Welcome to the huberman live podcast where we discuss science and science based tools for everyday life.
I'm Andrew huberman. And I'm a
professor of neurobiology and Ophthalmology at
Stanford school of medicine. Today, we are discussing music and your brain. However, this episode could have just as easily been
entitled music is
your brain, or your brain is music. And that's because music, believe it or not is a neurological phenomenon.
Most of us, think of
music as something that happens outside of us. The sounds we hear the lyrics. We hear their meaning, how they anchor us to pieces of our history, both emotional or social it turns out that when we listen to music it activates nearly every piece of our brain. Moreover when we listen
to music it activates our brain
in ways that our brain itself and indeed our
body as well help to create that
music at the level of so called neuro.
Ensembles. That is the firing of neurons. In other words, when we listen to music our brain and our body become part of the instrument that
contributes to our perception of that music. Today, I'm going to make clear how all of that happens. We will also discuss how music can be leveraged towards shifting, our brain States, and our bodily States, for instance, what sorts of music to listen to, in order to make ourselves happy yes, Studies have been done on that as well as how long to listen to music in order to shift our mood or our overall body.
Ali State, including how to process feelings of sadness. Many of you are probably familiar with particular songs that anchor us to particular times in our history or people in our history. And there's an age-old question, really as to whether or not listening to sad, music can help us process our feelings of sadness or whether or not. They drive us further down the spiral of sadness and despair and indeed Studies have explored this as well. So today, I will explain how music indeed, how different types of music activate. Different. Neural circuits in your brain to create.
Different brain and bodily States, how we can leverage music toward things like, emotional processing, shifting, our emotions as well as to enhance learning and memory. And we will also talk about the use of music to enhance brain, plasticity, that is your brain's ability to change in response to experience, not just in response to that music. But rather using music as a tool to expand our capacity for neuroplasticity. Giving us the ability to learn far more in other.
Other context in areas of life, I confess that in researching this episode, I found myself continually delighted as to first of all how impressive the science of the study of music and the brain is. And secondly, how fundamental music is to all of our lives. And this is true whether or not you're somebody who listens to music often or you're somebody that really prefer silence. Indeed, we will talk about whether or not it's better to listen to music or remain in silence when you perform certain kinds of work, it turns out that there's a very clear answer to that.
Want a little bit of a Hint. It is best to listen to music in between bouts of work or during brief rest periods as opposed to listening to music while you work. And for those of you that listen to music while you work and thoroughly enjoy listening to music while you work, we will also discuss what that means about your brain in particular because it's likely that it got wired up that way at a particular phase of development and each and all of you can learn today how to best leverage music toward productivity. But perhaps equally important how to Leverage
music for enrichment and enjoyment of life. I'm pleased to announce that we will be hosting three live events in Australia. All three events will cover science and science related tools for mental health, physical health and performance. There will also be a Live question and answer session. The first live event will take place on February 10th in Melbourne at the plenary theater. The second live event will take place on February 17th in Sydney at the Sydney Opera House, and the third event will take place on February 23rd in Brisbane.
The Great Hall to access tickets to any of these events. Simply go to huberman, labs.com, slashed, or, and use the code hubermann. I hope to see you there. And last, but certainly not least. Thank you for your interest in science before we begin. I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to Consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public in keeping with that theme. I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our
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To Roca ROK a.com and enter the code huberman to save 20% off your first order. Again, that's Roca are okay, a.com and enter the code huberman at checkout. Okay, let's talk about music and your brain and to start off, I just want to take a step back and acknowledge something that is absolutely remarkable about music, which is, if you think about language, I could describe to you a glass. I could describe to you. And apple. I could describe to you a story.
I could describe to you a face. I could describe to you any number of different things and you could do the same. For me, language is essentially infinite in the number of things that I can explain and the ways that it can explain it. And yet, if you think about music music provided, there are no lyrics in that music can't explain how a glass is shaped it. Can't even tell you that there's a glass present in the room or on a table. It can't tell you what a face looks like it. Can't tell you what that person. Who
That face did or is doing so, in some ways you might think. Wow,
music is fairly diminished in terms of its qualitative depth compared to language.
And yet, if you take a step back and think about what music can do, it's astonishing and it actually
overwhelms. What language can do, what can music do?
Well, even in the absence of any lyrics, any words, put to music
music, can describe an emotion,
in fact, music can describe numerous types of
Oceans and it can do it with a lot of nuance. So
not just displaying for us, happy or sad, but rather different degrees of Happiness. Different degrees of
Sadness. Music can be used to convey a sense of longing.
A sense of nostalgia, a sense of delight, a sense of awe, and on and on.
So, whereas music can't describe nouns very well,
it can beautifully described emotions
and not only can music describe emotions
with a
And
this degree of nuance music can evoke emotions with a tremendous degree of nuance.
Now, this is spectacular and it's not only spectacular, it is important, because as we move through today's episode, you'll soon, come to realize that it's very
likely and indeed, we have a lot of scientific evidence to support the fact that
music evolved prior to spoken language. Moreover, it's very likely that singing
evolved prior to spoken language
and that
Isaac singing and dance together
evolved prior to
language making music as well as singing and dance. But really just music. Even on its own in the absence of any lyrics or any bodily movement as the fundamental
form of human
communication. Indeed music can evoke empathy again, we're talking about music in the
absence of any
lyrics. And when I say music can evoke empathy, I'm not talking about the sort of empathy where you look at somebody an odd and
understand so called cognitive empathy which is important by the way. And
No Dynamics or
emotional empathy where you're actually feeling what the other person is feeling. But of course, you never
really know what somebody else is feeling. How could you? You can only have a sense of what they might be feeling and you have a sense of what you're feeling, but let's be honest as one of our prior guests on the huberman. Lab podcast, dr. Carl dieser off. So aptly noted rarely. Do we ever understand how anyone else truly feels? Because indeed rarely do we ever understand how we ourselves? Truly feel
and certainly with language it's very
Hard to explain our feelings with words in a way that can convey, the way that we feel with. The kind of nuance
that represents our own
reality, even in a state of extreme happiness or extreme sadness. Words fall short of
explaining how we feel inside. And yet, as I
mentioned earlier, music, not only can describe emotions. It can evoke emotions within us and in doing so it can evoke emotions that give us a sense of
empathy for the person.
Like the music or simply for others in the world and music can do
that. So powerfully, because
not only does music come in through our ears and we'll talk about the process of how
sound is converted into what we perceive as music, and a little bit because indeed it comes in through our ears and we can hear that music, of course, but
the nerve cells, the neurons in your brain, as well as the nerve cells in your body can become activated by music in a way that the firing of those neurons literally the
The frequency of those neural,
impulses comes to match the
frequency of the sounds that you're hearing in your outside environment. In other words, when you listen to music, not only is that music coming
into your body, through your sense, organs, your your hearing, but your
body itself is an instrument playing that music from within. So for instance, if you listen to a piece of music that has a lightness to it, that evokes a sense in you of the Turning of the seasons from Winter to Spring
and
It's common in certain classical music but other forms of music as well.
When you hear that music, indeed, it's coming in through your ears but also the firing of the neurons in your brain and body responding to those particular frequencies of sound
is
such that your body itself is an instrument playing that sense of the Turning of the seasons from Winter to Spring within you,
which is why your body starts to feel
lifted in some cases, or it starts to feel a lightness in some cases and
And an entire set of emotions
starts to be recruited that
at least for you resemble the Turning of the
seasons from Winter to spring.
Now that may sound rather complex, but we're going to break that process down into its component parts. But what I essentially just said is that when you listen to music, not only are you hearing that music, but your body, that is your neurons and indeed your hormones as
well. Things like oxytocin and some other hormones in your brain and body that will discuss are contributing
to a symphony.
Of emotion from within your body and brain.
Okay. So while music can't explain
objects, it can't describe them.
It can explain in a very nuanced ways emotions, and it
can evoke emotions within us. Now, if
that's not amazing enough music, can not only describe an evoke
emotions, it can also imply
intent. Think, for instance, about drumming, that, you would hear off in the distance and we're not talking about
Ratatat, we're talking drumming of this sort.
Don't don't don't. And perhaps the
Cadence of that drumming changes such that as its approaching, it gets
more and more frequent.
What is the intent being implied? Well, we know
from numerous studies and, you know, from numerous movies that you've seen and heard that, that
sort of low
frequency drumming of
increasing Cadence, as
Approaches is implying the intent of aggression,
or war, or
at least is implying, that something
serious is going to happen.
Now contrast that with a different frequency of sound played at a higher Cadence, got it done now the second set of tones definite done Terra done are far less clear in terms of what
they mean, what their
intent is but if we contrast
them with
With, let's just call them what they're typically called the war drums or the drums that that convey, a sense of aggressive intent. Doom, doom,
doom. What we create then is a juxtaposition of two different, emotional states in you. Perhaps, or maybe you
don't respond to those with any robust, emotional shift,
but we are conveying to
separate or distinct sets of intent. Now, of course, spoken language can convey intent. I could say, for instance,
You know, I'm going to help you how can I help you today? Or I could say I'm going to hurt
you, right? Yeah, of course. With spoken language you could do that and you could change the intonation of that
language, you change the frequency. So if I were to say I'm going to hurt you. It's very different than if I say I'm going to hurt you,
okay? Or if I put it as a question, I'm going to hurt you. Okay. So with language, of course, there's also the opportunity for a
lot of nuance, depending on where the inflections, where the accents are on a particular phrase, even a particular word.
But with music, as you recall,
when we convey a sense of intent, we are also conveying that sense of intent through the body of The
Listener. Not just bringing it in through their ears.
