alone in these
findings. Sarah Wilson, a clinical
neuropsychologist at the University
of Melbourne, conducted MRI
scans on people as they sang and
reached the following conclusions:
“When we sing, large parts of our
brain ‘light up’ with activity. There is
a singing network in the brain which
is quite broadly distributed. When
we speak, the hemisphere of the
brain dealing with language lights
up, as we might expect.
"When we sing, however, both
sides of the brain spark into
life. We also see involvement
of the emotion networks of the
brain. Regions that control the
movements we need to produce
sounds and articulation also light
up.”
Singing Releases Feel Good
Hormones
Baishali Mukherjee, an officer for the
World Federation of Music Therapy
is able to sum up quite nicely what
the likely benefits of singing are
going to be:
“Endorphins are related to an