Health Study Explores Healing Abilities of Hip-Hop

Hip-hop fans often use rap music to relax or get out their emotions but a new study suggests the genre may actually have healing powers.

Recent work done by researchers at Cambridge University have found that freestyling puts a rapper's brain into a rare "flow state" that stimulates the parts of the brain which are responsible for emotion, language, motivation, motor function and motor processing, the Daily Mail reports.

The National Institutes of Health study also looked at other forms of music, including scanning the mind of an opera star. It was discovered that several brain regions were more active when a singer imagined singing than when they actually did.

"We're trying to understand the brain not just so we can address mental disorders or diseases or injuries, but also so we can understand what happens when a brain's working right and what happens when it's performing at a really high level," said researcher David Jangraw.

There are still more plans for the study as well, as Julia Langley of Georgetown University's arts and humanities program would like to see more research into the type and dose of music for different health situations. "If we can study the arts in the same way that science studies medication and other therapeutics, I think we will be doing so much good," she said.

Other studies, such as one being done at Wake Forest University will continue to look at other ways music can help the body.

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