And so when we do that, what we do is we start to recruit a huge number of neural circuits that are involved not just in understanding
or a sense of empathy for an emotion. But rather that can recruit movement or what we call Prix motor circuits in the body,
Prix motor circuits.
Are the neurons that start to fire before a particular pattern of action is generated. And
so when we hear music that conveys, emotion that evokes emotion and especially when we hear music that conveys a sense of intent from the outside we to start to feel as
if we need to move or respond to that music in a particular way. Now, what
I just described to you is not something that's learned. In fact, it is innate. How do we know that? Well, there are some beautiful studies that
Have
explored how babies respond to music, indeed, how babies, respond to
specific types of music, specific frequencies of sound spacing between
particular notes and on and on
it's been demonstrated for instance, that babies. As young as three months, old respond to music very differently than they
respond to just other forms of sound scrambled in time.
Now, of course babies, that are three months old aren't
speaking. So you could ask them, does that sound like music? How does it make you feel?
Etc. They're not going to answer at least not with any coherence because they don't have spoken language yet. But despite their absence of language, we know that babies as young as 3 months old respond to
music because they do. So with rhythmic movements
of their bodily Limbs and actually their torso, as
well. Now, a little bit later, we will touch on this issue of what types
of music evoke movement of the Torso versus movement of the limbs versus movement of the Torso and limbs. No I'm not going to dance.
For you during this podcast. However, there's a really interesting story there that relates
to how
primitive or evolved the motor neurons, the neurons that actually move the musculature are and how primitive or evolved the music that one listens to is.
But just to give you a sense of where that's headed in this study, where they examine the responses of very young babies to music, they found is that certain frequencies
of sound evoked movements in those babies that were rhythmic, where it was
Mostly their torso moving back and forth and maybe their head a little bit whereas other patterns of sound different frequencies in different Arrangements, evoked movement, of their limbs more than their torso and still other patterns of sounds evoked movement of their torso, Limbs and head. In other words, babies, dancing. And if you've ever been to a wedding or a party or been out
dancing, you will see people who
include more torso versus limb versus Limb and
torso movement when they
dance. And
yes, of course, some of this relates to proficiency and dancing Comfort on the Dance Floor, Etc. But there are some Universal rules out there about how certain frequencies and patterns of sound AKA music. Evokes different types of bodily
movements. So, starting from a very young age prior to any
instruction in terms of how to dance, or what music
is
babies are dancing to music.
And that highlights an important point that we will return to again and again,
Out today's episode, which is that the systems
of the brain that
respond specifically to movement, not just sound but specifically to musical sounds are
intimately tied to the neural circuits of
the body, the generate movement.
And this is especially important to understand when we get into our
discussion about music and our sense of motivation,
okay? So the list of incredible things that music can evoke within us by way of how it
activates. Our nervous system in body is starting to grow. We've talked about how music can
convey emotion, how music can evoke emotion and how music can convey a sense of
intent as well. Now as how music can generate action within us. This is a pretty
spectacular list if you think about
it.
In addition music causes changes within our bodily
physiology that extends beyond the nervous system, although it has a relationship to the nervous
system in particular. There been a lot of studies that have explored how music changes
things like our blood pressure or how fast our heart is beating our so-called resting heart rate.
And here we've made some important discoveries in recent years. And when I say we, I don't mean my laboratory.
I mean, Laboratories that focus on the relationship between music and our bodily physiology.
Because we've
long known that music can change various Health metrics, there's some really nice studies and I'll link to one or two
of the meta-analyses of these studies in the show. No captions.
That have showed that. If people listen to anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes of Music per day. And by the way, the selection of Music in these studies ranged, everything from
Rock and Roll to classical
music to country music. Typically these studies would ask subjects what their favorite music is
and then they would have them listen to that particular genre
Music for anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes per day. And if you look
at the meta analyses of those studies, what you find is that almost all of them. See some sort of significant effect that is some statistically significant shift in the
bodily. Physiology of people that deliberately listen to music for 10 to 30 minutes per day. Not while doing anything else, but just listening to that music they find for instance, that they're
resting. Heart rate is reduced if not during the period in which you're listening to the music then after the time in which they listening to
The music, they find that their so-called heart rate, variability tends to increase. For those of you that aren't familiar with heart rate, variability having
increased heart rate. Variability is a good thing and that's because heart rate variability reflects the sort
of push and pull or the balance rather of the activation of a so-called sympathetic nervous system,
which is the one sometimes called the fight or flight system, although I don't really like that nomenclature. The sympathetic nervous system. By the way, is not about emotional sympathy. It's what drives your heart rate higher than
Put us in the activated states where we favor movement and motion and makes us alert. Whereas the parasympathetic aspect of our nervous system is the portion of our autonomic nervous system, sometimes called the rest and digest
system, the parasympathetic nervous
system Drive states of deeper
relaxation of calm, in any event, heart rate,
variability, reflects a periodic breaking a
slowing down of heart rate and breathing and
other aspects of our neural system function that
Works alongside with sympathetic activation think of sympathetic activation as an accelerator parasympathetic activation is a break. And when heart rate variability is higher it reflects the fact that our parasympathetic nervous system is periodically engaging. It's getting activated and slowing our heart rates. Slowing are breathing down. Music seems to have the effect of activating that parasympathetic aspect of our nervous system. And so, we are pumping the break every
once in a while slowing
down our heart rates slowing down our breathing. In other words,
When people listen to music for a dedicated period
of time, each day of about 10 to 30
minutes, some studies looked at as
much as 60 minutes. But typically 10 to 30
minutes, what one finds is that heart rate,
variability increases, not
just during the period when they're listening
to the music. This is very important but also heart rate. Variability is increased Around the Clock in those subjects even during
sleep making listening to 10 to 30 minutes of your favorite
music each day. Not just what I would think to be enjoyable protocol.
All if you could even call it a protocol, it's so enjoyable to listen to your favorite music. That feels almost inappropriate to call it a protocol because protocol sounds kind of rigid. Like you're imposing that on yourself
but if you need an excuse to listen to your favorite music, for 10 to 30 maybe 60 minutes per day and just attending to that music.
Not while doing anything else, which is what these studies had subjects do.
Well, indeed that's been shown to
increase heart rate variability Around the Clock which we know is beneficial for your mental and physical health more generally. Okay? So there are dozens, if not hundreds of studies that have
It how music impacts our physiology. And as
I just mentioned, it seems that if we listen to music
that we like for 10 to 30, maybe 60 minutes a day, our physiology certain Health metrics, heart rate, variability, in particular improve now in light of the positive effects of listening to music on one's Health.
There's a recent
meta-analysis that I found particularly interesting. The
title of this meta-analysis is
effects of Music on the cardiovascular system and it was published in Trends in cardiovascular medicine.
Now from the title of this paper,
A effects of Music on the cardiovascular system. You might think that it's just yet another meta-analysis, exploring, how music impacts heart rate, variability and things of that sort. But what's interesting about this study
is that it identifies that the way in which listening to one's favorite
music, positively impacts the cardiovascular system and other aspects of our physiology
is very likely not through
direct changes on our heart rate simply by listening to music. But rather through changes in
Breathing. And this is true. Even if people were not singing along
with the music, by the way.
Now, the relationship between breathing and heart rate
is something that I've touched on before. But if you haven't heard me
discuss this, I'm just going to briefly tell you the
relationship in two or three sentences and then I'll explain the mechanism also in about two to three sentences. So, if you
have a background in biology or even if you
don't, this will all be very simple and very clear
when you deliberately
inhale with a lot of vigor or you deliberately
We make your inhale longer than you naturally would. So for instance, if I
breathe in very vigorously through my nose, something very specific happens to your heart rate, it increases whereas when you deliberately exhale,
meaning when you exhale and deliberately make that exhale longer or you deliberately add Vigor to that, exhale
Or even a shorter, deliberate more vigorous
XL.
You slow down your heart rate and that's because of a phenomenon called respiratory. Sinus arrhythmia which because it includes the word arrhythmia sounds like a bad thing, but it's actually a wonderful thing. It has to do with the relationship between a particular muscle in your body called the diaphragm. Which when you
inhale our lungs, fill with air, our diaphragm moves down and our heart. Therefore has a little bit more space. It actually gets bigger temporarily bigger but bigger and when it does that, whatever volume of blood
In the
Heart Is Now moving through a larger space. So it's the same amount of blood moving through a larger space and the nervous system
registers that
as the blood moving more slowly through that,
temporarily enlarged heart.
And as a consequence, there's a signal sent through various Stations of the nervous system to the heart to speed the heart up. In other words, just as I said before, when we
inhale, our heart rate speeds up
conversely, when we exhale our lungs, empty
T out.
Some are our diaphragm
moves up and as a consequence of that, there's less space
for the heart and so our heart temporarily becomes smaller.
And when that happens, the volume of blood within
that smaller heart moves more quickly. And that's detected by the nervous system, which then
triggers a neural signal from the parasympathetic arm of the autonomic
nervous system which is just fancy nerd. Speak for
a neural signal is sent to
your heart every time you exhale to slow your heart down. So the well
Published effects of listening to your favorite music? Increasing your heart rate. Variability is not
a direct interaction between the sounds coming in through your ears and changes in your heart rate while you're listening to the music. That's actually what I would have thought
happened. But this more recent meta-analysis pulls apart the variables in these different studies. It really illustrates that when we are listening to music We Are
subconsciously. Most of the time subconsciously
changing our patterns of breathing. We
Are inhaling an
anticipation of certain things happening in the music. Where
exhaling? When we feel a relief
of tension, we get excited,
we may get sad, we may get happy, we may even just be listening to music that we don't think is
impacting our physiology at such a core
level, but indeed, it is music is able to Route into our nervous system at levels
below. Our conscious awareness,
and literally turn the various
knobs, if you will, of our cardiovascular system of our breathing apparatus, the diaphragm, the lungs
It can evoke respiratory sinus arrhythmia which again sounds like a terrible thing but is actually the reflection of a healthy nervous system and heart and in doing. So yes it increases heart rate variability, something that is beneficial to all of us
but it's doing so by
changing our patterns of breathing.
