1 00:00:06,810 --> 00:00:11,530 Our panel today looks at the chill effect. 2 00:00:11,530 --> 00:00:15,940 We've all had it, that moment when you hear something in a piece of music, and shivers 3 00:00:15,940 --> 00:00:20,150 run down your spine or the little hairs on the back of your neck stand up. 4 00:00:20,150 --> 00:00:46,240 Mari's piece, Alt has a kind of ghostly quality, which is why she's chosen it for us today. 5 00:00:46,240 --> 00:01:11,450 Mari is obviously not the only person that will be on our little panel, our discussion 6 00:01:11,450 --> 00:01:12,450 today. 7 00:01:12,450 --> 00:01:19,010 Let me introduce you to the rest of the gang.Beginning with Psyche Loui, she is Assistant Professor 8 00:01:19,010 --> 00:01:24,979 currently at Wesleyan University, but about to start taking over in the Music and Creativity 9 00:01:24,979 --> 00:01:33,229 department at Northeastern University, please welcome Psyche Loui. 10 00:01:33,229 --> 00:01:38,719 And Professor of Psychology and Neural Science at NYU, David Poeppel. 11 00:01:38,719 --> 00:01:46,630 Assistant Professor of Psychology at SUNY, Purchase, Meagan Curtis. 12 00:01:46,630 --> 00:01:56,850 From the University of Connecticut, Professor of Physics and Psychology, Ed Large. 13 00:01:56,850 --> 00:02:02,530 Psyche you are also a violinist, so you would've known all the technical stuff that was going 14 00:02:02,530 --> 00:02:05,539 into Mari's piece. 15 00:02:05,539 --> 00:02:11,450 But, was it ghostly sounding, and if so, why? 16 00:02:11,450 --> 00:02:14,569 What would make a piece have that kind of character to it? 17 00:02:14,569 --> 00:02:20,599 I thought it was ghostly sounding, and I think to me it comes down to the fulfillment and 18 00:02:20,599 --> 00:02:22,120 violation of expectations. 19 00:02:22,120 --> 00:02:27,950 So, I think the piece had a lot of dissonance, had a lot of bow noise, and I think our brains 20 00:02:27,950 --> 00:02:34,790 by this age, we're primed to think about sounds as being consonant, especially in music. 21 00:02:34,790 --> 00:02:43,220 And so, when you add a little bit more noise to the bow, or you play closer to the bridge, 22 00:02:43,220 --> 00:02:50,400 that gives you that shivery feeling that is dissonance, and I think that that's what makes 23 00:02:50,400 --> 00:03:13,610 a piece feel kind of unexpected and eerie. 24 00:03:13,610 --> 00:03:18,849 And I think it's that interplay between the unexpected and then kina more consonant resolutions 25 00:03:18,849 --> 00:03:22,250 of sounds that makes us get the chills. 26 00:03:22,250 --> 00:03:28,800 Ed, you do a lot of studying of this vibration oscillation waveform, that sort of thing. 27 00:03:28,800 --> 00:03:29,800 Right. 28 00:03:29,800 --> 00:03:34,329 It can actually have the opposite effect of putting people off of kind of distancing them 29 00:03:34,329 --> 00:03:36,530 from what they're hearing, right? 30 00:03:36,530 --> 00:03:37,790 Sure, sure. 31 00:03:37,790 --> 00:03:42,750 One of things, obviously expectation is very important, but one of the things that happens 32 00:03:42,750 --> 00:03:48,849 when you listen to those kind of sounds is, or any sound, is that the brain stem, the 33 00:03:48,849 --> 00:03:56,439 early parts of the auditory system, literally are synchronizing with the sound on a cycle-by-cycle 34 00:03:56,439 --> 00:04:03,310 basis, and that has really ... It can make even a single sound, not even two sounds in 35 00:04:03,310 --> 00:04:09,360 a row, but those kind of harmonics that Mari was doing, very emotional, and really give 36 00:04:09,360 --> 00:04:13,340 you the chills just that one note even. 37 00:04:13,340 --> 00:04:19,550 But it will be a very individual response, what works for one person, will not work for 38 00:04:19,550 --> 00:04:20,550 another. 39 00:04:20,550 --> 00:04:27,449 When Meagan I know you really kind of have worked a lot with targeting how individuals 40 00:04:27,449 --> 00:04:31,560 respond to things like music, right? 41 00:04:31,560 --> 00:04:33,449 To a certain extent. 42 00:04:33,449 --> 00:04:38,510 There is a lot of individual variability with how people respond to certain songs. 43 00:04:38,510 --> 00:04:43,740 So a song that might create an intensely emotional experience for me, may not create any sort 44 00:04:43,740 --> 00:04:46,360 of experience for you. 45 00:04:46,360 --> 00:04:52,650 And is there a way of ... Has neuroscience gotten to the point where it can kind of co-defy 46 00:04:52,650 --> 00:04:59,639 what the parameters are that make it likely for one kind of music to affect a person that 47 00:04:59,639 --> 00:05:03,530 way, as opposed to another? 48 00:05:03,530 --> 00:05:11,860 Well, I think that there are some predictors that can tell you who is most likely to respond 49 00:05:11,860 --> 00:05:13,550 emotionally to a certain type of piece. 50 00:05:13,550 --> 00:05:18,470 So for instance, if you have a personal history with the piece, if it's well-known to you, 51 00:05:18,470 --> 00:05:22,110 if you're a musician, if you've played the piece before, that's going to create a deeper 52 00:05:22,110 --> 00:05:28,569 emotional response, and the context in which it occurs is going to influence how you respond 53 00:05:28,569 --> 00:05:30,300 to the music. 54 00:05:30,300 --> 00:05:38,039 So there are some things that do seem to have predictive value, however there's still tremendous 55 00:05:38,039 --> 00:05:40,350 variability across different individuals. 56 00:05:40,350 --> 00:05:41,350 Right. 57 00:05:41,350 --> 00:05:44,910 There's a lot there that we're gonna unpack during the course of this conversation. 58 00:05:44,910 --> 00:05:48,150 Things like context, expectation. 59 00:05:48,150 --> 00:05:57,150 David, it seems like maybe 25/30 years ago, music and neuroscience seemed like distinct 60 00:05:57,150 --> 00:06:04,140 fields, and then gradually in the wake of Oliver Sacks' work, neuroscience began to 61 00:06:04,140 --> 00:06:09,110 kinda look at music, and then really focus on music, and now it's like, obsessed with 62 00:06:09,110 --> 00:06:10,669 music. 63 00:06:10,669 --> 00:06:18,879 What has your experience been of this kind of progression of interest on the part of 64 00:06:18,879 --> 00:06:20,090 neuroscientists in this art. 65 00:06:20,090 --> 00:06:25,330 And first, we have to of course say it, neuroscience is obsessed with everything, 'cause neuroscience 66 00:06:25,330 --> 00:06:27,220 can explain everything. 67 00:06:27,220 --> 00:06:31,090 I have to say that as Professor of Neuroscience. 68 00:06:31,090 --> 00:06:38,970 But it's true that the one big change has been the availability of techniques to measure 69 00:06:38,970 --> 00:06:41,800 the human brain, that weren't available 25 years ago. 70 00:06:41,800 --> 00:06:48,560 In the last 25 years, we've kind of optimized and developed brain recording techniques from 71 00:06:48,560 --> 00:06:53,140 awake behaving humans, listening to music, listening to speech, that allow us to monitor 72 00:06:53,140 --> 00:06:58,460 what's going on and begin to come up with kind of more satisfying mechanistic answers. 73 00:06:58,460 --> 00:07:04,789 Some of us work on this, and of course it's often much more compelling and fun to study 74 00:07:04,789 --> 00:07:08,830 something like music than the usual stuff we do in the lab, which is you come to my 75 00:07:08,830 --> 00:07:14,460 lab, you sit in a machine and you hear beep, beep, beep, and then 90-minutes later you're 76 00:07:14,460 --> 00:07:17,150 still hearing beep. 77 00:07:17,150 --> 00:07:21,139 That is necessary, that's how we sort of build up the parts list of how a mind and brain 78 00:07:21,139 --> 00:07:25,289 are organized, but in the end, we're interested in compelling experiences, like music. 79 00:07:25,289 --> 00:07:27,440 Why do we find Mari's piece mesmerizing? 80 00:07:27,440 --> 00:07:31,240 Not because it's beep, beep, beep, because it's something other in our head that's going 81 00:07:31,240 --> 00:07:32,240 on. 82 00:07:32,240 --> 00:07:33,240 And that's what we're trying to figure out. 83 00:07:33,240 --> 00:07:42,250 So if you're able to take an FMRI for example, a functional MRI of a brain as it's in the 84 00:07:42,250 --> 00:07:48,940 act of listening to music, one the interesting things is music seems to affect the brain 85 00:07:48,940 --> 00:07:54,699 globally, there is no like one part of the brain as there is for speech. 