Is musical ingeniuty influenced by mental instability > craziness?

Talented musicians are often linked to ideas of mental illness and  many of us have assumed at some point or another that a person’s gift can be indirectly (or directly) correlated to the amount of times that person has entered rehab > perhaps this madness is precisely what makes their tortured songs so captivating?

Spectacular ingenuity is often riddled with deep unhappiness > this has been going on for much of music history.  Think of brilliant classical and romantic composures like Brahms, Beethoven and Schumann > Schumann reportedly tried to stretch his fingers to be longer and heard voices in his head.  How it is these men could be so gifted when it comes to creating music and not so gifted when it comes to functioning normally in the world?  This leads us to ask the question > could it be that there is a significant connection between madness and music?  Could music be the product of these bouts of creativity and intense states of madness?

Scientists are just beginning to fully grasp the full capacity of mental illness and its effects on the human brain.  Scientists are also beginning to understand the deep, innate appreciation our minds have for music.  For Schumann 200 years ago, there was no scientific research on this whatsoever.

Music Can Overpower Other Memories

Could the answer to those suffering from dementia, depression, and bipolar disorder simply lie in music?  According to neurologist Oliver Sacks, musical perception, sensibility, and emotion can overpower other memories.  This is because large amount of dopamine, the brain’s natural feel good chemical, are released when we listen to music we enjoy.  He gives an example in his book, Musicophelia > about a woman suffering from Alzheimer’s, who can barely perform daily activities, but is memorizing Schumann’s A minor Piano Concerto.  This seems to imply that even those who seem to have lost some normal mental functioning, are still able to access the musical area of their brain, perhaps even more strongly than before.

So could it be that, at a time when mental illness was vastly misunderstood, these gifted men were simply trying to escape into another reality?  That their unstable mental health could be the culprit to creating such beautiful music?  Perhaps music even served as a temporary cure, like the woman suffering from Alzheimer’s in Sack’s book.

British Psychiatrist, Anthony Store, thinks so and writes in his book Music and the Mind “that the liability to depression and the threat of its occurrence can act as a spur to creativity.” Perhaps music really is the strongest medicine of the mind.

In a gathering of musicians, neurologists and psychologists at the World Science Fair, the topic of WHERE we hear music and the context of which we hear it became a topic for discussion > The sole question was “do we perceive music differently if we didn’t suspect we were going to hear it?” > read the bullets for primary points and watch the video if you are interested in the answer

• If we walked into a park and a band was playing – an event that we didn’t expect – would we translate that music any differently than we would if we attended a concert we were anticipating for the past month?
• Neurologically…no > our brains are certainly influenced by context but would analyze the beat and harmony in the same manner no matter the degree of anticipation

Movement Evolution

Daniel Levitan’s presentation for the Library of Congress on the importance of music in human development, communication and movement > let’s bullet summarize this video in case you don’t have time to watch all 8+ minutes:

• Levitan believes that music came before language > his argument > neanderthals and chimpanzees proceded homosapiens and they relied on alternations in pitch and time  to communicate = pitch and time sounds more like music than language. Therefore, if one were to believe that language came first they would have to believe that homosapiens just forget/skipped the communicative habits of our ancestors and started language out of the blue.
• You can’t make music without movement
• Humans have a unique ability to take music in through the sense of hearing and produce movement via the motor system in synchronization. Other animals can bang sticks together but they can’t achieve sustained synchronization like humans can

Crowded Anticipation

The pentatonic scale has been learned inherently by all in the world and Bobby McFerrin is out to prove this to be true with his demonstration at the World Science Music Festival. Through research we’ve discovered that the brain is engaged the most in music right before an anticipated change. Naturally, we create expectations in our minds when we listen to both familiar and unfamiliar music. In this case, the brain is using it’s visual receptors to anticipate the next pitch and the audience vocally delivers what they believe is the pitch being requested by McFerrin’s movements.

Why is this scale so familiar? The pentatonic scale (a scale of 5 notes) is commonly found in music around the world because of it’s lack of dissonant intervals between the tones > there are no semitones. To put it in lamans terms, moving from one note to the other feels very natural and involves no surprises and can be done instinctually by most non-musicians.