So if you've ever wondered, why music can change how you feel so robustly. Well it's doing that at
a deep foundational level of your nervous system indeed at the levels of your nervous system that typically are not in your conscious
awareness because
After imagine that most of you are probably not listening to music and thinking oh here comes that one chorus are here, comes that one Melody and this is where I always exhale or this is where I always
hold my breath. This sort of
thing. Know, most people are just listening to music. It's coming in through their ears. They're experiencing some bodily Sensations. Maybe they're moving. Their torso arms, maybe arms and torso, maybe you're not moving it all, no dancing. Maybe just listening with in your head, or
maybe it's just dropped into the background below your conscious awareness at all. And yet, that music is
communicating emotion, it's evoking
Motion, it's communicating intent. It's
activating those Prix motor circuits that would have you move if it could and we'll talk about dance a little bit later but even if you're not dancing, even if you're not
swaying, the tiniest bit, your patterns of breathing are changing and through
respiratory sinus. Arrhythmia, your heart
rate is changing and through changes, in your heart rate, your heart rate, variability is increasing. So
if ever you wanted a tool or protocol, that was easy to use, but could positively
Impact your mental, and physical health.
Well, listening to your favorite music for 10 to 30 maybe 60 minutes. Maybe more per day. Is that protocol? As many of you know, I've been taking a G1 daily since 2012. So I'm delighted that they're sponsoring the podcast. A G1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink. That's designed to me all of your foundational
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hubermann. So hopefully it's becoming clear just how absolutely powerful music is at evoking different physiological. Responses within you that is within your brain and body
but there's an additional one that I find
particularly interesting
because it addresses and indeed
answers. One of the most common questions that I receive all the time, which is, how can I get more motivated? Not how I Andrew.
Get more motivated although of course I ask myself that question from time to time although admittedly most of the time I'm wondering how I'm just going to get everything that I need to get done done
but I often get the question. How can I feel more motivated or what can I do to sustain my motivation
over time? And we hear a lot of different strategies about how to do that. We hear about the quote unquote, just do it strategy, the incredible slogan, that Nike created. And that persists, to this day,
Has become
commonplace and culture and indeed the just do it. Form of advice, can be a good one, but for a lot of people just hearing just do it
or telling themselves just do. It is not something that can evoke action in them. Other people will listen to motivational speeches, they'll look at motivational videos, they'll read motivational books, they may even hire coaches. In other words, people
invest a ton of time energy
and money into trying to be more motivated.
Indeed, a number of episodes of the human Lab podcast have
focused on the relationship between say motivation drive and the neuromodulator dopamine. We have several episodes about that as well as a tool kit all of which are available at zero cost at huberman lab.com. You can access those easily by putting motivation into the search function at huberman live.com. All of that will come up time-stamped, Etc. But
perhaps surprisingly, today's conversation about music, offers us a particularly potent tool to increase motivation. And that's because one of the fundamental
Mental properties of listening to music, is that it evokes activation of these pre motor and motor circuits within our brain and body. That is the neural circuits. Whose specific job is to
mobilize our body
from its current position and
state to a new position and state.
So for those of you that listen to
music while you work out or prior to, when you work
out, you are definitely on to something. For those of you that don't, that's fine too. What I'm going to describe now are the specific sets of neural.
Gets that listening to music activates. As I mentioned earlier, listening to music activates so many circuits
throughout the brain and body. That really one can take a step back from the scientific literature on this and say
any time someone has done a study where human beings listen to music and people
record from particular brain area. Believe you're not even from the
olfactory system from the system in the brain responsible for smell. There seems to be some significant shift
in terms of the neural firing there or the release of neural chemicals.
Which on the one hand might lead you to conclude that listening to music is just sort of a nonspecific generalized,
activator, of nervous system function. It is kind of like, turning all the lights on but that's
not the case music. In fact is activating different neural circuits differently in time and space to evoke a whole set of specific reactions in your brain and body.
But not the least of which is the propensity for you to
move and this is something that you can leverage and indeed, I'll describe our protocol by which you can leverage music in order.
To greatly increase your state of
motivation. Okay, so this is the portion of today's episode where we're going to discuss some specific neural circuits. But I want to assure you that if you're a neurobiologist, you can understand this. If you are not a neurobiologist, in fact, if you took no
biology ever in your life, I'm going to make it clear and easy for you to
understand. As I mentioned before, when we hear music, it activates many, many circuits
throughout the brain and body. When I say
circuits, I mean neurons nerve cells
that communicate with one, another sort of chains of
Actions
when I say respond to one another, what I mean is when neurons are quote, unquote, activated, they
release chemicals. Those chemicals are called
neurotransmitters things like glutamate
Gaba. They're also called neuromodulators things, like dopamine serotonin the names, don't really matter for sake of today's
discussion but what those things do is they influence the likelihood that the next neuron
will be active or less active. Okay. So neuron speak the language if you will of
City because that's how they evoke release of
these chemicals and chemistry.
They all vomit out these chemicals, those chemicals, then
bind to little parking spots on the next neuron called receptors.
And then the next neuron gets activated electrically and then to the next neuron and next neuron. And so on, it's a chain of electrochemical reactions. Okay? So there's your neuro science 101 lesson for today
when people listen to music. There is heightened
activation
Of the so-called frontal cortex, the area of your
brain, which is on the surface below your skull, but just behind
your forehead more or less.
And that area of your brain is involved in a lot of
different things. It's involved in understanding context, you know what sorts of behaviors and thoughts and actions are appropriate for a given environment. By the way, if any of you have ever been in an environment where everyone was really quiet. And you thought, oh my gosh, what's keeping me from just blurting out my name right now or saying, something totally inappropriate your frontal. Cortex is the one providing the show.
Called top-down inhibition on that impulse to blurt something inappropriate out. And by the way, your thoughts about that impulse are perfectly normal. They actually reflect a heightened sense of normalcy because
it means that your brain is thinking about how it's
not going to do that. And so therefore, you're not going to do that. Likewise if you are ever at the edge of a high bridge, please stay on the safe side of the railing. But if you think, oh my goodness, what's keeping me from just jumping off the bridge right now. What's keeping you from doing that as your frontal cortex? It's
suppressing certain actions in a
context dependent way in particular actions that are dangerous to you socially, physically, dangerous to others, socially, physically, Etc. Now,
the frontal cortex in order to do, that also has an incredible ability
to make predictions.
So this is the function of the
frontal cortex that I want to focus on for the moment,
your frontal cortex is great at doing the if this then that type of analysis, if I
say this everyone will be offended or if I say this maybe they'll laugh or
If I don't say this, I'll be safe if I do say that I won't be safe, this kind of thing.
Frontal cortex is activated when we listen to music because within music, there are some
regularities.
Sometimes these are described as motifs, or melodies, or choruses, again, this is the entire landscape of discussion that we
could have and we will have with an expert guest about how the mathematics of Music impacts the electro chemical signaling within the brain and the
coding. That is the mathematics of
Brain function, which
leads us to predict that certain things because they just happen or likely to happen again or not happen again, but
let's set all that aside for the moment. And just State, the simple fact, which is that when you listen to music, your frontal cortex increases in activation because it is predicting. What you're going to hear next based on what you're currently hearing, and
what you heard before. Now, I am from the generation that we didn't have iPods. When I was a kid. We did have CDs. We did have tapes, but you had
Fast forward or rewind, a cassette tape or you had to
skip on the CD. In order to move
about the album in time.
Nowadays, you can queue up different songs in different order,
really easily. But if you are somebody who listens to albums, start to finish, or if you're like me and you
grew up, listening to albums, start to finish, maybe occasionally, skipping a song. But
you will be very familiar with this phenomenon, which is that
right? As a given song ends, if you're familiar.
Earlier
with that album you
already anticipate the start of the next song
in your head and that just speaks to the predictive function that the frontal cortex plays. So if you have a mixtape
with a bunch of different songs, sure, you don't expect
one song of a given artist to lead into the next but if you're somebody who's listening to that mixtape, a lot. So, you're familiar with What song comes next door, if you're listening to a given album
start to finish and you're very familiar with it. Well, then, you'll immediately resonate with what I'm saying here, which is that your frontal
cortex is always anticipating what sound is likely to come.
Next
and this is very important because one of the key things about music and its ability to evoke our sense of surprise or
Delight through the release of a neuromodulator called dopamine. We get to
this a bit more later is because that prediction Machinery is thinking, oh,
I heard that set of
chords a moment ago, I'm going to hear it again and then when it changes up your brain goes oh
whoa, hold on. That wasn't what I expected and it sometimes does that with a sense of delight like oh yes and sometimes it hears that and
He goes oh wait, what's this? I don't really like this that much. I like the opener that song but I don't really like the rest. I think of that is you know there's certain pastries muffins in particular where I really like the top. It's got the little crumbs. It's got the berries and stuff that you like get down past the top and then you get to the middle of thing. Like this thing's. Not that good, okay? There certain songs like that for me. So I always thought of those is muffin songs because the top of the muffin is always the best, whereas a donut is great the whole way through. And now I'm going on a tangent because I'm thinking about muffins and donuts. I want to take us
back.