86 00:07:54,699 --> 00:07:57,030 Music seems to be all over the place. 87 00:07:57,030 --> 00:07:59,970 Yeah, so let me disagree with you already. 88 00:07:59,970 --> 00:08:00,970 Okay. 89 00:08:00,970 --> 00:08:04,629 So the same is true for speech. 90 00:08:04,629 --> 00:08:07,050 Speech is just as complicated as music. 91 00:08:07,050 --> 00:08:10,159 Let's go right into the meat of this, right? 92 00:08:10,159 --> 00:08:13,409 You asked Psyche, why is it ghostly? 93 00:08:13,409 --> 00:08:19,449 Well, there is a huge individual differences which we're gonna talk about and Psyche has 94 00:08:19,449 --> 00:08:24,030 actually a very influential recent paper about the wiring diagram that is. 95 00:08:24,030 --> 00:08:30,250 When I listen to it, my individual, my response it was, it reminded me of animals. 96 00:08:30,250 --> 00:08:34,350 You probably had nothing like that in mind, your dog or some bird, but I thought this 97 00:08:34,350 --> 00:08:38,680 was a scene of many different animal sounds coming together in weird ways, and that was 98 00:08:38,680 --> 00:08:40,310 my interpretation of it. 99 00:08:40,310 --> 00:08:45,470 So in the privacy of my own mind, I'm entitled to interpret music any way I like. 100 00:08:45,470 --> 00:08:46,790 This is not the case for speech. 101 00:08:46,790 --> 00:08:54,010 In the case of speech, meaning is conveyed by putting things together, you pull out particular 102 00:08:54,010 --> 00:09:00,310 words, and then you put the words together to construct meaning, and that is much more 103 00:09:00,310 --> 00:09:02,510 directed in some sense, than it is in the musical case. 104 00:09:02,510 --> 00:09:08,630 So we have our own private interpretation much more so, and that's partly tremendous 105 00:09:08,630 --> 00:09:09,649 individual variability. 106 00:09:09,649 --> 00:09:14,940 So, if I say to you, man bites dog. 107 00:09:14,940 --> 00:09:19,750 All six of us will have the same interpretation of what that means, as will the rest of you, 108 00:09:19,750 --> 00:09:22,290 and if you don't come see me later. 109 00:09:22,290 --> 00:09:26,790 But if you hear, even a few bars of music, you will not. 110 00:09:26,790 --> 00:09:32,620 And therein lies a really big difference, and that big difference is carried by pretty 111 00:09:32,620 --> 00:09:35,960 complicated networks that are true for the speech case, and the music case. 112 00:09:35,960 --> 00:09:37,899 So it's a story. 113 00:09:37,899 --> 00:09:40,410 Well, I think yes and no, right? 114 00:09:40,410 --> 00:09:45,630 I think that it's a bit of a strong statement to think that if you have one piece of music 115 00:09:45,630 --> 00:09:47,760 that we don't all hear it the same way. 116 00:09:47,760 --> 00:09:52,360 I think we can all take different emotional interpretations from it, but I think part 117 00:09:52,360 --> 00:09:58,280 of the goal of composition in a way, is to align a composer's intention with the audiences 118 00:09:58,280 --> 00:09:59,280 attentions. 119 00:09:59,280 --> 00:10:03,620 Otherwise, if there's no alignment, and this is from Fred just down the street, if there's 120 00:10:03,620 --> 00:10:07,050 no alignment, you could say that a piece is kind of failing. 121 00:10:07,050 --> 00:10:09,029 And so, we have to find the common ground. 122 00:10:09,029 --> 00:10:14,149 Musicians have to find the common ground between what we're making and what the audience is 123 00:10:14,149 --> 00:10:19,100 hearing, and I think that comes down to like us having similarly wired brains to a certain 124 00:10:19,100 --> 00:10:22,110 extent, but of course there's lots of differences. 125 00:10:22,110 --> 00:10:26,810 I think that it's not so simple that you just can't take whatever you want out of music, 126 00:10:26,810 --> 00:10:29,160 I think that there are some commonalities. 127 00:10:29,160 --> 00:10:34,920 And coming from the other side, 'cause I'm on your other side. 128 00:10:34,920 --> 00:10:37,670 It's not as though language is that simple either. 129 00:10:37,670 --> 00:10:44,280 I mean, man bites dog is one thing, but a more complicated sentence, a more complicated 130 00:10:44,280 --> 00:10:48,380 discourse, people interpret in many different ways also. 131 00:10:48,380 --> 00:10:53,779 And that's one of the interesting things about language and music, is it's got this multifaceted 132 00:10:53,779 --> 00:10:56,410 kind of meaning that we can see. 133 00:10:56,410 --> 00:11:01,279 Well coming from the other side, the other-other side, as an interpreter, I do classical whatever, 134 00:11:01,279 --> 00:11:09,050 and if you're trained in the violin, you know that you have to practice the same thing over 135 00:11:09,050 --> 00:11:15,060 and over and over and over and over again, until you're technically, right? 136 00:11:15,060 --> 00:11:21,800 So how do you keep yourself fresh, and how do you present yourself emotionally coherent 137 00:11:21,800 --> 00:11:25,850 to the audience so that you're not just tracing your notes? 138 00:11:25,850 --> 00:11:28,269 What I do, personally this is like behind the- 139 00:11:28,269 --> 00:11:32,730 Tell us how the sausage is made, go ahead. 140 00:11:32,730 --> 00:11:36,640 Industrial secret that you're not supposed to know. 141 00:11:36,640 --> 00:11:38,870 No, just my own process. 142 00:11:38,870 --> 00:11:43,589 I use the Stanislavski, like a, actor's method act- 143 00:11:43,589 --> 00:11:44,589 Method acting. 144 00:11:44,589 --> 00:11:45,589 Yeah, method acting. 145 00:11:45,589 --> 00:11:52,290 I read a lot of Stanislavski when I was young, and I built my own emotional sub context, 146 00:11:52,290 --> 00:11:53,290 right? 147 00:11:53,290 --> 00:12:00,519 So I learned early on that if I practice and practice, I am just bored on stage, because 148 00:12:00,519 --> 00:12:01,779 I've done this before. 149 00:12:01,779 --> 00:12:04,780 And if I'm bored, you are bored, right? 150 00:12:04,780 --> 00:12:11,720 So for me not too bored, I have to build this sub context of emotions so that I can follow 151 00:12:11,720 --> 00:12:12,720 that thing. 152 00:12:12,720 --> 00:12:19,430 But then I have to choose a subtext maybe a day or two before, maybe a conversation 153 00:12:19,430 --> 00:12:28,149 I had, a book I read, a news I saw, some story that I kind of lay out emotionally, and then 154 00:12:28,149 --> 00:12:30,290 that way I can present that. 155 00:12:30,290 --> 00:12:36,500 But then you are not seeing that, you don't know the book I read, but emotional logic 156 00:12:36,500 --> 00:12:39,000 is there, so you can follow the logic. 157 00:12:39,000 --> 00:12:40,262 That's how I do it. 158 00:12:40,262 --> 00:12:46,650 I wanna come back to this idea that if you as a performer or as a composer, aren't feeling 159 00:12:46,650 --> 00:12:48,980 it, that the audience won't feel it. 160 00:12:48,980 --> 00:12:55,160 Because there was a study done some years ago, about job satisfaction, and orchestral 161 00:12:55,160 --> 00:13:02,610 musicians ranked slightly below sanitation workers. 162 00:13:02,610 --> 00:13:11,350 I'm sorry if this has come as a shock to you. 163 00:13:11,350 --> 00:13:16,889 I'm thinking about ... Oh my God. 164 00:13:16,889 --> 00:13:24,910 The fact that we can go to an orchestral concert, and have a really amazing experience, which 165 00:13:24,910 --> 00:13:35,050 is being played to us, apparently by 104 people who are bored out of their tiny minds, is 166 00:13:35,050 --> 00:13:36,860 a little weird. 167 00:13:36,860 --> 00:13:38,079 Yeah. 168 00:13:38,079 --> 00:13:47,110 And we've each picked a piece of music to share with you today that for each of us, 169 00:13:47,110 --> 00:13:53,360 gives us that shiver, that chill effect, and Psyche you picked an orchestral piece. 170 00:13:53,360 --> 00:14:01,490 Does it matter to you if you know that that orchestra has been sawing through this piece 171 00:14:01,490 --> 00:14:08,830 all week long, and is sick of the sound of it, and they're just doing what ... It's a 172 00:14:08,830 --> 00:14:09,830 job. 173 00:14:09,830 --> 00:14:10,830 Does that- 174 00:14:10,830 --> 00:14:11,830 Right. 