I'm doing a short presentation on the psychological effects of music in my psychology class next Tuesday. I'm trying to find good information on exactly what effects both listening to music and being a musician have on your psych. What I've found so far is information that listening to music can temporarily increase IQ scores in temporal spacial reasoning and that being in music lessons and playing an instrument increases IQ across the board. I was wanting to know if anyone here had written a paper or knew of a good source on psychological effects of music, particularly in different cultures besides western society...such as African or South American. Any information would be greatly appreciated!

Hi,
I don't know if it may be of interest to you, but I'm reading right now a book by Oliver Sacks titled "Musicophilia".
The author is a neurologist who explores various case studies and writes about how music can have a strong influence on people with Parkinson's Disease, Alzheimer, Schizophrenia. He also describes the meaning music can have on patiens with some kind of brain damage (by birth or by an accident later in life)

I haven't heard of that book, but it seems that it could definitely have some information I could use. I'll check it out tomorrow. Thanks!

I was just this minute reading Avison's An Essay on Musical Expression at google books. Check it out esp Polybius on the Arcadians.