To music. But the point is relevant, nonetheless,
which is that your frontal cortex is making predictions? And when those predictions are broken, that's a sense of novelty and when that novelty is something that you like, okay, so it evokes a sense of yes I like that well then dopamine is deployed and when that novelty is something you don't like typically there's a reduction in the amount of dopamine released in a separate set of brain circuits below, whatever level of dopamine happened to be there prior your so-called Baseline level of dopamine.
Okay, so when you listen to music, there's a
Wrong activation of the prediction Machinery in your brain. There's also activation of the circuits in your brain that register
novelty. What are those circuits? These are things like the
ventral tegmental area and the nucleus accumbens. I've talked
about these before. On the podcast again, you don't need to know those names. Those are the names given to certain brain areas that control the release of dopamine in
time according to whatever you happen to be experiencing in that moment, okay? So the me's
Olympic reward pathway could perhaps better be called.
He's Olympic reinforcement pathway. So for those of you out there shouting wait, the me's Olympic pathway, does a bunch of other things. It's not just
dopamine, I agree. It's also serotonins a bunch of other things, but for
today's discussion were thinking about the me's Olympic pathway as deploying dopamine
which it does when we hear something novel, meaning, not what we predicted and we like what we hear. And then there are a bunch of other brain centers in circuits that listening to music
activates. I just list off a few. Again, this isn't intended to confuse anybody or out a lot of useless.
Nomenclature.
But since I am a neuroscientist and this is a science and science, informed tools
podcast. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that we get strong activation of a brain structure. You actually have two of them. One on each side of the brain called the amygdala. This is a brain area. That's part of a larger set of circuits that's associated with
arousal. Okay? Meaning becoming more alert becoming more aware of our surroundings and the particular sensory stimuli that are coming in at the particular time such as the notes of the music, or a
Set of lyrics and music. Also activates areas of the brain such as the parahippocampal formation, the cortex, and the hippocampus itself,
brain areas that encode
and store memories.
And in, this is something that I think everyone will be familiar with when you hear certain songs or even songs that sound like certain songs or even songs that you swear, you've never heard before, it can evoke a
sense of nostalgia of longing, for something of missing, somebody of sadness or
of
Light and happiness and
positive memories of somebody or
something. Indeed, I think it's fair to say that hearing particular pieces of music particular songs. More than any other experience, can activate a whole
library of memory and emotions within us. And that's because of its ability to activate the parahippocampal regions of the brain, the cortex, the and the hippocampus itself. Again
several different brain areas all which communicate with one another and other
areas of the brain in order to encode our memories.
Our sense of self, our sense of others, our sense of history with those people and on, and
on now, rather than just make this, a catalog of different brain areas that music evokes, what I'm trying to do is spell out how music activating these different brain areas is creating different components of what we are familiar with as our experience of music. So frontal, cortex prediction, mesolimbic reward pathway novelty amygdala, a sense of emotion and arousal.
Parahippocampal, cortex and cortex, and hippocampus, our memories in particular, our emotional memories and our location Memories
associated with a particular piece of
music, right? Haven't you ever heard a song from? Let's say a summer camp that you went to when you were a kid. I'll send you remembering the smell of the grass is at that summer camp. You remembering how some of the kids were really great in on some of the kids were really obnoxious. You remembering some things that you did remember your counselors. I mean, there's just in a whole landscape of neural information, their life information, stored in your head,
That hearing a particular
song that was sung. When you were, what eight years old, 10 years old at Camp, just flips the lid on, and it comes geysering out remarkable.
Now, there are two other sets of brain circuits that are activated by
music that
deserves specific attention and deserve that
specific attention. Now in the context of discussing motivation and musics ability to motivate Us in particular ways
and those brain circuits are the basal ganglia, okay? So this is a set of
It's within the brain, they're associated with action, initiation, so-called go circuits and withholding
action so-called no, go circuits. But basically, the basal ganglia are involved in regulating movement
and the cerebellum. The cerebellum is sometimes referred to as the mini brain.
It looks like a little mini brain in the bottom back of the human brain and some species, the cerebellum is much larger relative to the rest of the brain. But in
humans is like this little piece in the back. That looks like a little mini brain, like you're carrying a second brain back there. That's why I call it mini brain. Sarah.
Tell them, it's involved in a lot of things, but one of its primary functions is to encode rhythmic timing and processing. And along with its
outputs to some deeper brain stem areas, things like the vestibular and cochlear nuclei will talk about this, the pair of brachial.
Nucleus again, you don't need to know these names. It, meaning the cerebellum along with the basal ganglia creates patterns of activity in our
brain, that Cascade down to particular circuits in our body. So, these are so-called Prix motor circuits and
motor circuits.
That generate the sense that we not only
can move but that we want to move and that we want to move in particular ways. So if
you internalize nothing from the last five minutes or so in which I've been
describing, how music impacts different neural circuits in the
brain, please do take away this important point which is that when we listen to music we think of that as an auditory experience. But now,
you know, that it's also an emotional
experience. And, and this is a very important and when we listen to music, it is
Programming a specific set of motor actions that are more likely
to occur,
put differently. When we listen to music. We are more likely to move our body and not just
dance, not just move our torso, our limbs or Limbs and torso together in concert with the music, but rather move our
body from its current
position to another position. And
this is one of the most important things to understand about music music, despite being an auditory stimulus coming in through our ears, evokes the
One of neural circuits in our brain that creates a sort of
inertia it creates a propensity for Action across our entire
body. So now that you understand that listening to
music activates lots of different brain circuits, of course, the circuits that respond to auditory stimuli so-called primary, auditory cortex as powerfully activated by listening to
music. But also circuits associate with novelty anticipation.
We talked about circuits in the brain associated with
memory but also circuits in the brain that are associated with generating movement and not just movement.
And that is in sync with or corresponds to the music that we're listening to but all forms of movement. But when we listen to music that has a relatively fast, Cadence, and we can actually Define what that
Cadence needs to be and we'll do that in a moment
when we do that. So called premotor circuitry the circuitry, that's going to initiate that kind of inertia or that pressure for movement, within the neural circuits that actually evoke
movement are all activated. So for those of you that like to listen to music while you exercise, you're familiar with the
That listening to great songs with great, beat
with particular lyrics, or that associate you with a particular time or place in your life can be very motivating. But there are data showing that when people listen to music, that's faster than about 140 to 150 beats per minute that it creates a heightened state of motivation in the body to move. And the way that it does that is, by way of Shifting, the balance between those go circuits and no go circuits of the basal ganglia, there's some other ways that it doesn't
As well. For instance, music can evoke the release of certain neurochemicals called the catecholamines. These include dopamine, but also norepinephrine and epinephrine from centers in the brain and body glands in the body. Like the adrenal gland, that shift the body toward a predisposition of being more likely to move. So if we want to distill all this out to a simple actionable, take away simply no. This listening to music relatively faster music predisposes you to be more motivated to move and that is independent is what I find. So cool. It's in
Dependent of whether not, you're familiar with the song, independent of whether or not the lyrics of the song are motivating lyrics, if they are, that's just going to layer on
top of the faster Cadence which is going to predispose you to
move. But what's remarkable is that just listening to that faster? Cadence Music is creating a neuronal resonance. If you will a pattern of neuronal firing within you, that is going to essentially take your and here I'm using metaphor is going to put your state of motivation from either back on your heels to being flat-footed or
I'd say you're mildly motivated. So I'll call that
flat-footed to being forward Center of mass. So
for any of you that are suffering from lack of motivation, particular to exercise, but believe it or not, also to do
cognitive work where you're going to be still and you're going to sit down, you're going to read or learn or practice, something listening to
music for 10 to 15 minutes, prior to doing that work, prior to doing that exercise is one of the best ways to get motivated in order to
engage in that worker, engage in that exercise. That's been demonstrated in the data very conclusively.
Variety of different types of music. And again there are multiple
mechanisms that converge to create that heightened state of motivation. Some of those mechanisms are neurochemical like the release of the so-called catecholamines, dopamine norepinephrine and
epinephrine. Some of them are strictly neural circuit based so activation of premotor circuitry and those are going to combine with neural
circuits that are going to narrow
your field of vision. This is a good thing
whenever you want to be motivated, they're going to literally constrict your field of vision
to more of a tunnel type of vision, as
opposed to more panoramic vision
and that I just
grabbed it as placing you into a forward Center of mass. I don't necessarily mean literally a forward Center of mass
and that's perhaps you're exercising like running leaning slightly forward. What I'm talking about
is using music as a way to deliberately shift, your state of mind and body from one that is a
motivated. Not motivated to more motivated
and it's a very simple protocol
extracted from the peer-reviewed literature, you simply find some
faster, music, hopefully, music that you like it would be even better if it was music to add lyrics
that you
Motivating and listening to that for 10 to 15 minutes, prior to engaging in, whatever that work
may be physical or cognitive on the
topic of cognitive work. One of the, most common questions I get is what sorts of sounds or music? Should I listen to, in order to increase my state of productivity motivation, concentration, etcetera, on previous podcasts related to focus and motivation. I touched on the use of so-called binaural beats which are different frequencies of Beats presented to one
Or the other ear, this is best accomplished with headphones. And there are a lot of different frequencies of binaural beats that you can get out there.
Want to get detailed about this. Binaural beats also involve the
differential between the frequency of Beats between the two presented to the two ears and then that difference, then is
heard by higher order
processing centers in the brain. In any event, we don't have to get too technical about it. We can simply say that. Yes, there are some decent peer-reviewed studies demonstrating that when people listen to
To
so-called 40 Hertz. It's particular frequency of sound 40, Hertz binaural beats that it can enhance concentration and focus. However, this is important. There's some recent studies that show that binaural beats. Sometimes can impede
concentration and focus and thereby can impede cognitive performance on various tasks.