175 00:14:11,830 --> 00:14:15,440 I actually almost chose to become an orchestral musician, and then didn't. 176 00:14:15,440 --> 00:14:19,529 And I think it is because of this feeling that if you're doing the same thing over and 177 00:14:19,529 --> 00:14:22,850 over again each day, it might get boring instead of being the thing that you love. 178 00:14:22,850 --> 00:14:27,660 But I don't think that's completely true, I think that my friends who choose to go into 179 00:14:27,660 --> 00:14:31,680 music professionally, they choose it not because they're not good at anything else it's just 180 00:14:31,680 --> 00:14:35,380 that they can't imagine dedicating their life to something else. 181 00:14:35,380 --> 00:14:40,980 Which I think, says something about why music is so important, because it's doing something 182 00:14:40,980 --> 00:14:46,110 to you emotionally, and it's triggering your reward system, it's hopefully good for your 183 00:14:46,110 --> 00:14:49,720 brain, there's lots of work on that as well. 184 00:14:49,720 --> 00:14:56,130 But I think at the end of the day, even when a bored orchestral musician is performing 185 00:14:56,130 --> 00:15:02,470 onstage in a concert, I think they do enter a different world that is professional and 186 00:15:02,470 --> 00:15:06,449 is together and is kind of in it for the greater good. 187 00:15:06,449 --> 00:15:13,839 I think that the other stuff is maybe like union, administration, all these other things 188 00:15:13,839 --> 00:15:17,510 that Well I think there's also a question of agency. 189 00:15:17,510 --> 00:15:21,620 Musicians like to make the music that they want to play, and when you're an orchestral 190 00:15:21,620 --> 00:15:26,040 musician, you play the music you're told to play, in the way that the conductor at his 191 00:15:26,040 --> 00:15:30,699 or her tempo, and you're waiting for your cue, et cetera. 192 00:15:30,699 --> 00:15:32,230 So there is a question of agency. 193 00:15:32,230 --> 00:15:37,279 I mean, with all due respect to orchestral, I know many of them, and they're deeply committed, 194 00:15:37,279 --> 00:15:43,459 but there is that, they're not getting that little pop that you're getting when you hear 195 00:15:43,459 --> 00:15:44,459 this piece. 196 00:15:44,459 --> 00:15:47,079 Explain what this piece does for you. 197 00:15:47,079 --> 00:15:54,029 So Rachmaninoff Second Piano Concerto, Second Movement, and I chose the beginning of it. 198 00:15:54,029 --> 00:16:13,990 It's really, let's just listen to that. 199 00:16:13,990 --> 00:16:19,900 So it's kind of a hushed tremulous opening there. 200 00:16:19,900 --> 00:16:25,410 Yeah, I think it's setting up a lot of action that's about to happen. 201 00:16:25,410 --> 00:16:29,721 And I think that feeling of anticipation, there's also a lot of chord changes, and we 202 00:16:29,721 --> 00:16:37,009 know from Joss Lebotta's work in '89/'91 that chord changes are more likely to elicit that 203 00:16:37,009 --> 00:16:41,880 feeling of like as if your heart's skipping a beat. 204 00:16:41,880 --> 00:16:47,350 Whereas melodic changes in certain ... There's music theoretical predictors for how you make 205 00:16:47,350 --> 00:16:51,449 these melodic changes, but those are more likely to make people cry. 206 00:16:51,449 --> 00:16:57,699 So you have different kinds of strong emotional responses that are triggered by different 207 00:16:57,699 --> 00:16:59,690 kind of compositional devices. 208 00:16:59,690 --> 00:17:05,620 Which is why I think that ... and I think that composers' kind of implicitly know about 209 00:17:05,620 --> 00:17:11,530 these types of devices, and that's why they're able to deploy these tools of music theory 210 00:17:11,530 --> 00:17:15,080 to make a rewarding experience for audience. 211 00:17:15,080 --> 00:17:22,820 When you get to things like rhythm, you're getting back, aren't you to the lizard brain, 212 00:17:22,820 --> 00:17:34,400 the brainstem and the fact that we learn early on to entrain to a beat, so it sort of comes 213 00:17:34,400 --> 00:17:39,600 back to what I was saying before about music affecting different parts of the brain on 214 00:17:39,600 --> 00:17:41,170 a physical level. 215 00:17:41,170 --> 00:17:42,170 Right. 216 00:17:42,170 --> 00:17:47,940 That part Ed, of the brain is being reached as well as the sort of prefrontal- 217 00:17:47,940 --> 00:17:53,480 It's not just the brain stem for rhythm, its auditory cortex, it's motor cortex, it's the 218 00:17:53,480 --> 00:17:59,320 basal ganglia, and these parts of the brain have intrinsic rhythms, and there's a lot 219 00:17:59,320 --> 00:18:00,910 we don't know about the brain. 220 00:18:00,910 --> 00:18:07,200 But one of the things we do know, is that it communicates within itself via rhythms, 221 00:18:07,200 --> 00:18:10,360 and different kinds of oscillations that are going on. 222 00:18:10,360 --> 00:18:15,430 And one of the most, I think amazing discoveries in the past 20 years is that when we listen 223 00:18:15,430 --> 00:18:20,740 to musical rhythm, our brains synchronize those intrinsic rhythms to the rhythms of 224 00:18:20,740 --> 00:18:21,740 music. 225 00:18:21,740 --> 00:18:24,660 That's the process known as entrainment. 226 00:18:24,660 --> 00:18:26,100 Entrainment, yeah. 227 00:18:26,100 --> 00:18:30,200 Does your musical example give us a sense of that? 228 00:18:30,200 --> 00:18:34,110 Yeah, so I picked on that, yeah would exactly show that off. 229 00:18:34,110 --> 00:18:37,970 It happens to be, so one of the things that happens when we listen to rhythmic music, 230 00:18:37,970 --> 00:18:42,990 it happens to everybody, is you'll find yourself tapping your foot or bobbing your head. 231 00:18:42,990 --> 00:18:48,970 This and that feature of music that makes you want to move has been termed groove by 232 00:18:48,970 --> 00:18:53,540 one of our colleagues, Peter [Ginotta 00:21:50], and he did a large study of all different 233 00:18:53,540 --> 00:18:58,730 kinds of older music and newer music, in an undergraduate's rate the groove, and this 234 00:18:58,730 --> 00:19:03,520 piece that I chose was the one that they consistently chose as number one. 235 00:19:03,520 --> 00:19:08,550 And I'd do this experiment in my class every year, my undergraduates consistently choose 236 00:19:08,550 --> 00:19:11,410 it as number one, even those it's from the seventies. 237 00:19:11,410 --> 00:19:15,520 It's Superstition by Stevie Wonder. 238 00:19:15,520 --> 00:19:22,630 I see you. 239 00:19:22,630 --> 00:19:36,840 It's impossible not to move, right? 240 00:19:36,840 --> 00:19:38,720 When the clavinet comes in- 241 00:19:38,720 --> 00:19:39,720 Yeah. 242 00:19:39,720 --> 00:19:43,320 You know, and adds its layer to the groove that's already been established. 243 00:19:43,320 --> 00:19:47,480 And it's just like, then the brain is suddenly like, what just happened? 244 00:19:47,480 --> 00:19:49,640 Yeah, right right, right right. 245 00:19:49,640 --> 00:19:56,210 What would that look like David on, if you would've hooked one of Ed's undergrads up 246 00:19:56,210 --> 00:19:59,150 to an FMRI, while that was happening? 247 00:19:59,150 --> 00:20:00,150 Any idea? 248 00:20:00,150 --> 00:20:03,290 We can take any of you and hook you up. 249 00:20:03,290 --> 00:20:09,100 Not so much an FMRI, FMRI is a wonderful camera, it's a camera that takes pictures with very 250 00:20:09,100 --> 00:20:14,540 high spatial resolution, but to capture this kind of thing you need a machine that actually 251 00:20:14,540 --> 00:20:17,910 has a high temper resolution, so you can follow their rhythm. 252 00:20:17,910 --> 00:20:19,520 So FMRI's not so great. 253 00:20:19,520 --> 00:20:26,010 You want something like EEG, which many of us use, or its big cousin magnetoencephalography, 254 00:20:26,010 --> 00:20:28,320 that's a giant recorder of brain activity. 255 00:20:28,320 --> 00:20:33,580 And what you see, and what we can measure is how different parts of the brain entrain. 