Listen Close

We loathe listening to music every day > we sift through our playlists looking for the right song in every moment > but I am willing to bet you can’t explain how you actually hear that song > I’m also willing to bet you don’t really care. But you can entertain your pals next time you are out at a live show waiting for the next band to take the stage by explaining to them scientifically how they are hearing that live music > I’m willing to bet they don’t care either but at least they will be impressed with your smarts. I warn you.. the bullet points are boring if you are not into details > watch the video if you hate reading science

• Sound Waves vibrate a sensory element known as your eardrum > really your eardrum is there to protect the rest of your ear (inner ear and middle ear) from damage by reflexing when those waves come. It vibrates back and forth like a drum being hit by a stick > hence the name earDRUM
• When the eardrum reflexes it aids your ear in concentrating what you hear (this is part of the reason we are able to hear one conversation in a room full of many).
• The sound vibrations then amplify in the middle ear where you have little tiny bones (ossicles) and then travels to your inner ear
• These vibrations travel to the cochlea which is responsible for turning physical sound waves into electrical signals. The the basillar membrane is located inside the cochlea and extends across it. Inside the basillar membrane is an organ that contains a bunch of tiny hair cells.
• These hair cells send the electrical impulses to the cochlear nerve and onto the cerebral cortex > travel up the brain stem to the auditory cortex located in your temporal lobe

Experience Classical Music

Daniel Levitin, professor of psychology and neuroscience at McGill university, is combining his knowledge of the brain with his passion for music.  The goal is to make classical music more accessible through discovering exacting how it affects an audience > The multi-instrumentalist jazz and rock musician has teamed up with the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony to create a music experience that tests music’s impact on audience members.

Conductor Edwin Outwater’s orchestra plays Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 as well as parts of Symphonies No.3 and No. 9. > breaks in the pieces allow the audience to answer questions posed by Levitin.  Through these questions Levitin has discovered that people comprehend classical music better than some might assume.  He found that over 90 percent of the audience members were able to correctly identify the key the music was in > this led to the realization that audience members were experiencing the symphonies on a primal level, despite a lack of musical knowledge.

Outwater states that music causes reactions, like hearing a baby cry it creates an emotional response >   Outwater and Levitin are proving, despite a listener having little knowledge of the music, that it goes beyond emotion and can dictate the release of hormones and chemicals.

Earthquake Victims Think Music

When the Great East Japan Earthquake uprooted habitants lives and destroyed the homes of thousands, it left thousands with mental pictures of torment and despair. Since the occurrence, the world has regained it’s dependency on Japan and the fact that the earthquake severed global supply chains is somewhat of an afterthought > but there are still people that need help. They are haunted by dramatic imagery and despair for their belongings. Masaki Batoh is working to improve the mental condition of those that are suffering from post-traumatic stress in one form or another by using music and their thoughts.

For the past 2 decades, Batoh has performed acupuncture on a variety of patients and according to him “music and acupuncture are one in the same” > helping alleviate the daily stresses human encounter by evoking  emotional impulses. Using a modified EEG machine > in the form of headgear, Batoh has recorded the brain activity of some victims and altered their emotional state by providing audible responses to their cognitive changes.

The EEG machine contains a motherboard that communicates with a sensor which is controlled by the EEG waves provided by the human subject (wearing the headgear). These waves produce a sound respective to their form. In time, the subject learns to control the sound/music through their thoughts > it seems the subjects are adjusting to eliminate the unpleasant noise and replace it will a more pleasant noise. The end goal is to put the mind at ease in a sort of meditative state where the subject can sense pleasant feelings. Batoh has dedicated 2 songs on his latest album with his musical project “ghost” to feature full recordings of an actual session. You can find out more about the project here.

Learnings

•  EEG headgear is closer to becoming a consumer product that can be utilized by more than just researchers, doctors and scientists
• We can actually listen to the mind waves of a the victims of a tragic moment in our history and make music out of it
• The notion of acupuncture and music working as one is interesting to consider in future research – can music amplify the affects?

Universal Vibrations

Scientists in Montreal have learned more about why the sound vibrations we call music are so universally important to humans. By discovering that a distinct path of dopamine releases can occur when listening to music we find pleasurable scientists proved that musical pleasure is similar to the pleasure we feel when given tangible rewards or have sex.

Scientists used 2 technologies when conducting this research

1. ligand-based positron emission tomography > otherwise known as “PET scanning” combined with phychoiophysiological measures of autonomic nervous system activity
2. fMRI – functional magnetic resonance imaging

The latter was used to examine the timing of brain responses when listening to music and the former was used to monitor chemical releases in the brain.