However, the studies that show that binaural beats can be detrimental to performance. On various cognitive tasks did not use 40 Hertz, binaural beat specifically so we are still
Oh, awaiting more studies on binaural beats. Meanwhile, I'll just restate what I said before is that there is some evidence that listening to 40 Hertz. Binaural beats can enhance concentration and focus. There are also data showing that other frequencies of binaural beats might be detrimental to concentration
and cognitive performance. And
previously, I've also discussed studies showing that, for instance, if people listen to
White Noise in the background, you could do this on your computer or speakers in the room or headphones, or so-called Brown noise, which is essentially like white noise. All frequencies of sound or most frequent severe.
Found combined, but with particular frequencies of sounds that are accentuated and others are notched out as it's called so-called
Brown noise. Rather than understand all of this at a
technical level because I've covered that before in previous
podcast, suffice to say, if you go to YouTube and you just put in White
Noise background for cognitive Focus or brown noise background for cognitive Focus. You can just try those. If you like during a session in which you're trying to read or learn or do mathematics or music or any kind of cognitive work if you don't like them, if they don't work for you then.
You know, there's certainly no obligation to use
them likewise with 40 Hertz binaural beats and for binaural beats, you can also find those as
zero-cost YouTube scripts. There are number of zero cost apps that will allow you to listen to binaural beats. I've used the app
brainwave for some period of time. Now to be honest I've never done this strict control
experiment on myself of listening to the 40 Hertz. Binaural beats or not
listening to 40 Hertz binaural beats doing the equivalent
types of tasks. I can be fairly regimented with my work and behavior. But
Ben run, a detailed, controlled study on myself around this. Rather, if I want to heighten my level of focus or rule out distractions, what I will do is I will listen to either white noise or brown noise while I do work, or I will listen to 40. Hertz binaural beats while I do certain types of work or sometimes, frankly, I just work in silence. Other times I will listen to classical
music in the background. I'm a big fan of listening
to classical piano. I particularly like Glenn Gould, the
bach variations those are very pleasant to me but and this is
Really important in researching this
episode about music and
the Brain. What I discovered was in the controlled studies that have been carried out as to whether or not people perform better on cognitive tasks. That require a lot of focus, especially learning tasks that compared silence in the background to purely instrumental music in the background to music with lyrics, in the background to ones favorite
music with or without lyrics. The data
are very clear, it's very
Sure. That most people that means statistically on
average people perform best on cognitive tasks or tasks. That require a lot of focus to perform. Again. These are mental tasks, not physical tasks
when they are doing those
tasks in complete silence. So that was
somewhat surprising to me second best conditions are to do those tasks in the presence of instrumental music only. And in that case, there was a lot of variation as to whether or not people
preferred
Faster, Cadence Music. So 140 to 150 beats per minute or faster or slower music.
60 beats per minute or slower. I'll get back to those specific numbers later because they represent thresholds for inducing different types of emotional states, either happy or sad. But
meanwhile, it's very clear when people work in silence, they perform better than when they work with music, instrumentals in the background and they perform even less. Well, when they listen to music with
lyrics in the background, we'll talk about why that is the case.
In a moment and then
people perform especially poorly relative to their performance in silence or
any of the other conditions I mentioned, when they listen to their favorite music, while doing cognitive work. And that to me was a bit surprising, especially since I spent a lot
of my University years
studying while listening to my favorite music and different forms of listen to slower music than faster, music and go back and forth and then sometimes turn it off altogether and work in silence.
But the center of mass of the literature around this
issue of whether or not
To listen to music while one studies or tries to learn something.
The data are pretty clear the data show that it's best to study and learn either in
silence or with quiet, instrumentals in the
background. Now, I mentioned before that previous studies compared the effects of working in silence versus working with 40 Hertz, binaural beats or white noise or brown noise in the background. And in those studies, it was found that the white noise Brown noise and forty Hertz binaural beats background produced better.
Focus. I should say, heightened levels of focus and cognitive performance and learning then working in silence, but
not yet, seen a study that compared 40 Hertz binaural
beats. Brown, noise,white noise to music directly, perhaps, there's one out there. If there is, please send it to me, I'd be very curious to learn what the results of those are. Now that might seem like a lot of information, but the takeaways from it are very clear and it's always nice when things are clear, right?
It's clear that if we want to focus and learn that working in silence, or with
white noise, or brown noise or 40 Hertz, binaural beats is going to be preferable to working while listening to music. But if you're going to listen to music while you work that is, do
cognitive work, then you're going to want to listen to music, that is purely instrumental and ideally the music would be
somewhat faster than 140 to 150 beats per minute. Now, I
do not expect you to go and measure the frequency of beats per
In the music that you listen to and of course the beats per minute are going to change, right? That's an
average 140 to 150 beats per minute. I don't expect you to get super technical breakdown. The music that you're listening to that is not my goal nor is that really what this podcast is about. I think occasionally people think that you know the goal of a science and science based. Protocols podcast is to optimize everything. In fact, a not such a fan of the word optimize because optimal really depends on the situation. You happen to be. In the point here is simply this that
many people out there,
there, including myself, have been listening to some of our favorite music while working, but it's very clear as to why that degrades cognitive performance. We know, for instance, that when we read, we are creating a semantic narrative in our own head. And when we listen to music with lyrics, especially
music with lyrics, that we recognize
the semantic content of the song, the lyrics competes with our comprehension of the narrative within our head,
from the material that we're supposed to be learning. So now, it should be sort of obvious. Why?
Into your favorite music that includes lyrics. While trying to learn something else is going to impede learning. It's because you got multiple scripts multiple dialogues happening in your head and in fact this is an
opportunity for me to take a slight tangent but a relevant one which is to say a
lot of times people ask me how I can retain a lot of information. I confess I never use a teleprompter for podcasting. I do have a usually, a short stack of notes, you know, anywhere from one to six or seven pages of just bullet-pointed notes.
It's that queue
up things that I want to
talk about in that I have researched in the literature. And then, of course, I'll refer to papers from time to time.
But one of the things that's been very useful for me, which was taught to me
by the way by Professor, when I was in university to
read and retain information that I've read by memory, is that when I read, I'm trying to listen to the
words being spoken in my head, typically, my own voice, although sometimes in someone else's voice doesn't really matter, I find.
So when I'm reading, yes, it's a process of visual scanning but I'm also
Listening to the words with in my head as if they're being spoken. Some of you may be familiar with
this because you do it. Others. If you perhaps might find this a bit more foreign, I'd be curious to know what your process of reading and retaining that information is whether or not it includes an internal dialogue. But nonetheless it
should be very straightforward now to see why
if you're listening to words that you're reading on a page maybe even mumbling them you know a little bit, moving your lips a little bit, while you read which by the way, if you heard our episode on
Language and auditory processing with dr. Eddie Chang, who's chair of neurosurgery at? UCSF he talked about the fact that when we
read any material that the brain is generating promoter
activity, you know what promoter activity is
promoter activity, down
to the muscles of the throat, larynx and pharynx which would speak. Those words were
those signals to get above a certain level but that when we read typically the signals that are getting sent through those Prix motor circuits.
Just below the threshold of what would
have us actually speak. Those words
put simply when we read we are just shy of saying what we are reading. And so when I say that when
I read I'm listening to the words in my head that's what I'm referring to. So we're
starting to funnel in on some general principles
of music and how it impacts the brain and how that can be leveraged toward Better
Learning and better motivation both in the
context of physical and cognitive Endeavors,
okay? So if you want to get motivated, listening to music prior to doing something,
Thing that you're trying to motivate to
do is a good idea. That's what the data say. If
you're trying to learn something that's cognitive then requires reading focus and concentration silence. 40 Hertz binaural beats white noise or brown noise is probably best. And if you are going to listen to music, listening to
music that includes instrumentals, but not lyrics would be best
and listening to music that includes lyrics that you're very familiar
with would be the worst
condition. Now with that said,
There are nice studies. And by the way, I'm going to link to a number of reviews and primary studies in the show no captions that refer
back to this point
about to tell you which is that listening to music while trying to do cognitive tasks
can be detrimental toward learning that material turns out that
if you listen to music in the breaks between trying to learn certain material, you can actually heightened your level of
cognition and focus and your ability to
learn. So I find this particularly cool. It's not that music
is bad for.
Us and cognition and learning.
It's that listening to music, especially music that you're familiar with that includes lyrics at the same time
as trying to learn something else. Is not too good idea,
but listening to music with lyrics especially music with lyrics that you're familiar with that. You find, particularly uplifting and motivating is a cognitive and performance. Enhancer, when you go
back to doing that work in silence or perhaps while listening to White Noise, Brown noise or 40 Hertz, binaural beats.
So many things, the answer is not black and white. It's not that silence is better than music, or that music
is bad for learning. It turns
out that listening to music, even music with lyrics. You're very familiar with can be highly beneficial for learning, but that you want to listen to that music. In the breaks between these
bouts of cognitive work. Now, I've done previous podcast that talk about
how long about of cognitive work can or should be. Typically 90 minutes is going to be the upper limit before you take a break, some people can't work for 90 minutes.
Without a
Break by the way. Folks, when I say without a break I don't mean remaining in a deep trench of focus for 90 minutes. Nobody does that
actually, I suppose there are a few folks
that with neurochemical Assistance or just by way of training, can get themselves into a deep deep trench of focus for 90
minutes or more. But most people are going to focus on something and then have their attention
flit out of focus. And then they're going to have to draw their focus back to whatever it is, they're doing. That's not just typical. That's absolutely normal. And you shouldn't be concerned at all. If you try and focus for
And it's and find your attention jumping around two or three times during that attempt, but
if you're somebody who is going to do, say, a 90 minute or even 60 Minute or even 30 minute, bout of work, and you are going to get up for a moment and use the restroom or you're going to take a break in between bouts of
work. So maybe work for 30 minutes, take 10 minutes or 5 minutes off or 90 minutes. Take 30 minutes off, listening to music. In those
breaks. It seems can increase our ability to focus and to learn new material.