256 00:20:33,580 --> 00:20:40,060 So the brain is hijacked by rhythmicity, you can't stop yourself, and you see the brain 257 00:20:40,060 --> 00:20:46,760 activity, the waves of the brain surfing on the waves of the sound, and it's sort of inescapable. 258 00:20:46,760 --> 00:20:51,680 So the sound can be kind of conceptualized as a series of waves that we can analyze in 259 00:20:51,680 --> 00:20:56,720 all kinds of ways, and the brain activity literally surfs on top of that, whether it 260 00:20:56,720 --> 00:20:57,770 wants to or not. 261 00:20:57,770 --> 00:21:00,110 So you're actually seeing movement, motions- 262 00:21:00,110 --> 00:21:03,850 Well you see, that's how we visual it. 263 00:21:03,850 --> 00:21:08,530 So Ed mentioned that the rhythmic brain activity in different areas, or we call them neural 264 00:21:08,530 --> 00:21:12,460 oscillations, and you can imagine that is the brain breathing at different rates. 265 00:21:12,460 --> 00:21:13,460 Yeah. 266 00:21:13,460 --> 00:21:14,460 Right? 267 00:21:14,460 --> 00:21:17,690 So, at the level of single cells or local networks or larger networks, the brain is 268 00:21:17,690 --> 00:21:23,260 breathing at faster rates and slower rates, it has to do with biological factoids that 269 00:21:23,260 --> 00:21:27,040 we don't have to unpack here for fear of losing your audience. 270 00:21:27,040 --> 00:21:33,450 But these are sort of optimally suited to grab onto the rhythmicity to the piece, and 271 00:21:33,450 --> 00:21:37,450 when you're listening to Superstition, different parts from the periphery to the central part 272 00:21:37,450 --> 00:21:42,720 of the brain, literally are just locking on or entraining to this, and so you can't stop 273 00:21:42,720 --> 00:21:43,720 yourself. 274 00:21:43,720 --> 00:21:47,410 How much of this Meagan, do you think is cultural? 275 00:21:47,410 --> 00:21:55,730 Would an Australian Aborigine in the Outback be as quick to entrain to the groove of a 276 00:21:55,730 --> 00:22:01,550 Stevie Wonder as anybody who grew up with Western pop music? 277 00:22:01,550 --> 00:22:03,220 Well, perhaps. 278 00:22:03,220 --> 00:22:07,350 There is some evidence that the emotions that are perceived in music, are perceived to a 279 00:22:07,350 --> 00:22:09,870 certain extent at a universal level. 280 00:22:09,870 --> 00:22:15,120 So, if you are an individual from a particular culture, you're going to be better at identifying 281 00:22:15,120 --> 00:22:19,930 emotion in music from your culture, than you would for other cultures that have music that 282 00:22:19,930 --> 00:22:21,330 you're less familiar with. 283 00:22:21,330 --> 00:22:27,220 However, you'd still identify the emotion above chance, and what that tells us is that 284 00:22:27,220 --> 00:22:32,050 there are some universal features that are used to detect emotion in music. 285 00:22:32,050 --> 00:22:37,650 When we think about emotional responses to music, it's actually helpful to distinguish 286 00:22:37,650 --> 00:22:43,180 between the effective response that you have, and what is being communicated by the music. 287 00:22:43,180 --> 00:22:50,040 And, within a given culture, there are these codes that exist, that tell the listener that 288 00:22:50,040 --> 00:22:55,770 this is a sad song, or this is a happy song, or this song is going to induce fear. 289 00:22:55,770 --> 00:23:00,740 And those codes are fairly well established and agreed upon by listeners within a culture. 290 00:23:00,740 --> 00:23:06,640 So one of the interesting things that you'll see is that listeners will very quickly identify 291 00:23:06,640 --> 00:23:11,720 an emotion that's communicated by the music, they could do so after hearing only a quarter 292 00:23:11,720 --> 00:23:17,700 of a second of a song, and the level of agreement between listeners is actually really high 293 00:23:17,700 --> 00:23:19,810 particularly within cultures. 294 00:23:19,810 --> 00:23:25,420 Now, how that translates to your emotional experience, the emotions that you feel in 295 00:23:25,420 --> 00:23:28,380 response to the song, that's a different question. 296 00:23:28,380 --> 00:23:32,450 So you have what's being communicated by the music, and then you have the factors that 297 00:23:32,450 --> 00:23:35,360 lead to you actually experiencing an emotion. 298 00:23:35,360 --> 00:23:39,171 And a field really makes a distinction between the two. 299 00:23:39,171 --> 00:23:45,650 You sound like you're probably familiar with the work of Thomas Fritz among the Mafa people. 300 00:23:45,650 --> 00:23:53,590 Where he ... the Mafa live in the highlands of Cameroon and had minimal contact with the 301 00:23:53,590 --> 00:23:55,490 West and Western music. 302 00:23:55,490 --> 00:24:02,261 And he went there with a series of pieces of music had a happy face, a sad face, and 303 00:24:02,261 --> 00:24:09,650 a scared face, and consistently, the Mafa were able to, hearing Western music for the 304 00:24:09,650 --> 00:24:14,620 first time, or keyboard music for the first time that he had brought to them, were consistently 305 00:24:14,620 --> 00:24:17,690 able to identify correctly the emotion. 306 00:24:17,690 --> 00:24:22,890 And then even more unusually he brought some Mafa music back to Germany, and the people 307 00:24:22,890 --> 00:24:30,210 there were able to identify correctly the emotions that music was carrying. 308 00:24:30,210 --> 00:24:35,090 I wonder for you Mari, did you grow up with traditional Japanese music as well as Western 309 00:24:35,090 --> 00:24:36,090 Yeah. 310 00:24:36,090 --> 00:24:41,250 When I grow up in Japan, I was telling your producer that there's a song, children's song, 311 00:24:41,250 --> 00:24:50,950 it's a very innocent about bubbles. 312 00:24:50,950 --> 00:24:53,310 Right? 313 00:24:53,310 --> 00:24:59,390 It's like a happy song. 314 00:24:59,390 --> 00:25:00,390 Yeah. 315 00:25:00,390 --> 00:25:07,030 It's a song about little bubbles, you're blowing bubbles, and bubbles fly to the roof. 316 00:25:07,030 --> 00:25:15,650 Oh it hit the ceiling and he disappears, oh we don't blow, let the bubbles fly. 317 00:25:15,650 --> 00:25:18,740 And it's just an innocent song. 318 00:25:18,740 --> 00:25:24,960 And then it turned out the composer's daughter died, so the lyrics are about the daughter 319 00:25:24,960 --> 00:25:29,440 who died, he said don't kill my daughter. 320 00:25:29,440 --> 00:25:33,420 After I knew that, I cannot listen to it the same way, right? 321 00:25:33,420 --> 00:25:34,420 Yeah. 322 00:25:34,420 --> 00:25:40,620 So it's very like, I grew up singing that song, but now I can't. 323 00:25:40,620 --> 00:25:42,160 I relate in a different way. 324 00:25:42,160 --> 00:25:49,210 Okay, so this gets to an interesting question, which is, let's say just for sake of argument, 325 00:25:49,210 --> 00:25:54,220 that and I know this isn't true, but let's just say, everybody who grew up on Western 326 00:25:54,220 --> 00:25:59,410 pop music, hearing the opening of Superstition, is going to get that little pop of dopamine 327 00:25:59,410 --> 00:26:00,410 or whatever. 328 00:26:00,410 --> 00:26:05,640 That little hit, that little shiver down the spine, when that keyboard comes in. 329 00:26:05,640 --> 00:26:12,740 Would that happen when that listener is two or three, or does that listener have to have 330 00:26:12,740 --> 00:26:18,900 some experience to know ... I mean at what point does your own cultural and individual 331 00:26:18,900 --> 00:26:25,000 experience completely alter or color your response to music? 332 00:26:25,000 --> 00:26:31,340 So it's interesting, and a lot of people make this mistake, they think, well you know, I 333 00:26:31,340 --> 00:26:35,690 sit down and listen to music, I start tapping my foot immediately, therefore it's innate, 334 00:26:35,690 --> 00:26:38,270 it's inborn somehow. 335 00:26:38,270 --> 00:26:45,010 But in fact, there is a long trajectory to the development of rhythm perception and rhythmic 336 00:26:45,010 --> 00:26:46,610 interaction with music. 337 00:26:46,610 --> 00:26:52,240 So, turns out infants, if you test infants the day after they're born, you play them 338 00:26:52,240 --> 00:26:57,240 different kinds of sounds, you play them speech, you play them music, they'll move more to 339 00:26:57,240 --> 00:27:02,060 music, but they won't synchronize, they can't synchronize. 