Notes and Neurons

How Music and the Human Brain Can Interact and Influence One Another By Cadalyn Burris

You watch the cellist’s fingers move along the fingerboard of the instrument. Their right hand gently holds a bow, bending flexibly, arm flowing along with the fingers, masking the strength behind the movement. Their left hand creates a beautiful vibrato, rotating with a quiet precision and bringing a subtle warmth to each carefully crafted note. The cellist’s head bows towards their instrument, eyes closed in concentration. You feel your eyes fill with unspilled tears of emotion. How, you ask, can music affect me so profoundly? Music is an experience that most people enjoy. In middle and high school, there are many students in band, orchestra, choir, or who are taking music lessons outside of school. Music is playing at all hours of the day on the radio, and there is always seasonal music to listen to. However, the secrets of hearing music are not always residing in the quality of headphones or the tone of a note, but in the human brain. First, someone may play music on their instrument, creating sound waves. These sound waves travel through the air to the ear canal, where they cause the eardrum to vibrate. This then causes tiny bones in the middle ear most commonly called the hammer, anvil, and stirrup to be displaced. This vibration is sent to the inner ear, or the cochlea, through the ossicles in the middle ear. The vibrations are then dissected by the cochlea. Spencer B. Smith, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin, as well as the director of the Texas Auditory Neuroscience Lab, says, “There is a place in the cochlea that best represents every single frequency in music… if you’ve opened up the top of a grand piano, and if you’ve seen all of the strings for each piano key, it’s very similar to the orientation of what’s going on in the cochlea.” According to Smith, there are certain parts of the spiral of the inner ear that are tuned to the different frequencies in sound, and these parts will vibrate. Electrical impulses are then sent to the brain conveying the information of which parts of the cochlea are vibrating. The brain receives the first wave of information within the first 50 milliseconds of a sound occurring. “The auditory system is one of our fastest senses,” Smith said, “and that’s because it has evolved really well to convert mechanical vibration energy into electrical impulses, and that’s a very fast way of relaying information.” After this information is delivered, the brain may recognize the type of instrument being played from the combination of different frequencies. The information may be relayed to other parts of the brain. Music is actually one of the few experiences that can activate all parts of the brain. “Our respiration rate, our blood pressure, our heart rate, our galvanic skin response, all of that is influenced by music, not only because of the features of music itself, not only because of music’s sound and tempo and contour…, but also because we form associations with music that we hear,” says Robert A. Duke, [insert credentials here]. If a song has emotional signif-

icance, areas of the brain that have to do with memory may be activated. Emotional parts of the brain can be affected by music as well. Music at a school pep rally will be uplifting to get the students excited, but music sung to help children sleep will be soft and slow. A masterpiece performed by an expert musician can even drive people to tears. And most people have a song that reminds them of their childhood, an event, or their friends. “[music] actually engages parts of the brain that are involved in social bonding, in emotion, and that’s probably why our

ancestors evolved to… engage in music is because it’s a very simple way of socially bonding people together and it forms a sense of community, and it’s all because all these other brain areas, in addition to the auditory system, are being activated,” Smith explained. When you think about it, music is a highly social experience. You go to a concert with your

“It’s an amazing thing that I can have a thought in my mind, and I can speak that thought, and... you hear what I’m saying, and I’m able to convey information from my brain to your brain through sound.”

- Spencer Smith

friends and jump up and down to the beat of the rhythm. You go to the movies with your family and are affected by the emotion the music brings to the story even if you don’t realize it. If you’re in an orchestra, band, or another musical group, a community is formed that can even transcend making music together. Professor Bob Duke, the Head of Music and Human Learning at The University of Texas at Austin, agrees. “I would always say that the greatest benefit [of learning music] is just the joy of being able to make music either alone or with other people… it’s something that, we’ve known for a long time, provides a kind of human connection to make music together with other people that a lot of other activities don’t provide. It’s really quite a remarkable thing.” Smith believes that the most important thing for everyone to know about how the brain functions is how malleable it is. “The nervous system in general is highly influenced by experience. That means that if you become an expert in something, if you become an expert musician, or even a musician who practices a lot you’re technically an expert. That has positive influences on how your brain processes sound,” Smith said. However, this also means that the opposite is also true. If one’s