Ariel, once we return to
those bouts of cognitive Focus.
Now when it comes to physical
exertion, cardiovascular exercise, resistance training of any kind,
many people including myself like to listen to music, while
performing that physical exercise, or that physical exertion the data on whether or not music,
improve physical performance is a bit mixed. Certainly, you can find studies that show that it improves physical output. Other studies will say that it doesn't make a difference. Other studies.
I will say that it reduces
physical output. However, this is a very important,
however, the type of physical exercise is not
very well matched between those different studies.
So, this is something that I believe is going to be highly individual in accordance with the publisher data. I mix it up. There are times when I will head out for a run or I will do a resistance training session and I will listen to music. Usually an
album all the way through or a playlist, all the way through. And that's because I don't want to be going onto my phone very often. In fact, these days
Days. I use an older separate phone that doesn't have any text messaging or communication to the outside world, but it has music loaded into it or onto it. That allows me to just listen to music. So that I don't run the risk of getting distracted texting and doing things like that. I just want to focus on my physical exercise, I should say that phone also has audio books podcasts things, I've downloaded to it so it's a place where I can listen to things but not communicate with the outside world at least while exercising
some
You very well to listen to music, literally in between and
during their sets of resistance training throughout their entire runs. It's
going to be individual, you have
to figure out what's best for you. However,
one of the most interesting things about the scientific literature on this shows that if people listen to music, in particular music that tends to be faster,
more upbeat, typically, it's going to be in these studies rock and roll music as opposed to classical. Although there are some studies that have explored classical and other forms of music as it relates to exercise,
listening to that music.
In between bouts of exertion. So in the rest between sets of resistance training or periodically during say a run or about of cycling can indeed enhance performance in a way that at least by my read of the data exceeds that, which is observed when people just listen to music through out. In other words, if you find it, useful, to listen to music
before during, and after your workouts, great be my guest.
However, what the data say is that switching up between
Silence and listening to music. And in this case, it would be listening to music that you're very familiar
with and that can evoke a sense of motivation and desire to
action in you, for whatever reason, the music, the beat the memories that it draws you to Etc. Well then that's going to be useful. So, there really isn't one
protocol for how to get the most out of music for sake of physical exertion. But if you're interested in playing with some of these variables, as they've been examined with, in the peer-reviewed literature,
I find it interesting. And indeed, I found
It useful to, for instance, do a workout where I only
listen to music in between sets of resistance training
or to listen to music prior
to going out for a run. And then, oftentimes, when I do that, the song will or songs will be sort of on Loop in my head. Although I confess that a lot of times nowadays, I listen to podcasts while I run or while I hike and when I'm in the gym and I'm doing resistance training, I like to listen to music as opposed to content that requires that I really focus very heavily on that content such as a podcast. Such as a book
I'd like to take
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Crackers plans again, that's inside
tracker.com huberman to get 20% off. Now, I'd like to talk about the use of music to shift our mood and indeed to get us out of states of anxiety. This is a really interesting scientific literature with some very specific
actionable. Takeaways that I think everyone will find beneficial. I certainly did however I
want to point out that we don't need a scientific study to
illustrate for us. The way that music can shift our
mood and you already know why it is that listening
owing to a
sad song. Can sometimes make us feel sad, listening to happy. Music can make us feel happy.
It's because when we listen to music, there are some fundamental components of
that music.
Literally the mathematical structure of that music, including the frequency of
sounds, the
Cadence of those sounds as well as the lyrics. But even in the absence
of lyrics that
are activating brain circuits within us, such that the frequencies of sound that we're hearing are revoking firing of neurons.
In the brain of the same frequency. In other words, your brain becomes a bit of a piano playing the same song that you're hearing inside your head. Now, that's sort of a duh,
right? You hear music in your head even if you're listening to it from outside in the room. But
when you understand that neuron speak the language of electrochemical communication, what we're talking about here is particular music, evoking the release of neuro chemicals, in your brain at a particular
frequency. So just think about that.
For a
second, we know that neuro chemicals such as dopamine serotonin
some of the so called endogenous opioids, right? These aren't opioids that people, take this isn't related to the opioid crisis. We're talking about endogenous opioids that are released in response to music. Things like exercise, different types of social
interactions. Those and other chemicals are released according to the firing of specific neurons. And we know that when you listen to music at particular frequencies arranged in particular motifs,
Etc, that the neurons that release, those neurochemicals are firing at those same frequencies. In other words, that the sound is causing a sound dependent pharmacologic concert with, in your brain. So that fact should make it incredibly clear as to why certain music even in the absence of lyrics can evoke certain emotional states. Certain sound, frequencies are transformed into the neural language within your brain, that releases, certain neural chemicals that create
certain emotional states.
Of brain and body,
just a drill in how incredible that really is a little bit further. If you see a beautiful painting or the picture or
presence of somebody's face in real life, that evokes a particularly
strong positive or negative emotion. Imagine that. Of course, it
creates the release of certain neurochemicals or perhaps in the case of a negative face, suppresses the release of certain neurochemicals.
But we can't say that a particular
The frequency of color say Reds against oranges or the presence of a rainbow evokes, a sort of rainbow light Cascade of neurochemicals whereas with sound that's exactly what's happening. And this isn't to diminish the value of vision in terms of its ability to evoke emotional states within us. After all, I'm foremost a neuroscientist but under the umbrella of neuroscientist, I started off as and I
continue to be a vision neuroscientist studying the visual system and its ability to evoke emotional state.
Then us. But I have to acknowledge that the auditory
system. And in particular, the circuits in the brain that respond to music have a
remarkably potent ability to evoke these emotional states which is why
when surveys have been done asking people. Why they listen to music, the responses that have come back generally resemble, the following statistics, approximately 90% of people say they listen to music to relax,
approximately 82 percent of people self report that they listen to music in order to make
Themselves.
Happy
Approximately forty six point five percent of people say that they listen to music in order to process particular states of
emotion will get back to what process means in a moment.
But more often than not. When these Studies have a specific questions about what particular types of emotions, people are listening to, in order to
process their emotions better. It is the emotion of sadness,
and 32.5% of people report that they listen to music in order.
To increase their sense of concentration. And we already talked about the role of Music in concentration or its ability. In some cases to inhibit concentration a few minutes
ago. Now, you might be asking yourself, how can 90% of people listen to music for one thing, and 82% of people for another thing and so on and so
forth. We're well over a hundred percent of people. Ah,
well in this survey and other surveys like it
people have the option to give multiple reasons for listening to music because, of course, most people have multiple reasons for listening to music.
Now with that said, if we are to examine this one particular category, nearly half of people who report, listening to music on a regular basis, listen to music
in order to process their emotions
we can ask. What does the scientific literature tell us about how certain types of music evoke
certain types of emotions or help us process certain
emotions and we'll get back to what we mean by processes are moment. But a number of Studies have been done on this. There's a meta analyses that can
Verge on some general themes. What I refer to as the center of mass of data, right? When there are a
lot of studies in a given area the outcomes of some of those studies conflict with one another generally, in a good meta-analysis. What happens is different
studies are considered more powerful or less, powerful than others. Depending on how many subjects were involved. The different control conditions are lack of control conditions and so on and so forth. This is one of the great values of meta-analyses is that they don't treat all studies equally, they separate it out studies based on their level of
Rigor and thoroughness.
Well what we can say with confidence is that music that makes us quote unquote, happy or tends to shift, people state from
less happy too happy. Regardless of how they enter, the
experiment tends to be faster music, meaning music that on average contains 140 to 150 beats per minute
or faster.
Okay, and there's some other features to quote unquote, happy music, if you will that it tends to be in a major key.
If there are lyrics to that music that the lyrics tend to report things that are happy or get this
total
nonsense. In fact, when the type of lyrics in this Quantico, happy music. Sigh guess singing
about great events in life and positive things falling in love, being in love,
positive, memories, birth of children connection, to friends, Great Adventures,
Those lyrics or I should say that music containing those lyrics was no more effective in creating states of Happiness. Then was music of equivalent Cadence. So, again, music that was 140 to 150 beats per minute or faster, on
average. Well, even if the
lyrics were complete nonsense, even if the vocalizations weren't actual words, it's still evoke the same
increase in the level of happiness, in the subjects. Then when compared to the music.
Coherent lyrics around, happy events.
What this means is that the Cadence of music is no doubt, the critical variable, when one is trying to
shift one's mood from a state of whatever, could be depressed or sad to non-depressed non sad, or neutral to positive and so on, and so forth. But what this also explains is one hit wonders.
Rarely if ever, by the way
are one hit wonders, sad and depressing songs sometimes
Is almost always these one hit wonders are songs that are very effective in shifting people's mood from
not so happy to happier
or we could just say happier regardless of where they started out before, listening to the song, they feel better while. And after listening to the song and
indeed more often than not the lyrical content of those songs
is not particularly meaningful. It's not addressing a particularly meaningful state or issue is just what some people call a party song or something. That's just uplifting, not just to them too.