340 00:27:02,060 --> 00:27:10,800 It turns out that if you play them rhythms from the Western culture, and Balkan cultures 341 00:27:10,800 --> 00:27:15,000 like Bulgaria, they can tell the difference between those rhythms when they're six months 342 00:27:15,000 --> 00:27:19,410 old, but by the time they're 12 months old, they undergo perceptual narrowing, and now 343 00:27:19,410 --> 00:27:20,820 they can't make those distinctions. 344 00:27:20,820 --> 00:27:26,370 Similarly, to speech or to faces. 345 00:27:26,370 --> 00:27:29,060 Kids that are two and a half, three and a half, and four and a half years old still 346 00:27:29,060 --> 00:27:31,940 can't synchronize very well. 347 00:27:31,940 --> 00:27:35,840 But they synchronize better if there's a person in the room to synchronize with. 348 00:27:35,840 --> 00:27:42,540 And it's, they're six or seven years old before most kids can really dance in synchrony with 349 00:27:42,540 --> 00:27:43,540 music. 350 00:27:43,540 --> 00:27:44,900 There're exceptions, right? 351 00:27:44,900 --> 00:27:46,080 Right, right. 352 00:27:46,080 --> 00:27:47,840 Justin Bieber being one, right? 353 00:27:47,840 --> 00:27:49,450 You've seen the movies of him playing- 354 00:27:49,450 --> 00:27:52,100 You had to go there, didn't you Ed? 355 00:27:52,100 --> 00:27:53,100 Yeah I had to. 356 00:27:53,100 --> 00:27:56,740 But there're sort of rhythmic geniuses out there. 357 00:27:56,740 --> 00:28:01,260 But most kids, they're six or seven before they can really synchronize with music. 358 00:28:01,260 --> 00:28:06,360 But, even to come back to what David, you were saying about Mari's piece, Alt, that 359 00:28:06,360 --> 00:28:13,360 you heard something in it that she probably hadn't intended, but three or four year old 360 00:28:13,360 --> 00:28:19,830 David Poeppel might not have known what to make of that. 361 00:28:19,830 --> 00:28:22,780 You're bringing a lifetime of auditory experience. 362 00:28:22,780 --> 00:28:30,010 Of course you bring one of the delicious parts of human experiences that we have a hard disc 363 00:28:30,010 --> 00:28:32,830 of life in our head, that colors everything. 364 00:28:32,830 --> 00:28:39,130 So what we bring to every experience, whether it's music, the visual arts, dance, theater, 365 00:28:39,130 --> 00:28:44,470 what the art historian Hans Gombrich called The Beholder's Share, it's I think a beautiful 366 00:28:44,470 --> 00:28:45,470 phrase. 367 00:28:45,470 --> 00:28:50,990 And so for me, the Beholder's Share to to you piece was finding something different. 368 00:28:50,990 --> 00:28:57,020 I don't wanna skew this discussion too much towards meaning, but I will anyway. 369 00:28:57,020 --> 00:29:01,650 Because a second example that just came up, was the one you gave with the Japanese children's 370 00:29:01,650 --> 00:29:07,360 song, which you hear it for the first time and think, oh that has a cheerful thing. 371 00:29:07,360 --> 00:29:11,310 The moment you tell the story, it colors it in a completely different way. 372 00:29:11,310 --> 00:29:18,140 So now, I too, cannot hear this, 'cause it's kind of, oh this is this joyful rah, rah the 373 00:29:18,140 --> 00:29:21,310 balloons are flying up or blowing bubbles. 374 00:29:21,310 --> 00:29:27,430 Knowledge is a dangerous thing, in knowledge your preconceived, the priors you bring with 375 00:29:27,430 --> 00:29:32,660 you to the perceptual experience color your interpretation of that. 376 00:29:32,660 --> 00:29:37,400 That invariably leads to individual differences because we all have slightly different things 377 00:29:37,400 --> 00:29:38,860 on our hard disc. 378 00:29:38,860 --> 00:29:47,700 And your hard disc, includes a little area devoted to the music of Tom Waits, which … 379 00:29:47,700 --> 00:29:50,730 Surprisingly big area. 380 00:29:50,730 --> 00:30:00,320 So I am to the dismay of my wife and sons who are all musicians incidentally, I am a 381 00:30:00,320 --> 00:30:05,010 deep fan of Tom Waits, and I selected a song for the particular reason I think it makes 382 00:30:05,010 --> 00:30:15,890 a few interesting points, called Kentucky Avenue, which is about childhood 383 00:30:15,890 --> 00:30:31,900 and pairs well with your- 384 00:30:31,900 --> 00:30:35,900 [music] 385 00:30:35,900 --> 00:30:37,780 So this one works for me every time. 386 00:30:37,780 --> 00:30:40,300 Okay, why did I? 387 00:30:40,300 --> 00:30:43,280 I selected this simply because I like it. 388 00:30:43,280 --> 00:30:47,090 But it makes a couple of points that I think are germane to our discussion. 389 00:30:47,090 --> 00:30:50,040 One is the, so this is about childhood right? 390 00:30:50,040 --> 00:30:56,160 This is a song about all the weird stuff that happens when you're a kid, and the compelling 391 00:30:56,160 --> 00:30:57,390 effect it has on your head. 392 00:30:57,390 --> 00:31:02,410 So the stuff, the first time you heard certain things, or you fell in love, or you kissed 393 00:31:02,410 --> 00:31:05,960 for the first time, or you had some awful experience with a parent, anything. 394 00:31:05,960 --> 00:31:11,140 Stuff in your childhood has a particularly compelling grip on things. 395 00:31:11,140 --> 00:31:17,230 That's one point, so our experiences early on, really color stuff later very profoundly. 396 00:31:17,230 --> 00:31:21,660 The second point I think is, which is interesting, and I think it's easy to overlook, although 397 00:31:21,660 --> 00:31:27,710 we all have this experience, is that material that's putatively sad, which this song is, 398 00:31:27,710 --> 00:31:30,380 can give you a positive aesthetic experience, right? 399 00:31:30,380 --> 00:31:35,350 So sad things are supposed to be sad, and in real life, sad things are sad, we don't 400 00:31:35,350 --> 00:31:37,940 seek bad experiences, we seek positive experiences. 401 00:31:37,940 --> 00:31:45,030 But in the arts, one of the fascinating things is that a negatively colored emotional things, 402 00:31:45,030 --> 00:31:50,030 can be experienced as wonderful, and aesthetically engaging and moving, and that's one of the 403 00:31:50,030 --> 00:31:54,470 most exciting things about the arts, and the music really brings it out in this magnificent 404 00:31:54,470 --> 00:31:55,470 way. 405 00:31:55,470 --> 00:31:56,470 Yeah. 406 00:31:56,470 --> 00:32:01,160 Meagan, you've done a lot of work with this sort of, the behavioral kind of response is. 407 00:32:01,160 --> 00:32:04,570 What is it about the sad song that we keep coming back to? 408 00:32:04,570 --> 00:32:09,280 Well, it might be that it's one of the safe ways that we can experience this emotion, 409 00:32:09,280 --> 00:32:14,170 without having any sort of personal consequences. 410 00:32:14,170 --> 00:32:19,910 When you have sadness that's evoked through traditional ecological means, it's because 411 00:32:19,910 --> 00:32:23,620 you've experienced a personal loss, no one wants that. 412 00:32:23,620 --> 00:32:28,010 But music, and art in general, gives us the chance to explore these emotions that we tend 413 00:32:28,010 --> 00:32:32,110 to avoid, because they have no consequences in this context. 414 00:32:32,110 --> 00:32:36,550 So we can go to the theater and enjoy being really frightened, because we know that we're 415 00:32:36,550 --> 00:32:41,070 not in danger, and music may be doing the same type of thing, where it gives us the 416 00:32:41,070 --> 00:32:46,570 chance to explore negative emotions, in a way that have no consequences for us. 417 00:32:46,570 --> 00:32:52,010 Yeah, and I think that it's really about experiencing a certain beautiful thing together, right? 418 00:32:52,010 --> 00:32:53,480 The fact we're in it together. 419 00:32:53,480 --> 00:33:04,230 I think that a lot of the experience of music moves us because it's kind of a resonant emotional 420 00:33:04,230 --> 00:33:05,910 experience across a lot of people. 