The study started with 217 subjects that were monitored closely as they watched commercials that used music to convey emotion > these subjects were supposed to try to elicit “chills” while watching. Researchers selected 10 members of the 217 test subjects to participate in an fMRI scan + PET scanning experience that would examine their brain while they listened to music they loathed and admired > genres ranging from heavy metal to latin dance all dependent on the subject’s preferences.

What Did This Brain & Music Study Find?

• Listening to music releases dopamine in 2 areas of the brain: the dorsal and ventral striatum (areas that are commonly known to release dopamine when experiencing pleasure)
• Anticipation is the reason for the channels of dopamine releases when listening to music
• There was a sustained build up of dopamine while the user anticipated a part of the song they liked. 10-15 seconds before their favorite parts the caudate was most involved in building anticipation and giving a senses of pleasure to that anticipation
• Once your anticipations are fulfilled, referred to as the peak, the nucleus accumbens was more involved than the caudate
• The findings concluded that dopamine can be released in the striatel system and experiencing that peak can trigger a dopamine release in an anatomical pathway distinct from that associated with the peak pleasure itself

Physical + Mental Human Responses to Music

Music has the ability to stimulate an action and generate a result > that’s a simplistic way to explain the purpose of music. When we listen to our favorite songs scientific research has shown that our blood pressure rises, the electrical conductance of our skin is lowered, our pupils dilate and the brain, especially in the cerebellum (responsible for movement) becomes highly active. These are just a few of the physical human responses science has accounted for. But what about psychological?

If we were to examine what it is pyschologically, that inspires people to listen to the songs they love one could denominate it down to 3 primary reasons:

1. Engage an emotion/feeling we wish to encounter or maximize > alone or in a social setting
2. Stimulate our minds to remain attentive > suppressing boredom and wandering thoughts
3. Filling our appetite for intellectual curiosity by examining the musical structure and meaning > through words/sound

Further Explanation of the List

1. When you are sad, do you listen to sad songs to compliment your mood or do you crave happy songs to cheer you up? Social tones are often set by the music playing in the background. Think about an establishment you visited recently > if they place songs with soft acoustic undertones the mood is probably not rambunctious.

2. While some like silence when they are studying or working, these people still use music from time to time to stimulate attention. If they hit a block in their focus > music can break that spell. It also fills in for time when we have nothing to do. Have you ever tried to find new music using a music discovery engine like Spotify or YouTube? If you have, you quickly discover that music discovery takes time, which fills up your time, which lessens the probability ratio of your being bored

3. Not everyone is a music critic in regards to songwriting and lyrical poetry. But we can’t forget those that do listen to music for the sake of picking it apart piece by piece in order to keep their mind “thinking” about the subject.

There have been a variety of studies conducted that support the argument that significant amounts of headphone exposure can cause permanent hearing damage (we are aware there are other studies that contradict this notion). Even if teens and music lovers understood this to be true the chances of them abandoning their beloved earbuds and beats headphones would be 0 to none. But what if we told them they can protect their hearing and hear through their bones instead? That’s intriguing. Aftershokz Bone Conduction Headphones are giving the general population access to the most advanced military technology. Aftershokz headphone technology doesn’t feed sound waves to your eardrum but rather to your bones. Both your eardrum and your bones have the ability to vibrate sound waves to the inner ear which is where the magic we know as hearing, happens.

Talking to yourself is an easy way to understand that bone conduction exists. If you talk aloud, you can feel vibrations throughout your head. That ability to hear your own voice is coming from your bones and feeding your inner ear. Aftershokz headphones attach to your head and pump beats and sound to your bones. Sounds weird right? > this could be the future of transportable music listening. The military leveraged the technology because listening in this manner allows you eardrums to better respond to other noises surrounding you. Depending on whether or not you see this as a detriment or an advantage will probably determine your interest level in the product.

Highlights of Aftershokz and Commentary

• A new approach to portable music listening that uses bone conduction technology to allow you to listen to music
• Fit comfortably around that beautiful skull of yours and can be used for any athletic activity, mobile gaming, phone conversations, etc. > it was used in combat > these phones are ready for whatever you want to do with them
• Ludwig Van Beethoven was legally deaf – but it is documented that at one point he learned how to bite a rod that was connected to his piano and that rod would feed his bones sound waves > that became vibrations > that he could understand – possibly hear

Music Experiments