Too many other people
which actually brings up an interesting and future-looking point, which is that nowadays we are seeing the emergence of AI. Artificial Intelligence being used to generate new songs by capturing these. Well, established rules gleaned from Neuroscience of how music impacts the brain such that it in the future. Artificial intelligence is going to be generating hit
songs for us as opposed to having people generating hit songs. I know this evokes state of concern and fear in many
'Well, I think that this is a fear that needs to be matched with. I don't know, perhaps a cautious
optimism. I mean, who knows? Maybe there are patterns of music including lyrics that human beings in their current understanding of themselves and of Music have not yet been able to tap into and you know, as maybe a I will be generating the best music that we've
ever heard or perhaps music that can shift our state's from more depressed or sad to heightened levels of happiness. In ways that humans have
Not been able to accomplish. So I think it's important to balance any pessimism about
Ai and its ability to generate music based on these rules of
how music impacts the brain with an open
mindedness after all neuroscience neuroimaging and
neural recordings directly with electrodes in the brain.
While people are listening to music is teaching us
how the brain responds to that music and is giving us information that indeed human beings. But also computers
can use in order to generate stimuli music that can shift our
Brain into more
positive States. And if that's the case, wouldn't that be
wonderful? Another established feature of happy music is get this. Its ability to get people
to relax, the furrow of their brow and D to raise their eyebrows and to be a bit wide eyed and not just through autonomic arousal. But rather through activation of the muscles in the face, conversely we know that sad music and
here we can Define sad music. This is actually been done in the literature sad, music tends to be slower than average.
Slower than 60
beats per minutes or so, again, on average
and this again is independent of the lyrics that might not even be present in the song. Sad music tends to activate the corrugator
muscles of the forehead, which are the muscles that Furrow, the brow and that lead to a kind of serious. Look, it's in. It's
a folding in of the face as
opposed to a widening up of the eyes and a relaxation of the
brow now, given where we are in the course of this discussion,
Ian, that shouldn't be surprising. We already talked about how listening to particular, sounds evokes.
The release a particular
neurochemicals, but in a more direct fashion, listening to particular sounds activate, certain Prix motor and motor circuits within the brain and body. Not just the
desire to move one's torso, limbs or
both. Bob one's head or move ahead side to side, but also the micro structures of the face, which, because one of the main roles of the face is to communicate, emotion is going to cause either a relaxation.
Of the brown and it lifting of the eyebrows or a furrowing or a activation of the corrugator muscles of the eyebrow. And if that's not obvious,
and yet interesting enough, well get this, there seems to be a direct
relationship. I'm chuckling because this still just blows my mind because it's a total, duh, obvious when you hear it, but it's still just so cool.
That there's a direct relationship of the
frequency of the sound that you hear, either low pitched, or high-pitched
and the Cadence of that sound. And here, I realize I'm not using
Technical
music theory language but whether or not the that particular tone is played
over and over close in time or more spaced out in time and facial expressions and indeed. When we listen to Bass tones low frequency tones set apart from one another with some distance so that they're not overlapping we get the all too familiar.
Bass face.
So, what I'm referring to here is what neuroscientist would call a labeled line, literally, a circuit of neurons that goes from the periphery. In this case, our ears into our brain, through several different stations, and then Wicks out to impact. All sorts of things within US states of emotion states of motivation, our propensity to move, but also a labeled line circuit coming from hearing low frequency sounds play
Spaced apart from one another, that evokes a particular facial expression. And again this takes us back to the earlier statement that I made which is not an original statement. Frankly, there are people within the field of auditory processing and understanding how the brain processes music. In fact, one of the
world experts in this dr. Erich Jarvis. At the Rockefeller University was a guest on this podcast, where we talked about the relationship between music movement and singing. And the fact
that music movement in particular day,
Dance and singing likely preceded, the evolution
of modern spoken language.
Well, Erich Jarvis, and others have argued quite convincingly that these circuits that I'm calling labeled lines to particular, facial
expressions, and states of emotion
are the most fundamental components of communication and the ways that humans have communicated about their emotional state and literally induced that same emotional state, in other members of our
species, dating back, tens of
If not more years,
one of the fun things about researching, this episode on music in the brain, is that there are a lot of quality studies exploring. How music impacts the brain, neuroimaging neural recording
data from excellent
Laboratories as well as a lot of studies. In fact, a surprising number of studies exploring how particular types of music impacts mood States and fortunately that allowed me to glean some very specific recommendations as to the minimum amounts of say, happy music that you need to listen to in order to shift your mood into
to a happier State and indeed the numbers exist in the literature and it has been shown that the threshold for significantly shifting one's mood into a happier state by listening to the sorts of Music. We talked about
before that faster, Cadence Music, even with nonsense, lyrics alone could include other lyrics. Instead, is nine minutes, not 10, not eight, but nine, and I'm sort of joking. When I say not 10, not eight, but nine because of course, you could listen to music for 10 minutes or 15 minutes or longer. In fact, earlier we
talked about the benefits of doing that.
But when one examines the various studies, that looked at how long subjects need to listen to music in order to shift their mood into a happier State, the
threshold seems to be nine
minutes, so if you want to feel happier than you currently feel, it seems that listening to happy music for nine minutes or more
is going to be the effective
approach, okay? So, nine minutes or more to shift one state to happier. What
about to process somber or sad? Feelings, feelings of loss?
Well, this
Raises an even bigger question. And it's a question that I
also get very often. If you're noticing, I get a lot of questions
often in any event. One of the common
questions that I get is
when we are feeling sad or experiencing a loss,
you know, grieving the loss of a relationship by, you know, by death or decision or by somebody
moving away or the loss of a pet Etc. Is it better to go into that state. In other words to quote, unquote, feel one's feelings
or
Counter those feelings.
Now, historically, that's been a very difficult question for me to answer because, who am I to say whether or not you should feel your feelings or whether or not feeling those feelings, will take you down a trench of feeling
much worse or much better. In fact, there's an emerging literature exactly about that issue. That is whether or not, the catharsis model is really best catharsis being the expression and feeling of one's emotions as a way to extrude or get rid of those emotions or whether or not that simply drives us further. Down the trench of those emotions.
That's really something that we should address in a separate podcast episode and I will have experts from the field of Psychiatry and psychology to help us address that question directly but
since we're talking about music and the brain and the fact that music has a tremendous capacity to evoke emotional States, including sad States, what has been shown in the peer-reviewed literature? Is that when people who are feeling sad for whatever
reason,
Loss of relationship. Death, who knows, doesn't really matter why they're feeling sad after all. It's that they're feeling sad.
Listening to 13 minutes or more of sad music,
that music can contain
lyrics. They are familiar with or no lyrics regardless of whether or not contains lyrics. It's going to be on average 50 or 60 beats
per minute or less we established that already.
Listening to that for 13 minutes or more has been shown to be effective in, allowing people to quote, unquote, process, their somber, feelings, and to some extent to
move past their feelings of sadness.
So, those studies support the idea that when feeling sad, feeling, ones,
feelings, and perhaps even amplifying those feelings of Sadness. By listening to sad, music for 13 minutes or more can help people process those sad feelings.
And while that point might seem overly
Reductionist, actually think
it's a real value. I'm certainly familiar with feelings of
loss, feelings of grief,
and I've often struggled with
this question of, you know, gosh do I
try and just push it aside, or do I deal with those feelings?
Again, this is something that you really need to determine for yourself.
But what these studies show pretty conclusively is that when we're feeling sad
matching that sadness or amplifying, that Sadness by listening to sad music for 13 minutes or more can help us move through that state of sadness.
Des and one could argue this is more or less the use of catharsis of amplifying emotional expression or feeling in order to try and move that feeling out as a classic idea of originating in Freudian psychology, but probably before then, as
well. But in any event, I think these data support the idea that even when
feeling sad, perhaps, especially when feeling sad
amplifying or matching those feelings, through the use of sad
music for 13 minutes or more,
Again, you don't need to set a timer for 13 minutes, but giving yourself a period of time to just listen to. That music is one way that can help you move through that state of sadness
and then be able to lean
back into other areas of
life. So, we've talked about the role of Music in evoking or shifting states of happiness and sadness. There are also interesting data that support the use of music for shifting, one out of a state of heightened anxiety. And I find this especially interesting because my laboratory for a long time, has worked on behavioral interventions to
Use anxiety things like the physiological side, which if you're not familiar with, you can put physiological sigh in my last name into YouTube and there's a demonstration of that. It's a breathing technique of to inhale, through the nose and a
long. Exhale through the mouth 2 lungs, empty that at this point in time, we
understand to be the fastest and most effective way to reduce ones levels of anxiety in real time. So it's to inhale through the nose long to lungs empty, exhale, through the mouth. That's the physiological sigh
earlier we talked about
Out the fact that one of the main ways in which listening to music
shifts, heart rate and increases heart rate,
variability and thereby positively shifts,
a number of different Health metrics is through shifts in breathing. So I justify that briefing yet about the physiological side as within the general context of what we're talking about
today in any event.
There are data that have explored whether or not specific musical stimuli can be used to significantly reduce anxiety in particular one published out of the University of Pennsylvania and I will provide a link to the study in the show. No captions, which shows that people that listen to a particular
song that I'll describe in a
moment experience up to 65 percent, reductions in their anxiety. And that's a significant reduction in anxiety and I should point out that 65%.
Auction in anxiety. In this case was accomplished with just three minutes of listening to this one particular song and get this. That particular song was as effective in reducing anxiety as
one of the most commonly prescribed benzodiazepines.
So what is this? Magical anxiety reducing song. The title of the song is
weightless by Marconi Union.
I hadn't heard of the song prior to researching this episode, I did indeed. Look up the song on YouTube and listen
into the song, I will provide a link to the song in the show. No captions. I
confessed that it is a very relaxing song. I also confess that I was not experiencing anxiety when I
listened to the song but it
was successful in reducing my level of overall autonomic arousal. I found myself more relaxed etcetera. Now, of course, what I'm describing in terms of my own experience is not a peer-reviewed study. It's what I would call an Ikeda meaning. I'm just describing my experience. But
again, there are peer-reviewed studies.
