Usually they say that the eyes are the gate that leads into one's soul, but the same expression could be used with other two connected words: music and brain. This is because more and more scientific studies show that music extensively stimulates the brain. Therefore, music could be considered a window to the brain. Why is that? Because paying or listening to music demands and stimulates, besides emotional states, intellectual abilities.

When playing an instrument, any kind of instrument, one uses his motor skills and also the cognitive ability. He has to feel the music in his soul and then put it in musical notes on the staff - which are the "words" of music. Even if in modern times music consists both in melodic line - a succession of notes forming a distinctive musical sequence- and lyrics, music at its origins consisted solely in melody and musical themes.

Therefore, as words are the raw material for literature, stone, marble or wood for sculpture, colors for painting - a harmonious arrangement of musical notes represent the seed of music. The classics are not to be forgotten, and we should all admit it that airs from Bach, Beethoven, Vivaldi and so on would not need lyrics to make them perfect, as they already are.

Scientists have been studying music, its effects on the brain and how it is connected with each of the brain's hemispheres and the emotional response. Researchers and neurological experts say that music is processed by the right cerebral hemisphere, but the left one is also involved in the perception of music. However, all scientists approved on the fact that music stimulates many brain areas, as it involves memory, learning and emotions.

When an individual listens to music and focuses on a certain melodic line, he focuses on the rhythm, melody, harmony of the musical piece. The more experienced someone is in music, the many brain areas he will use when listening to music.

Studies showed that people who have the temporal lobe damaged cannot feel music or recognize melodies. Some of them cannot sing, play an instrument or keep the rhythm. It is strange though the fact that, even if these people cannot recognize or hear a song, they hear speech or other sounds, like the ones of birds, animals etc. The condition is called amusia and shows that brain is really involved when music "comes in."

A research carried out in 1998 by Dr. Lawrence Parsons of the University of Texas-San Antonio and his team showed that music involves both the right and left hemispheres of the brain and is widely distributed all throughout the brain rather than in one specific area. They also found that music is similar to language in many respects, including its structure and the way in which it is perceived by humans.

"An understanding of the brain locations that represent the separate aspects of music will help us identify the neural mechanisms that are specific to music, specific to language and are shared between the two. The finding that there is a right brain region for notes and musical passages that corresponds in location to a left brain region for letters and words illustrates how a neural mechanism may be present in each of the two brain hemispheres becomes special adapted for analogous purposes but with different information contexts," explained Dr. Lawrence Parsons.

Due to the fact that music is so stimulating and requires a wide range of abilities, it highly contributes to the improvement of our cognitive function and mental abilities. This is why music is introduced as a study object in schools since we are in the first or second grade and this is why it is said that people that listen to good music are smarter.

Music was found to be also extremely beneficial for plants, not only for humans. Even if plants do not develop any kind of cognitive ability, music helps them grow faster, healthier and stronger. It seems that the harmonic atmosphere music - mostly the classical one - creates some positive effects on the growing process of plants. These ones "calm down", "relax" and "breathe" more.

All in all, it seems that the advice Depeche Mode gives us, to "enjoy the silence", is not the most appropriate one. Let us try enjoying the music! But the real music, the one that works wonderfully upon our brain and feelings, not the noisy, pointless rhythms of some modern artists in quest for fame and material support.