This is how music rewires your brain from the moment the first notes are played.

Music has a tremendous power over people. It lifts the spirits, comforts, makes us happy... but what exactly happens in the brain when we listen to it? A new international study published in the journal Advanced Science and led by researchers from Aarhus University (Denmark) and Oxford University (United Kingdom) has shown that the entire brain is rewired in milliseconds while we listen to music.

Using an innovative neuroimaging technique called FREQ-NESS —an acronym for FREQuency-resolved Network Estimation via Source Separation —scientists have been able to observe in real time how auditory stimuli reorganize brain networks based on their frequencies . In short: music not only activates the brain , it reprograms it to the rhythm of sound.

Traditionally, neuroscientists have studied brain activity in predefined bands (alpha, beta, gamma) and fixed anatomical regions. But the FREQ-NESS model is different. It goes a step further. This new tool makes it possible to map neural networks not by their location, but by the dominant frequency of their electrical oscillations. This means that researchers can analyze how multiple frequencies coexist, interact, and shift throughout the brain. Thanks to the powers of this technique, scientists can also detect how one neural network disappears and another emerges, even if they share the same physical space. The result is an ultra-precise 3D brain map that shows how sound redraws our neural connections in real time.

"We're used to thinking of brain waves as fixed stations—alpha, beta, and gamma—and of brain anatomy as a set of distinct regions. But what we observed with FREQ-NESS is much richer," say Mattia Rosso and Leonardo Bonetti of Aarhus University and Oxford University, respectively. Thus, it's possible to track brain waves in nature.

In the laboratory experiment, researchers played regular auditory pulses at 2.4 Hz —a simple and predictable rhythm—to a group of volunteers while recording their brain activity using magnetoencephalography (MEG).

The so-called default mode network , associated with introspective thinking, quickly gave way to specialized auditory areas such as Heschl's area (located in the brain's primary auditory cortex and responsible for processing auditory information). Experts point out that peaks of activity appeared at harmonic frequencies (4.8 Hz), extending to areas of the medial temporal lobe involved in memory and emotion . And alpha waves, which are normally located in the back of the brain, moved toward motor regions, as if the body were preparing to move to the beat. Ready to symphonically orchestrate the entire organism in real time to the music.

Furthermore, one of the most revealing findings of the study was the appearance of cross-coupling between frequencies , which allows distant brain areas to be synchronized or even explains why a simple song is capable of having long-term effects on how we feel or what we think.

According to Rosso, this breakthrough could transform multiple fields, from clinical neuroscience, enabling the diagnosis of disorders like depression or epilepsy by observing how brain networks respond to auditory rhythms, to personalized music therapies, allowing us to design specific rhythms to induce states of relaxation, attention, or motivation . The applications are many and reinforce a very powerful concept: that listening to music is not merely a passive act with which we can fill our silences, but rather acts as a continuous and active reshaper of the mind. So remember, the next time you put on your favorite song, keep in mind that you're not just enjoying the music; you're doing so much more.

Music has a tremendous power over people. It lifts the spirits, comforts, makes us happy... but what exactly happens in the brain when we listen to it? A new international study published in the journal Advanced Science and led by researchers from Aarhus University (Denmark) and Oxford University (United Kingdom) has shown that the entire brain is rewired in milliseconds while we listen to music.