Luring how this particular song shifts ones, autonomic State and I think this 3 minutes of
listening to this one song should at least
be Tried by anyone. That's trying to reduce their anxiety
Because unless you're listening to the song and some way that I'm not aware of like
excessively loud or something of that sort. I can't imagine how listening to the song. Would be detrimental in any way and if you are anything like the subjects in the study that they explored, it could very well be beneficial and help you reduce your anxiety. It's also something that you could keep
queued up in your phone or on any
Vice such that. If you think you may experience anxiety, you
just put your headphones in and listen to
it. You might be wondering whether or not Marconi. Unions weightless is only three minutes long. Well, I don't know the answer to that because when you go on YouTube, what you'll see is that clearly a number of people are benefiting from listening to the song to reduce their anxiety or at least that a number of people have listened to this song Because if you put Marconi Union weightless into the search function on YouTube, what you'll quickly discover is that the top video has get this 47.
In views, and it's
ten hours long. Now
across today's episode, it's been in the back of my mind. That some of you out there, perhaps our trained musicians,
that you grew up playing an instrument perhaps
sang in choir at school.
Perhaps you played multiple instruments,
perhaps you even know music theory.
Whereas others such as myself,
we're encouraged to play an instrument when we were younger. But then abandoned that instrument. In fact, I'll just tell you a brief story when I was a kid, every
Kid in school was required to pick an instrument, my parents for
whatever reason. Clearly they didn't ask me what I
want to do. They asked me to play the violin in school and I got the violin I started playing the violin. I took the Suzuki method lessons, this is where you don't learn to read music directly.
You there's a number assignment to the different notes and that's initially how you learn. I
was also supposed to listen to the songs while. I
slept this idea that some of the music and musical learning could be encoded
During sleep, an interesting topic because there's actually some emerging evidence for that now. But at the time,
as far as I know, there were no peer-reviewed studies but nonetheless, it was thought that this works and perhaps it
does. Well, I can tell you one thing, for sure, it did not work for
me because I have one photo and truly just one from a concert that I played. I must have been about eight or nine years old. And within
this photo, what you'll notice is there's a gallery of children all with violins all
Of whom's bows are up.
And my bow is down that in addition, to the fact that my
fly was open in the picture, and the fact that every time I played the violin, either by practice, or with the teacher present, when we would go to these once a week sessions with a individual teacher, people would cringe animals. Would cringe literally dogs would howl such that. My parents did not encourage me to continue playing. In fact, they and many others encouraged me to quit playing. So I quit playing.
Confess, I don't know how to play any instrument. I have attempted a few other instruments in my lifetime. Yes, I believe in neuroplasticity is a Hallmark feature of our brain. Our brain can learn things even as adults. But the point I'm trying to make here is that I am not of the category of kids that played an
instrument and understands music theory or how to read music. I simply don't and I realized that
those of you that are listening to this or watching this out, there are probably
in a mixed category of proficiency.
See all the way down to what I would consider
my own
relationship to music which is deficiency. Although, I greatly enjoy listening to music and I do have a pretty good ability to memorize lyrics in any event.
The reason I raise this is that there are now dozens, if not hundreds of quality peer-reviewed studies using a variety of technical approaches that show, that when children, especially children, younger than eight learn to play an instrument and even better learn to play,
Multiple instruments
regardless of whether or not they learn to read music that it leads to greatly enhanced connectivity within their brain that persists into adulthood and that it facilitates other
forms of neuroplasticity and learning which is
basically to say that my brain very likely does not include these
enhance circuits. Which circuits have
my referring to? Well there are a number of different circuits in the brain that have been shown to expand. When children, learn how to play an instrument as a
child
Eight or younger. And again, eight isn't a strict cut off
and I always have to highlight this forgive the tangent, but when we say 8 or younger, I don't
want people with nine year, old children or 10 year old kid or even 16 year old kid listening or even adult listening to think. Oh you know the window is shot for me because when one designs a study you have to have some thresholds who you include and who you don't include and some sometimes that leads to these kind of
artificial perceptions about where the cut-offs are. But
in any event, it's very clear
that if you
did learn an instrument when you were young,
Or ideally, even multiple instruments and
even better, would be to learn multiple instruments and how to sing along with instrumentals especially in an
improvised manner. Well,
your brain has expanded connectivity on average relative to children that did
not have that experience. Now, the good news is
that learning how to play an instrument or even thankfully for me listening to novel forms of music, music that you don't typically listen to.
For 30 to 60
minutes per day. And it doesn't have to be every day. In fact, it can even be just three days a week for 30 to 60 Minutes,
has been shown to expand brain connectivity in ways that of course, lends itself to better musical comprehension and even performance, but learning how to play a musical
instrument at any age, as well
as singing and singing, especially with others in a group has been shown to enhance learning and the acquisition of new skills separate from musical learning and singing.
In other words, it seems that learning how to play an instrument and singing are a gateway to neuroplasticity. And this is again supported by neuroimaging data. Some of the more striking of those data are that children that learn how to play one, two, three, instruments. When they were a kid or that sang in a choir, or a group or that, we're taught to sing solo for that matter. Show up to 30% greater connectivity within this
particular brain Network that links the two hemispheres of the brain. Now,
as soon as I say, two hemispheres,
Is of the brain. It starts drawing up a lot of ideas in people's heads, mainly drive from pop psychology that you know there are left-brained people and right brain people, I've touched on this before but I want to make this abundantly clear again. Now most of what you've heard about so-called
left-brained, people are right. Brained
people is complete and total
nonsense. It Smith.
There are some functions in the brain that are lateralized to the
left or the right hemisphere in particular prosity, they sort of
lilting and falling of speech and
Singing is highly lateralized in the brain. Other aspects of language can be lateralized in the brain but really if you hear that certain people are more emotional or certain people are more logical based on right brain left brain, stuff that stuff is
completely false. It's complete garbage. In fact it's not based in any real solid data.
So when I say that learning an instrument or learning how to sing young or even as an
adult is beneficial for increasing, the connectivity between the two
sides of the brain. What that increased connectivity between the two sides of the brain, which is by the way mediated
through a structure.
Called the corpus
callosum is not about enhancing ones, emotional
capacity or logical
capacity. It's really about increasing the capacity of all
brain circuits or at least the brain circuits that are connected up directly with the corpus
callosum, which includes many brain circuits for things like cognition
language, learning speech mathematics. A lot of people don't realize this but a lot of
musicians are
also especially Adept at mathematics and for you musicians, you're probably nodding of course, right? Because
Music is grounded in theory that has basis in math. And in physics, something that we will address in a future episode about harmonics
etcetera. When children are adults, learn how to play a musical instrument or several, or how
to sing and play musical instruments. That
increased connectivity in the corpus, callosum is essentially providing multiple highways of option, for
learning all sorts of things. So, it's something that I
highly encourage so much so that I intend to finally,
Finally learn how to play an instrument. I've got a particular instrument in mind that I wanted to learn how to play for a
very long time, but based on my prior experience, with trying to learn an instrument and
because I like to consider myself a considerate person,
I intend to do this more or less in
isolation from people and indeed from animals as
well. And for those of you that don't have the time or energy or desire to learn new forms of Music, you'll be
perhaps delighted to know
that just listening to novel forms of music. And
In particular, when you listen the novel forms of music and you pay attention to that music, not just letting it play in the background that too has been demonstrated to expand
the brain's capacity for neuroplasticity, its ability to modify itself and make it better at learning other sorts of things, both cognitive and physical.
So I highly encourage you to listen to the music. You love. I certainly
love to listen to the music that I Delight in and have for so many years.
But there's also strong scientific support to encourage listening to new forms of music that
Will you alike? But nonetheless, the mere foraging for and
listening to novel, forms of Music itself,
seems to activate brain
circuitry in a way that allows for Better Learning and comprehension of all sorts of
things. So, today, we've been talking about music in the brain and I confess, this is an enormous topic so much so that I had to discard with entire sets of data and discussion around, for instance, the mathematical
structure of music and how that relates to the mathematical structure.
Of
firing of neurons. We touched on this a little bit. However, in the context of certain frequencies of sounds that we hear creating certain frequencies of neuronal firing and activation in the brain. I mean,
just think about that. How amazing that is. It's
literally like the brain playing your neurons, like a piano. This is not what happens when you smell a particular odor, or taste a particular taste, or see a particular face or visual stimulus. Incredible things happen within those senses as well, but there is something, oh, so fundamental and incredible about me.
Sick in its ability to tap into our neural circuitry in our neural chemistry, in ways that shift our emotional states and our motivational States. So, we talked about ways that music can
be leveraged to shift, our emotional and motivational
States, again, not as a way to reduce music, to its reductionist parts. We're rather to help us gain understanding into how the brain responds to music and how we can leverage music of all kinds with and without lyrics, how we can balance the contrast between music and silence to increase
motivation and
So on and so
on, for those of you that are interested in the more formal structure of music and how it relates to brain function and vice
versa, as well as
for those of you that are interested in singing and songwriting and more along the lines of lyrical content and how singing and groups and how improvisation of singing and musical playing can impact brain function and plasticity, I promise you, there is going to be both
an expert guest coming on the podcast to discuss that as well
as a solo episode on those topics. Again, the topic
of music and the Brain being far too vast.
Cover in just one conversation
with that said, I hope that today's discussion allowed for you to think about music differently. Hopefully it will lead you to listen to music a bit differently. Perhaps even leverage music for different purposes in your life and above all to think about music and to enjoy music, either, listening to it, or playing it or both. Because as you now know, music
isn't just able to activate your brain, but rather your brain
contains a vast amounts of real estate that are literally there
to listen to music.
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Thank you. Once again for joining me for today's discussion about
music
And your brain and last but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.
