Before a child speaks, it sings.
Before they write, they paint.
As soon as they stand, they dance.
Art is the basis of human expression.
- Phylicia Rashad
- Gypsy proverb: "Stay there where they sing. Evil people would have nothing to do with songs."
Music and Neuroplasticity Melbourne University Professor Sarah Wilson is an internationally recognised expert in Cognitive Neuroscience and Clinical Neuropsychology.
Her research program has advanced our understanding of the neural basis of human cognition and behaviour. She has pioneered music neuroscience research in Australia, showing how music can enhance brain function in healthy individuals, and facilitate recovery after brain injury. She has also described a new clinical syndrome that arises following treatment of neurological disorders, and her research has led to better management of the cognitive, emotional, and social difficulties faced by individuals recovering from brain injury...
Introduction:
Singing in the shower makes your voice sound great, but is it also good for your mental health? We asked Professor Sarah Wilson from the School of Psychological Sciences at the University of Melbourne.
Wilson suggests that yes, singing offers a range of neuro-protective benefits, acting as “a form of natural therapy.”
As well as activating a range of networks associated with movement, listening, planning, memory, and language, singing triggers the release of the
feel-good neurotransmitter dopamine.
According to Wilson, the benefits of singing can be triggered by both singing and thinking about singing.
So if you don’t feel comfortable breaking into song on the bus, try thinking about it instead.
TRANSCRIPT
What happens to your Brain when you Sing?
"So when we put people in the scanner and look at their brains when they’re singing what we see is that large areas of the brain light up, or activate. Either thinking about singing or singing itself. These include motor networks, auditory or listening networks, planning and organisational networks, memory networks, language networks, if we’re not singing with words, and also emotional networks. And they augment social bonding and empathy. The complexity of singing is striking for the brain even though, to us, it feels like a relatively easy process. What’s remarkable about singing is that in the act of doing it we activate our reward networks. Those emotions lead to the release of dopamine which is the feel-good chemical for the brain. So, if you like, singing is a form of natural therapy. It lifts our mood, it releases dopamine, and it gives all those networks a workout, bringing protective, or neuroprotective benefits for our mental health. "
– Professor Sarah Wilson
ABC Classic FM Interview transcript:
Professor Sarah Wilson talks about Music and Neuroplasticity
ABC Classic FM
Interviewer, Vanessa Hughes
Fri 17 Aug 2018 (5:57)
ABC Classic FM's Vanessa Hughes explores the intersection of music and science. In this interview she talks to Professor Sarah Wilson about the impacts of music on the brain.
Vanessa Hughes:
00:30
Professor Sarah Wilson from the University of Melbourne, what is happening to your brain when you hear that? Why does it feel so good?
Sarah Wilson:
00:40
Well, that’s a wonderful question that neuroscientists have really been trying to nut-out the answer to, now, using very modern neuroimaging techniques to investigate the brain in action, when it listens to music. And a key finding, from that work, is that when we listen to music, either our favourite tunes or, perhaps, we’re singing, that large areas of the brain activate. And that means that many networks of the brain are involved and all of those networks are getting used. Music has this remarkable ability to directly activate the reward networks of the brain. And these are the areas of the brain that give us that dopamine hit –that really feel-good release of chemicals in the brain– that are known to have positive feel-good effects.
VH:
01:34
How does it actually help your brain to be smarter or more active?
SW:
01:40
So, that’s this concept of neuroplasticity where the brain changes with repeated use or engagement in certain activities. And, as I said before, when we listen to music or engage in music, we’re using all of these networks. And the thinking is that by using these networks we’re strengthening and enhancing their capability. So, there’s a large body of literature now that shows that there are benefits for musicians in terms of other cognitive skills. So, musicians will be do better on auditory learning or auditory memory tests. They might do better on spacial tests. There is also evidence that it generally enhances their IQ. And this is because it is this complex, rewarding task that involves all of these networks. And, so, we call this “near transfer effects” –that we use one skill to enhance the functioning of the brain more - generally.
VH:
2:43
That’s really interesting because I guess I always assumed that, you know, polymaths - the genius composers that might have been excellent at either visual arts or sciences and mathematics - were just born that way.