A colorful brain full of music notes. Image courtesy of GDJ, modified by Cadalyn Burris brain is not exposed to sound, even temporarily, that part of the brain falls into disuse. There have been studies that the area of the brain that holds the visual system can expand into the parts of the brain where the auditory system is located in the brains of people who are deaf. Everything you do shapes your brain and its functions, whether you train your brain through playing music, walking your dog, or spending time on social media. Your experiences change your brain, your actions change your brain, and even your thoughts change your brain, either for the better or for the worse. This is why one must practice an instrument to become an ‘expert’ at it. “... when we repeat things over and over again, that signals our brain that this is something that it should keep and retain over time,” Duke said. The memories that form are strengthened over time. If one learns music at an age where the brain is rapidly developing, this knowledge can slightly change the brain structure. This is mainly observed in children, as

their brains are especially malleable. However, the brain is plastic throughout one’s life, and one can become an exceptional performer regardless of whether they started learning the cello as a child, the tuba as a teen, or the accordion as an adult. A good teacher can be extremely impactful when one is learning music. “... everyone who’s a thoughtful teacher recognizes how powerful potentially they are, in ‘turning somebody on’ or ‘turning somebody off’ to poetry or music making,” Duke said. A teacher who is aware of this can make a student feel good at their instrument or engage them in the wonders of music. “[students have] been listening to music, probably for a lot of their lives. And what music teachers can do is exploit all of that experience people have in their memories already, and say, ‘Okay, so how can I take all this good experience that people have, and help them apply that to now learning this… skill that’s related to their music making,” Duke explained. Although music can spark all kinds of connections in the brain, it will not solve all your problems or make you smarter. A common misconception people have is that studying music will make a child better at school. Research has shown that musicians had good performance in school before they started learning an instrument, and the good grades in other areas of study were not a result of learning an instrument. “The rewards that come from doing this [music] won’t necessarily make you smarter or make you a better person. It might make you happier because you have these goals that you shoot for, in learning to play and developing your skills and not only do you reach the goals occasionally, but the goals actually involve doing something that’s really potentially quite beautiful and expressive, which is a lovely thing to be able to do.”

The piano is one of the instruments commonly used in music therapy. But why, you might ask, do we need to know this? How can we use this knowledge to do something? Claire Kendrick, a music therapist at the Center for Music Therapy in Austin, works to help people with brain disorders - using music. Music is one of the only things human experience that can activate all the parts of the brain, which is how Kendrick and other music therapists can work to address some of the symptoms of their clients using different techniques. Since different people need something different from music therapy, different exercises are practiced with certain people. “...that’s why music therapy is effective is making it very personalized. So we can bring in different instruments, we can bring in different songs that are their favorite songs in order to personalize the experience,” Kendrick said. An example would be to interpret music and help people put what they feel and think of

the music into words. Kendrick might also ask a person to play an instrument such as maracas, drums, and xylophones. Most music therapists play the guitar, piano, and sing. Playing instruments can help with practicing precise body movements and spatial awareness. Although many people have not heard of music therapy, it is scientifically proven to be beneficial to patients. Kendrick detailed how a music therapist named Jane Stanley conducted research that proved that music had an incredible effect on newborns. “[Stanley] took infants that were having difficulties feeding, which is an important skill that they need in order to leave the hospital, and when the music

therapist would play a lullaby for the baby when it would start to drink milk, the baby would learn… ‘I get a reward when I’m drinking, and the reward stops when I stopped

“We know [music therapy is] effective, it’s enjoyable, and it’s something that can be used and adapted for basically everyone. It’s a really important part of healthcare.”

- Claire Kendrick

drinking’,” Kendrick said. In addition to this phenomenon, newborns who had been receiving music therapy were released from the NICU 2.5 days sooner than a newborn who hadn’t been, according to Kendrick. Music can normalize breathing as well. Music therapy has even helped people who sustained damage to the part of the brain that works with speech talk. Music can work wonders in places one couldn’t have dreamed were related. Kendrick says some of her favorite moments as a music therapist have been when she can see she’s helped someone. “When I was an undergrad student, I was working with a child with autism. And we were working on correct pronouns because he was getting ‘you’ and ‘I’ mixed up… and we had written a song about when you use ‘you’, when you use ‘I’, and ‘he’ and ‘she’, and in the session I couldn’t really pick up on whether he was internalizing what we were working on. And then his mom, I think maybe a month into him receiving services, told me that he’s started to use pronouns correctly at home. And then his mom, I think maybe a month into him receiving services, told me that he’s started to use pronouns correctly at home. And that was like a lightbulb moment for me because I was like, Oh my God, I’m actually doing something,” Kendrick exclaimed. It is so impactful to see that you’re making a difference, that you’re helping someone else and it’s positively influencing them. Even the smallest things, like saying ‘hello’ or ‘please’ can have an incredible impact. From understanding the brain to music therapy, it is important to understand how music can interact with the brain and how we can use this knowledge to the best of our abilities. After all, it’s amazing how a person can have an emotion in their mind and be able to convey that to the people around them through music. Maybe they can even change the listener’s worldview, or give them a temporary peace between the notes.