Benefits of Music to Health and Attention:

Music Moves Brain to Pay Attention, Study Finds
Listening to music helps build a brain identify beginnings and endings (event segmentation) and the area of the brain that updates memory, which helps build the ability to pay attention. As symphony movements changed, so did listeners’ neurological activity.

Full Study PDF in Neuron
US News & World Report
Science Daily

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Paying Attention Sets Off Symphony of Cell Synchronization
The team of psychologists and neuroscientists used a new strategy for understanding the mechanisms whereby sustained attention makes us process things more effectively, literally making the world come into sharper focus.

Abstract in Nature Neuroscience
Science Daily

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Tunes to Soothe: The Healing Power of Music
It has long been known that listening to music can ease stress – but scientists are discovering that it has a powerful effect on pain, immunity – and even recovery from heart attacks.

The Independent (UK)

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Listening to Music Can Reduce Chronic Pain and Depression by Up to a Quarter
Listening to music can reduce chronic pain by up to 21 per cent and depression by up to 25 per cent, according to a paper in the latest UK-based Journal of Advanced Nursing.

They found that people who listened to music for an hour every day for a week reported improved physical and psychological symptoms compared to the control group.

Journal of Advanced Nursing Press Release (UK Study)
Abstract in Journal of Advanced Nursing
Science Daily

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Listen to Music - It Can Save the Brain
Hearing and mimicking language, hearing music, and exposure to arts also create additional synapses in the brain. These synapses are “jump points” across which data signals from axons travel between 2 cells or among many cells in a network. The more synapses together with increasing numbers of transmitter axons, the greater the ability of the brain to learn and to apply information. IQ rises. Music does this for most humans. As with any trend, there are exceptions.

Hub Pages

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Music Has the Power to Move Us
References the study on how music helps you ‘pay attention’ and notes that the study also shows that music affects the area of the brain that 'helps update memory' and that when people listen to music 'the whole brain lights up.'

St. Joseph News-Press

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Music Listening Enhances Cognitive Recovery and Mood after Middle Cerebral Artery Stroke
Listening to music improves stroke patients' recovery, study shows. Researchers from Finland found that if stroke patients listened to music for a couple of hours a day, their verbal memory and focused attention recovered better and they had a more positive mood than patients who did not listen to anything or who listened to audio books.

Abstract in Brain
Full Study PDF in Brain
Science Daily

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Listening to Music of Choice During Outpatient Eye Surgery Lowers Patients' Cardiovascular, Emotional Stress
Older adults who listened to their choice of music during outpatient eye surgery had significantly lower heart rate, blood pressure and cardiac work load than patients who did not listen to music, a study by researchers at the University at Buffalo has shown. Furthermore, the music-listeners rated themselves significantly less anxious and significantly better at coping with the experience than their non-music-listening colleagues.

University of Buffalo (SUNY) Press Release
Science Daily

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Music Can Boost Your Immune System
Listening to music can give your immune system a boost and may help fight off disease, researchers have discovered. They also found that stress hormone levels, which can weaken the immune system, decreased after being exposed to the music. Study focused on dance music only.

The Independent (UK)

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Music as Medicine for the Brain
Neurologists like Oliver Sacks are prescribing [music] for conditions from Parkinson's and Alzheimer's to stroke and depression.

US News & World Report

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Where Brain Waves Meet Sound Waves
As for the therapeutic value of music, Michael Thaut, a professor at Colorado State University, noted that victims of strokes or traumatic brain injuries benefit from doing exercises to the accompaniment of music or even just the ticketing of a metronome.

International Herald Tribune (International NY Times)

 

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