SW:
2:59
Well that’s another intriguing area of research that we’re doing in our lab:
Looking at how much of the musician is ‘born’ of ‘made’. Is it genetics or is it environment. And, of course, it’s a complex story and an interaction of both.
We are finding, in this work, looking for genes in particular for singing ability, that there is a greater concordance between identical twins and their musical abilities than non-identical twins. So, what this is telling us is probably a genetic pre-disposition for musical ability. But then you also need to put in the practice and the hours to train the networks and get what we call are the “neuroprotective” or beneficial effects.
VH:
3:49
And we’re not all brilliant musicians or good enough to be professional musicians, so what if we just love listening to that music. Does that help us become smarter? Can we become superhuman just by listening to more Mozart?
SW:
4:02
(Laughter) I don’t know about superhuman, but, certainly, there’s some interesting clinical studies that show, for instance, for people who’ve had a stroke, if as part of their early rehabilitation in the hospital wards they played music versus, perhaps, auditory books, white noise or silence, that those patients who get the music actually get discharged from hospital sooner and have better recovery markers early post their injury.
VH:
4:36
But is all music equal, Sarah? Because, I mean, if that person is in hospital, they’re recovering and they’re listening to Beethoven, is that going to help them get better more than listening to something equally fabulous but not classical, like the Beatles?
SW:
4:51
This is a very debated issue, and you probably have heard of the “Mozart effect” which is an old idea now but has caused a lot of controversy in the literature: Is there a certain type of music that you need to listen to that’s going to entrain your neurons to fire or work together in a particular way that brings maximal benefit? The literature, to date, suggests that, in fact, it’s probably got more to do with mood, and that the benefits are greatest when you’re actually fully engaged and motivated to listening - and or playing or singing the music that you like - because that’s when you’re going to get the best brain function in response.
VJ:
5:39
Thanks so much for explaining this to us professor Sarah Wilson from the University of Melbourne. I think some more of that lovely flugelhorn might helps those neurons fire in the right way. What do you reckon?
Excerpt: ... Collective neuroscience, as some practitioners call it, is a rapidly growing field of research. An early, consistent finding is that when people converse or share an experience, their brain waves synchronize. Neurons in corresponding locations of the different brains fire at the same time, creating matching patterns, like dancers moving together. Auditory and visual areas respond to shape, sound and movement in similar ways, whereas higher-order brain areas seem to behave similarly during more challenging tasks such as making meaning out of something seen or heard. The experience of “being on the same wavelength” as another person is real, and it is visible in the activity of the brain.
Such work is beginning to reveal new levels of richness and complexity in sociability. In classrooms where students are engaged with the teacher, for example, their patterns of brain processing begin to align with that teacher's—and greater alignment may mean better learning. Neural waves in certain brain regions of people listening to a musical performance match thoseof the performer—the greater the synchrony, the greater the enjoyment. Couples exhibit higher degrees of brain synchrony than nonromantic pairs, as do close friends compared with more distant acquaintances.
But how does synchrony happen? Much about the phenomenon remains mysterious—even scientists occasionally use the word “magic” when talking about it. .
. .
The goal of the latest human studies is not just to explore synchrony more deeply but to go beyond it…to see whether brains can align at the level of understanding. “We think there could be synchrony, for example, when people understand perhaps even different stimuli the same way, if they have some sort of higher-level meaning that they share.” …Are synchronized brains more creative? Or do they just have more fun? The answers will have to wait for further analysis. … The researchers calculate linear correlations between subjects to determine the degree to which parts of their brains respond in the same way over time—are they in lockstep? Does their activity ebb and flow together?
. . . The people who listened and worked hardest to seek consensus—and not those who talked most—were the ones whose brains synchronized with others first and who drove synchrony in the larger group. >>>more
Read an Extract here
165 million years ago saw the birth of rhythm.
66 million years ago came the first melody.
40 thousand years ago Homo sapiens created the first musical instrument.
Today music fills our lives. How we have created, performed and listened to music throughout history has defined what our species is and how we understand who we are. Yet it is an overlooked part of our origin story.