421 00:33:05,910 --> 00:33:11,640 And so, we've done some work looking at brain differences between people who often get chills 422 00:33:11,640 --> 00:33:16,020 when they listen to music, compared to people who don't, when controlling for all these 423 00:33:16,020 --> 00:33:20,530 different variables, and it seems like the auditory areas are actually more connected 424 00:33:20,530 --> 00:33:24,820 to areas of the brain that are important for social and emotional processing, among people 425 00:33:24,820 --> 00:33:26,610 who always get chills. 426 00:33:26,610 --> 00:33:32,120 So it's as if, when you're listening to something that's beautiful, it's a songwriter's way 427 00:33:32,120 --> 00:33:38,330 of going straight to your social and emotional processing regions of the brain, through an 428 00:33:38,330 --> 00:33:39,380 auditory channel. 429 00:33:39,380 --> 00:33:44,320 So Meagan, the music that you chose for us is a sad song. 430 00:33:44,320 --> 00:33:45,480 It is. 431 00:33:45,480 --> 00:33:53,010 But it is a very different kind of sad song, from Tom Waits lonely guy at the bar at closing 432 00:33:53,010 --> 00:33:59,870 time sort of, this is, I'm sad and I'm storming the gates of heaven to let the universe know 433 00:33:59,870 --> 00:34:02,220 it. 434 00:34:02,220 --> 00:34:07,640 What is it about this excerpt from the Mozart Requiem that does it for you? 435 00:34:07,640 --> 00:34:13,490 So, one of things that happens in the clip that we're going to hear, is that Mozart created 436 00:34:13,490 --> 00:34:18,740 this beautiful melodic line, that doesn't resolve in a way that you expect it to. 437 00:34:18,740 --> 00:34:25,159 So the end of the melodic line ends on the seventh scale degree, and we generally expect 438 00:34:25,159 --> 00:34:29,861 that to resolve to a very stable scale degree in music, that we call the tonic, and that 439 00:34:29,861 --> 00:34:30,940 doesn't happen. 440 00:34:30,940 --> 00:34:36,550 And I think that leaves the listener wanting more, and it gives you this sense of lack 441 00:34:36,550 --> 00:34:44,870 of fulfillment, yet there's such beauty in that, and there's mystery, and for me it definitely 442 00:34:44,870 --> 00:34:46,630 causes all sorts of emotions. 443 00:34:46,630 --> 00:35:10,060 Well this is some of the Lacrimosa from the Mozart Requiem. 444 00:35:10,060 --> 00:35:33,540 I suddenly wanna buy a car. 445 00:35:33,540 --> 00:35:41,190 It's been used in a car commercial recently. 446 00:35:41,190 --> 00:35:42,840 Which is pretty telling actually. 447 00:35:42,840 --> 00:35:43,840 You know? 448 00:35:43,840 --> 00:35:46,150 You had your emotional experience. 449 00:35:46,150 --> 00:35:47,150 Longing, longing. 450 00:35:47,150 --> 00:35:49,540 What kind of car? 451 00:35:49,540 --> 00:35:53,550 I don't remember the brand, but it's a recent commercial. 452 00:35:53,550 --> 00:36:00,530 But this piece has been used in films, many ... That, especially what we heard at the 453 00:36:00,530 --> 00:36:07,130 end, where the voices come back in, that's become a kind of iconic musical moment in 454 00:36:07,130 --> 00:36:13,760 film, in TV shows, music consultants love this piece. 455 00:36:13,760 --> 00:36:21,320 Because it has a lot of emotional content, not necessarily the one that the text would 456 00:36:21,320 --> 00:36:25,270 lead you to expect, Lacrimosa is tears in Latin. 457 00:36:25,270 --> 00:36:33,120 But this, people hear something grand in this, and something elegant, and so you said there're 458 00:36:33,120 --> 00:36:35,080 lots of emotion in this. 459 00:36:35,080 --> 00:36:36,080 Right. 460 00:36:36,080 --> 00:36:37,080 For you, what do you hear? 461 00:36:37,080 --> 00:36:42,070 Well, one of the interesting things about this melodic line is that for me it reminds 462 00:36:42,070 --> 00:36:45,590 me of the sound of someone crying. 463 00:36:45,590 --> 00:36:52,580 So the fact that it is Lacrimosa tears, may have some direct relevance to how he decided 464 00:36:52,580 --> 00:36:53,690 to create that line. 465 00:36:53,690 --> 00:36:59,680 Maybe he was trying to emulate the types of sounds that people create when they're crying. 466 00:36:59,680 --> 00:37:07,550 So, for me this taps into this very basic type of sadness response, and yet it's not 467 00:37:07,550 --> 00:37:15,320 my sadness, so for me that becomes translated into an aesthetic response, rather than me 468 00:37:15,320 --> 00:37:20,520 becoming personally sad, instead I appreciate the beauty of it. 469 00:37:20,520 --> 00:37:26,960 So, if you're feeling a kind of response on a purely aesthetic level, are you less likely 470 00:37:26,960 --> 00:37:32,540 to get that shiver-effect, than if you're actually responding to it as if that's your 471 00:37:32,540 --> 00:37:34,750 emotion that's being prodded? 472 00:37:34,750 --> 00:37:40,180 Well the shiver is thought to be an aesthetic response. 473 00:37:40,180 --> 00:37:47,040 Oftentimes the songs that are most able to create the shiver-response are sad songs. 474 00:37:47,040 --> 00:37:54,460 Yet people say that the response is highly positive, people generally don't think that 475 00:37:54,460 --> 00:37:59,930 they're feeling sadness when they experience this extreme emotional response. 476 00:37:59,930 --> 00:38:04,970 So, what is being communicated by the piece, maybe very different than what is being experienced 477 00:38:04,970 --> 00:38:05,970 by the listener. 478 00:38:05,970 --> 00:38:10,630 The listener response, maybe highly pleasurable, even though the piece is really sad. 479 00:38:10,630 --> 00:38:16,880 And actually that kind of brings us to the piece that I chose, which is something I've 480 00:38:16,880 --> 00:38:24,770 only recently discovered, and which I'm not sure I know how to set up, other than to say, 481 00:38:24,770 --> 00:38:29,190 it's a man and a woman in a room, in their living room. 482 00:38:29,190 --> 00:38:35,040 Bruce Green and Cora Loy McWhirter, I think they're married, they're in North Carolina, 483 00:38:35,040 --> 00:38:37,870 and they sing old folk songs. 484 00:38:37,870 --> 00:38:45,040 Like generally lesser known pretty dark, what the critic Real Mark has called, weird old 485 00:38:45,040 --> 00:38:46,040 America. 486 00:38:46,040 --> 00:38:59,090 And it's one microphone, there's no reverb, it's just two voices singing, I'll say together, 487 00:38:59,090 --> 00:39:00,200 but you can decide for yourself. 488 00:39:00,200 --> 00:39:33,040 The song is called, Come Near My Love.So, 489 00:39:33,040 --> 00:39:36,580 I don't know what the hell is happening there. 490 00:39:36,580 --> 00:39:38,140 Harmony. 491 00:39:38,140 --> 00:39:39,300 But what kind? 492 00:39:39,300 --> 00:39:41,790 It's a fourth. 493 00:39:41,790 --> 00:39:42,790 Parallelfourth. 494 00:39:42,790 --> 00:39:46,220 But it's not tempered, it's not the parallel fourth that get- 495 00:39:46,220 --> 00:39:49,430 Sometimes it's not parallel, maybe that's what you mean. 496 00:39:49,430 --> 00:39:52,260 They sound like they're droning first of all. 497 00:39:52,260 --> 00:39:53,260 Yeah. 498 00:39:53,260 --> 00:39:54,260 Rather than singing. 499 00:39:54,260 --> 00:39:55,950 The sound of the fourth, right? 500 00:39:55,950 --> 00:39:56,950 Yeah. 501 00:39:56,950 --> 00:40:04,940 So, again it's not a tempered, it's a pure ... So it's wrong, it's not the fourth that 502 00:40:04,940 --> 00:40:10,700 you'll get at a piano or a guitar, although you could do it. 503 00:40:10,700 --> 00:40:12,680 Pythagorean. 504 00:40:12,680 --> 00:40:14,670 maybe. 505 00:40:14,670 --> 00:40:15,670 I don't know. 506 00:40:15,670 --> 00:40:19,590 I'm often listening to music while I'm doing other things, and I just stuck this CD in 507 00:40:19,590 --> 00:40:25,690 'cause a friend recommended it, and I just like rooted to the spot, what is that? 508 00:40:25,690 --> 00:40:36,490 Because it was unexpected, and just like different from anything that I'd heard from Mountain 509 00:40:36,490 --> 00:40:41,130 Appalachian, the high lonesome sound, it's definitely not that. 510 00:40:41,130 --> 00:40:46,480 It's definitely not Nashville style harmony, it was just really kind of unexpected. 511 00:40:46,480 --> 00:40:51,200 Well you know, it's funny, you started out the conversation by saying, well you know 512 00:40:51,200 --> 00:40:56,900 30 years ago there was no music neuroscience and so forth, but really music has been studied 513 00:40:56,900 --> 00:40:59,080 in science since there was science. 