The Musical Humantakes us on an exhilarating journey across the ages – from Bach to BTS and back – to explore the vibrant relationship between music and the human species. With insights from a wealth of disciplines, world-leading musicologist Michael Spitzer renders a global history of music on the widest possible canvas, from global history to our everyday lives, from insects to apes, humans to artificial intelligence. Bloomsbury Publishing, Dublin
The true picture is perhaps less colorful; Einstein was the product of a well-rounded education that, importantly, very much included the arts and humanities.
It’s little known that Einstein was an accomplished violinist, and even less known that had he not pursued science, he said he would have been a musician:
I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.
Looking at the role of music in Einstein’s thinking sheds some light on how he shaped his most profound scientific ideas. His example suggests that in being intimately involved with the scientific complexity of music, he was able to bring a uniquely aesthetic quality to his theories. He wanted his science to be unified, harmonious, expressed simply, and to convey a sense of beauty of form.
He confessed to thinking about science in terms of images and intuitions, often drawn directly from his experiences as a musician, only later converting these into logic, words and mathematics. ...
Gravitational waves discovered: the universe has spoken
Professor David Blair, University of Western Australia.
The Conversation.com - February 12, 2016
Excerpt:
It is hard to overstate the significance of this discovery. It is our first direct contact with our first stellar ancestors. It is our first direct view of a place in the universe where matter loses all its identity and time comes to an end. It is the first of many messages that will tell us how many black holes are out there and how much of the mass of the universe they can account for.
A long time coming
The first detection occurred 99 years after Albert Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves. Two Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (aLIGO) laser interferometers simultaneously detected a signal characteristic of a pair black holes – 29 and 36 times the mass of the sun – merging into one.
Gravitational waves are akin to sound waves: they make things vibrate. Our detectors are our bionic ears that allow us to listen to the universe. The signal from the pair of black holes started two octaves below middle C, and rose up to middle C in one tenth of a second. The signal itself was detected as a vibration of the distance between mirrors four kilometres apart. They changed their spacing by about a billionth of the diameter of an atom. ...
Last week’s announcement on the existence of gravitational waves confirms something philosophers and musicians have known for a long time: the universe is musical.
The key pursuit of metaphysics is to understand the nature of reality. For thousands of years, philosophers have grappled with trying to figure out what is real and how we might know. Music has always been central to that task.
Pythagoras understood music to be part of a quadrivium of mathematics, forming the basis of his philosophical inquiry. Plato placed significant value on rhythm and harmony as central to the organising of the universe.
More recently, in the 20th century philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari claimed that it is rhythm (chronos) that brings spatio-temporal order to the universe (chaos). Deleuze also made the claim that music is able to render different forces sonorous, which seems particularly apt when we think of black holes colliding.
In other words, our understanding of space and time is musical. As with Einstein’s notion of relativity bringing matter, space, time and gravity together, music weaves actual and virtual worlds together. ...
Follow your bliss! "This morning I have been pondering a nearly forgotten lesson I learned in high school music. Sometimes in band or choir, music requires players of singers to hold a note longer than they actually can hold a note. In those cases, we were taught to mindfully stagger when we took a breath so the sound appeared uninterrupted. Everyone got to breath, and the music stayed strong and vibrant. Yesterday, I read an article that suggested the administration's litany of bad executive orders is a way of giving us "protest fatigue" - we will literally lose our will to continue the fight in the face of the onslaught of negative action. Let's remember MUSIC. Take a breat. The rest of the chorus will sing. The rest of the band will play. Rejoin so others can breath. Together, we can sustain a very long, beautiful song for a very, very long time. You don't have to do it all, but you must add your voice to the song." - Michael Moore
"The bright line we are told divides art from entertainment, education, individual and community development is fairly new in human history, and it diminishes the complexity and the value of the arts for everyone. ... teaching artists are reminding us once again, that the arts are for everyone, and that making culture is everyone's – not just professional artists' birthright."
– Nick Rabkin, Research Affiliate in the Cultural Policy Center and a Senior Research Scientist at NORC at the University of Chicago.
See his February 2011 report, Arts Education in America:
What decline means for participation - published on Academia.edu
and
on YouTube - Surveys of Public Participation in the Arts