514 00:40:59,080 --> 00:41:00,810 At least in the West. 515 00:41:00,810 --> 00:41:02,370 Mari brought up Pythagoras. 516 00:41:02,370 --> 00:41:08,370 Pythagoras was considered by some the first scientist in the West, and his question was 517 00:41:08,370 --> 00:41:09,740 exactly that. 518 00:41:09,740 --> 00:41:14,540 Why do those two notes sound so good together? 519 00:41:14,540 --> 00:41:16,380 And we're still asking the question. 520 00:41:16,380 --> 00:41:17,380 Right. 521 00:41:17,380 --> 00:41:23,290 And why we should not let these two notes play together, because they make people do 522 00:41:23,290 --> 00:41:26,180 impure things. 523 00:41:26,180 --> 00:41:29,070 That's right. 524 00:41:29,070 --> 00:41:30,070 That lasted- 525 00:41:30,070 --> 00:41:31,070 Til the 15th- 526 00:41:31,070 --> 00:41:40,640 In the 18th century, Johan Mathisson in Germany, a doctrine of the different affects that scales 527 00:41:40,640 --> 00:41:45,890 would ... this scale will make people slit their wrists, this people will make people 528 00:41:45,890 --> 00:41:54,130 run out and make bad decisions with the next person of the opposite sex that they meet. 529 00:41:54,130 --> 00:41:59,180 This was really, this was seen as science, and you know. 530 00:41:59,180 --> 00:42:05,880 Well you know, I think a lot thinking like that went way off the tracks. 531 00:42:05,880 --> 00:42:06,880 Right? 532 00:42:06,880 --> 00:42:15,130 But there's also a lot of good evidence that there are physiological responses that we 533 00:42:15,130 --> 00:42:16,130 have. 534 00:42:16,130 --> 00:42:21,850 The brain, going back to the brain stem, responses in the brain stem in the early auditory system, 535 00:42:21,850 --> 00:42:27,420 that correspond to our feelings of what this harmony makes us feel. 536 00:42:27,420 --> 00:42:32,310 You can almost, in that song you played, you can almost just hear one harmony, it doesn't 537 00:42:32,310 --> 00:42:37,950 even need to progress, and you can already feel an emotionality out of that. 538 00:42:37,950 --> 00:42:43,990 So I don't think, although it has for the past couple of 100 years been very fashionable 539 00:42:43,990 --> 00:42:49,640 to discount that way of thinking, I think people are beginning to come back and say, 540 00:42:49,640 --> 00:42:54,230 no maybe there really is something about the way we respond to individual intervals that's 541 00:42:54,230 --> 00:42:55,230 really important. 542 00:42:55,230 --> 00:42:57,310 All right, so give me some news you can use. 543 00:42:57,310 --> 00:43:05,400 Why is this important to study, what does it tell us, what if any use is this? 544 00:43:05,400 --> 00:43:08,360 Scientifically, behaviorally. 545 00:43:08,360 --> 00:43:10,810 You mean music in general? 546 00:43:10,810 --> 00:43:16,010 No, our exploration of these kinds of emotional and the physical affect. 547 00:43:16,010 --> 00:43:18,060 Look, I think we shouldn't have to justify this. 548 00:43:18,060 --> 00:43:21,700 So let me disagree with the question. 549 00:43:21,700 --> 00:43:22,800 The premise of the question. 550 00:43:22,800 --> 00:43:24,060 So obviously there's a- 551 00:43:24,060 --> 00:43:26,680 It is a world science festival. 552 00:43:26,680 --> 00:43:35,660 So yes, that's why we do science, because we can't help ourself trying to understand 553 00:43:35,660 --> 00:43:36,660 stuff. 554 00:43:36,660 --> 00:43:39,250 And so there's a deep value to basic research. 555 00:43:39,250 --> 00:43:41,470 There has to be no nugget. 556 00:43:41,470 --> 00:43:46,230 So it turns out that there is, because there's fascinating therapeutic implications understanding 557 00:43:46,230 --> 00:43:47,230 music. 558 00:43:47,230 --> 00:43:51,530 But from my point of view, we do basic science to simply understand the parts list, we're 559 00:43:51,530 --> 00:43:55,490 here, we're trying to understand the parts list of the mind, the brain, and music. 560 00:43:55,490 --> 00:44:00,310 And so, there are two things that can happen, we can use to understand something about music, 561 00:44:00,310 --> 00:44:04,880 and something about the mind and brain, and we can use neural biological methods to understand 562 00:44:04,880 --> 00:44:05,880 something about music. 563 00:44:05,880 --> 00:44:10,510 These are perfectly valuable and reasonable things, and there has to be no end game, if 564 00:44:10,510 --> 00:44:16,420 there's a pill or a lotion or a car I can buy, it matters not. 565 00:44:16,420 --> 00:44:17,420 Okay? 566 00:44:17,420 --> 00:44:22,100 We do basic science because we're wired to have ... we have a science forming faculty, 567 00:44:22,100 --> 00:44:23,830 we just try to understand stuff. 568 00:44:23,830 --> 00:44:28,810 And that's very important, and we should not forget that part of science is just that. 569 00:44:28,810 --> 00:44:35,610 It's not trying to come up with an application, it's to satisfy curiosity and to let our minds 570 00:44:35,610 --> 00:44:39,070 wander in weird directions, and say, damn that was interesting. 571 00:44:39,070 --> 00:44:44,700 It turns out music is an extremely well-structured domain to learn something about how the mind 572 00:44:44,700 --> 00:44:45,700 and brain are organized. 573 00:44:45,700 --> 00:44:47,640 And that's deeply exciting and satisfying. 574 00:44:47,640 --> 00:44:48,640 Yeah. 575 00:44:48,640 --> 00:44:50,270 I can't agree with that more. 576 00:44:50,270 --> 00:44:55,730 But I also think that the reason why I do science is so that I can understand more things, 577 00:44:55,730 --> 00:44:59,570 and so that I could be more open-minded towards new ideas. 578 00:44:59,570 --> 00:45:02,900 Before I started doing this, it was like of course you listen to Mozart, because he was 579 00:45:02,900 --> 00:45:07,130 a genius, because he sounded good, and he was good because of all these ways. 580 00:45:07,130 --> 00:45:11,820 But then you hear about all the people who are kind of deriving different experiences 581 00:45:11,820 --> 00:45:15,920 from the same thing, like the illusion. 582 00:45:15,920 --> 00:45:20,050 And then that, thinking about that just makes you appreciate like diversity more, it makes 583 00:45:20,050 --> 00:45:22,500 you more open-minded I think. 584 00:45:22,500 --> 00:45:26,880 Meagan, do you more of an application-based approach? 585 00:45:26,880 --> 00:45:32,340 Well I think that addressing this question in general it raises new questions about the 586 00:45:32,340 --> 00:45:36,760 nature of music, and the significance to the human species. 587 00:45:36,760 --> 00:45:42,640 So if you look at the brain areas that have the strongest response when someone is experiencing 588 00:45:42,640 --> 00:45:47,110 chills, you see that they are the same brain areas that are involved in rewarding behavior 589 00:45:47,110 --> 00:45:49,050 that has biological significance. 590 00:45:49,050 --> 00:45:55,120 So acquiring food, having sex, and these brain areas are also responsive to drugs. 591 00:45:55,120 --> 00:46:00,951 So, when we see that music is activating these reward centers, we have to ask, well, does 592 00:46:00,951 --> 00:46:04,610 it have any sort of biological value for humans? 593 00:46:04,610 --> 00:46:08,690 Or, is it hijacking these systems in the same way that drugs do? 594 00:46:08,690 --> 00:46:09,790 And that's an open question. 595 00:46:09,790 --> 00:46:13,540 But I think this type of research raises those questions, and those questions are important 596 00:46:13,540 --> 00:46:17,600 to understanding what is music, and why is it important to humans? 597 00:46:17,600 --> 00:46:18,800 How about you Ed? 598 00:46:18,800 --> 00:46:24,860 Well I want to start out by agreeing with David, because I'm 100% I think he's right 599 00:46:24,860 --> 00:46:26,010 on with that. 600 00:46:26,010 --> 00:46:28,600 I think, but I wanna add two things to it. 601 00:46:28,600 --> 00:46:33,730 One he touched on, which is with music, music is so well-structured that it allows us to 602 00:46:33,730 --> 00:46:41,501 go and see the brain when we use EEG or EMG, we can see with the rhythms of music, we can 603 00:46:41,501 --> 00:46:45,920 see so clearly that brain entrainment. 604 00:46:45,920 --> 00:46:50,170 People like David have spent a lot of time studying speech, and it's in some ways the 605 00:46:50,170 --> 00:46:55,470 structure is not quite as clear, but in music we're able to first go in and say, oh my gosh 606 00:46:55,470 --> 00:46:57,840 the brain is really entraining to music. 607 00:46:57,840 --> 00:47:01,580 And then, pretty soon, people like David were saying, hey guess what, it's happening for 608 00:47:01,580 --> 00:47:04,480 speech too. 609 00:47:04,480 --> 00:47:11,770 So it gives us a kind of a way to focus the brain on this rhythmic thing. 610 00:47:11,770 --> 00:47:14,890 And then I will go and talk about some applications. 611 00:47:14,890 --> 00:47:23,010 So it turns out that there're a lot of kind of disorders of the brain in which you find 612 00:47:23,010 --> 00:47:25,440 people also have a problem with rhythm. 613 00:47:25,440 --> 00:47:32,830 Okay, so autistic kids have a problem with rhythm, people with specific language impairment, 614 00:47:32,830 --> 00:47:35,400 people with dyslexia. 615 00:47:35,400 --> 00:47:40,820 And there're other ways in which ... So we're not exactly quite sure what that means yet, 616 00:47:40,820 --> 00:47:45,800 but there're other very clear ways in which people are using music therapy to clinical 617 00:47:45,800 --> 00:47:51,090 benefits, so to help rehabilitate speech after a stroke for example, with melodic intonation 618 00:47:51,090 --> 00:47:58,680 therapy or rhythmic stimulation can help people rehabilitate their gait, if they have Parkinson's 619 00:47:58,680 --> 00:47:59,680 Disease. 620 00:47:59,680 --> 00:48:06,360 So there really are, we are beginning to understand that there may actually be some clinical applications 621 00:48:06,360 --> 00:48:10,790 to music, and a lot of them have to do with rhythm. 622 00:48:10,790 --> 00:48:13,971 It's funny that we're coming to this realization at a time when there're a lot of musicians 623 00:48:13,971 --> 00:48:19,880 who kind of pushing at the borders of what we consider to be music, as opposed to noise. 624 00:48:19,880 --> 00:48:26,150 That, we could go down a whole rabbit hole, but instead, I think what we're going to do 625 00:48:26,150 --> 00:48:31,540 is open the floor to questions from you folks, Yeah.. 626 00:48:31,540 --> 00:48:38,190 In talking about the fundamental processes involved in engaging with music, and talking 627 00:48:38,190 --> 00:48:41,920 about rhythmicity, that's suggests that if it's so fundamental, that it would be happening 628 00:48:41,920 --> 00:48:43,960 in other species as well. 629 00:48:43,960 --> 00:48:48,780 So what kinds of properties here generalize, that we can tell, generalize the experiences 630 00:48:48,780 --> 00:48:52,830 that say dogs or apes or others have with music? 631 00:48:52,830 --> 00:48:54,410 Oh, that's a really great question. 632 00:48:54,410 --> 00:48:56,210 Is that Finn by the way? 633 00:48:56,210 --> 00:48:57,930 Hi Finn, how you doing? 634 00:48:57,930 --> 00:49:00,730 Did you plant a question in the audience? 635 00:49:00,730 --> 00:49:03,860 I did not plant a question, but I'm glad she asked it. 636 00:49:03,860 --> 00:49:07,600 There're a bunch of really exciting studies going on right now. 637 00:49:07,600 --> 00:49:13,730 I don't know, probably many of you in the audience have seen Snowball, the dancing cockatoo? 638 00:49:13,730 --> 00:49:16,610 And people raise your hand, just so I get an idea of, yeah. 639 00:49:16,610 --> 00:49:22,640 So you can go on YouTube, dances to the Backstreet Boys, it's sort of, it looks like he's having 640 00:49:22,640 --> 00:49:24,090 a really great time. 641 00:49:24,090 --> 00:49:32,430 One of my colleagues Oni Patel or two, and John Iverson went and actually studied Snowball, 642 00:49:32,430 --> 00:49:38,580 and found that Snowball is in fact doing a pretty good job of synchronizing. 643 00:49:38,580 --> 00:49:44,119 It's intermittent synchronization, so Snowball goes in and out, but statistically, they measured 644 00:49:44,119 --> 00:49:47,290 statistically, he's pretty well synchronized. 645 00:49:47,290 --> 00:49:58,040 But, so then another colleague of mine Peter Cooke, decided to teach a sea lion to synchronize. 646 00:49:58,040 --> 00:50:06,220 And this is Ronin, who's also you could see on the web, and Ronin synchronizes as well 647 00:50:06,220 --> 00:50:07,220 as a person. 648 00:50:07,220 --> 00:50:10,760 Literally, just never misses a beat. 649 00:50:10,760 --> 00:50:16,300 So there're some animals, we have done some preliminary work with a Bonobo, just playing 650 00:50:16,300 --> 00:50:21,220 the drums and trying to get the Bonobo to synchronize, and the Bonobo will synchronize 651 00:50:21,220 --> 00:50:22,369 with drum sounds. 652 00:50:22,369 --> 00:50:26,020 The thing about some of these other animals though actually synchronize to music, which 653 00:50:26,020 --> 00:50:28,420 we haven't gotten there with the Bonobos yet. 654 00:50:28,420 --> 00:50:33,070 So, there're some people who say, well it's really a human thing, or you really to be 655 00:50:33,070 --> 00:50:37,710 a vocal learning species, but then there're other people, things like Ronin suggests, 656 00:50:37,710 --> 00:50:44,110 well, maybe it is more widespread, and at least the capability to synchronize. 657 00:50:44,110 --> 00:50:46,030 Maybe not the motivation per se. 658 00:50:46,030 --> 00:50:47,030 But yeah. 659 00:50:47,030 --> 00:50:49,030 All right, let's take one more question. 660 00:50:49,030 --> 00:50:50,030 Yes? 661 00:50:50,030 --> 00:50:51,119 Gentleman in the blue shirt here. 662 00:50:51,119 --> 00:50:52,119 Hi. 663 00:50:52,119 --> 00:50:57,160 My mom has dementia, she's in her nineties, in a conversation she may not remember what 664 00:50:57,160 --> 00:51:03,930 you said 30 seconds before, but she can recall the old hymns, word for word, or if you put 665 00:51:03,930 --> 00:51:09,340 on Glenn Miller or Tommy Dorsey or something, she's back out on the dance floor with my 666 00:51:09,340 --> 00:51:10,340 dad. 667 00:51:10,340 --> 00:51:14,250 What's going on there, and how can it help people with Alzheimer's and dementia? 668 00:51:14,250 --> 00:51:16,930 Do you wanna talk about that? 669 00:51:16,930 --> 00:51:19,170 I'll say a little bit. 670 00:51:19,170 --> 00:51:24,610 We know we have this network in our brain called the default network that's constantly 671 00:51:24,610 --> 00:51:25,800 on. 672 00:51:25,800 --> 00:51:30,210 And especially an area in the frontal lobe, medial prefrontal cortex, tends to have less 673 00:51:30,210 --> 00:51:35,720 activity over time as you age, and people with Alzheimer's it's really much less activity. 674 00:51:35,720 --> 00:51:42,090 And so what I think the music is doing is kind of acting a rejuvenator of that system, 675 00:51:42,090 --> 00:51:47,030 so that you're increasing activity in those regions that that might then last a little 676 00:51:47,030 --> 00:51:48,030 while. 677 00:51:48,030 --> 00:51:51,510 Yeah, I think you know, the brain is a funny thing. 678 00:51:51,510 --> 00:51:55,190 And people talk about the brain as if it's a computer, right? 679 00:51:55,190 --> 00:52:00,790 And we wanna know how this little cog works with that little wheel and so forth. 680 00:52:00,790 --> 00:52:05,470 But if what we learn when we study the brain it that it just doesn't work that way. 681 00:52:05,470 --> 00:52:08,190 It works in all kinds of counterintuitive ways. 682 00:52:08,190 --> 00:52:12,630 Another thing that you might know is that, if you have a stroke and you lose your ability 683 00:52:12,630 --> 00:52:18,450 to speak, there's a very good possibility that you will preserve your ability to sing, 684 00:52:18,450 --> 00:52:23,530 and that's now being exploited in melodic intonation therapy and so forth. 685 00:52:23,530 --> 00:52:24,530 So the answer is we don't really know what's going on, but music is touching like every 686 00:52:24,530 --> 00:52:25,530 facet of memory and our ability to communicate and so forth. 687 00:52:25,530 --> 00:52:31,130 And on that note, let me thank all of you for being here on our wonderful panelists, 688 00:52:31,130 --> 00:52:39,450 thank you so much.