How does music affect our brain?

The book explores many interesting neuroscientific aspects, such as hemispheric specialization in music processing. "Exceptional" musicianship, for example, is associated with an increase in the volume of the left-hemisphere cortex. Generally, the right hemisphere is more holistic than the left (as has been mentioned on several occasions). It deals, for example, with discriminating the type of chords, considering them unitary objects and not a superposition of individual notes. In musicians, being able to recognize the individual notes of a chord, and in general analyze more of the musical content, precisely correlates with greater use of the left hemisphere compared to non-musicians.

Left hemisphere and musical art

The role of the left hemisphere, as we read in the book, comes into play in a similar way to what happens with spoken language, particularly in the syntactic comprehension of music (or lyrics). Musicians know if a simple sequence of chords respects the standard harmonic rules (of the so-called "tonal system") or if it violates them. It has been seen, through the recording of "event-related potentials" (ERP), how in musicians the response called "syntactic P600" (600 milliseconds from the input signal) was much broader the more "wrong" it was the final chord of a given sequence. Therefore, there is a relationship between the rules of harmony consolidated over the last 250 years and the electrical signals that occur in the brain.

Note: The ERP ( event-related potential ) is recorded by averaging electroencephalography or electroencephalogram (EEG) signals in response to a given visual, tactile, auditory, or electrical input. after removing background noise. It is a tool that allows brain activity to be followed in real time and appears as a series of positive or negative spikes several milliseconds after the stimulus.

Music and images, the mysterious world of the brain

Another subject dealt with is that of the musical imagination, in its various forms, or the brain's ability to create images corresponding to certain musical stimuli, even without a particular musical training. In a 2019 study, when reading the staff or hearing the corresponding sound, pianists presented a "corticospinal output to the hand musculature that progressively increased along with requests for extension of the hand, as if they were actually performing the imagined movement." .

Woodworm in the ear

The phenomenon of "earworm" falls along the same lines. Who has seen the animated movie Inside Out she will remember how from time to time the brain would resonate in the protagonist's head a melody completely out of context, which she had memorized as a child. An experience that we all tried, for example, with the melodies of the commercials. This is the so-called involuntary imagination. This is also mentioned in the book of Proverbs. And well known to musicians is the practice of "silent review" (performed, for example, before a lesson, an exam, or a concert). In this case, the brain makes use of the kinesthetic, motor and emotional imagination, of visualizing the score without having it in front of it and also of "listening", which consists of listening to the music internally in the absence of real sound, as if it were a hallucination. .

Connection of music with moods

There are many curiosities that are mentioned in the book, some known for a long time and others more recently discovered. Why, for example, does everyone know how to recognize sad music? It seems that the characterizing elements of a sad passage, such as minor chords, can partially overlap those of the prosody (rhythm, stress, and intonation of spoken language, which goes beyond grammar) of sad speech. It has been proposed that music might involve neural circuits dedicated to processing biologically relevant emotional vocalizations. This close relationship with the regulation of one's own emotions, in fact, has also emerged in the testimonies collected by four Italian musicians and collected in the book: Giovanni Sollima (well-known cellist).

beneficial effects of music on health

After talking about the annoying dystonia disorder (Camilla Fiz has already written about it in Science on the Net), the theme of the therapeutic effects of music is addressed. First, listening to a piece with a certain rhythm encourages the patient to synchronize the frequency of the electroencephalogram with that of the sound heard. Another relevant effect that music has on our body is the correlation between songs characterized by “violent and dissonant” sounds and an increase in diastolic blood pressure.

In the same way, relaxing, calming or even familiar music "has been widely demonstrated to be able to relieve cancer pain, or reduce pain intensity and systolic blood pressure in patients during postoperative recovery, as well as reduce stress levels and heart rate in patients with coronary disease and cancer. And music also helps reduce stress levels in patients with multiple sclerosis.

Proverb writes that "the therapeutic power of music depends on its stimulating auditory and emotional regions that normally process the human voice and its emotional nuances [...], which translates into a comforting and healing action", acting as an analgesic: it has been shown that listening music “stimulates the centers of reinforcement […] and pleasure”.

The thing does not end here: singing in patients with Parkinson's and multiple sclerosis helps health care to strengthen and treat the cardiovascular and pulmonary systems, stimulating the muscles associated with respiration. It would also seem that prolonged listening to music increases people's longevity.

Beethoven's deafness

Continuing with the tonic of health. The book also talks about the serious pathology that afflicted Beethoven progressively in his life and that everyone knows: deafness.

In the dedicated chapter, it is illustrated how the composer probably "He suffered from chronic lead poisoning", a hypothesis supported both by the high levels of lead found in deep bones and by the "narrowing of the cochlear nerves" consistent with a "prolonged contact with heavy metals such as lead". Therefore, it was not about syphilis, but about the habit of drinking low quality hungarian wine, to which lead was normally added (an illegal but common practice at the time) to improve its aroma and flavor».

Probably the character then developed by Beethoven as a result of his pathology contributed to creating confusion in the mind of the author to the point of not being able to identify the correct way to read the metronome, but whether to read the number immediately below the notch or immediately above. This is not unimportant, because, as many performers know, the metronome times indicated in Beethoven's score are often too fast. Therefore, it is not only the fault of the interpretative "slowdown" of the romantic and post-Wagnerian period (after Beethoven).

Curious and macabre facts

To close the book, almost in a macabre way, there is a chapter with the main clinical and neuropathological data of some of the great composers in history, extracted from the most up-to-date anatomical findings of the authors. We know, for example, that Vivaldi suffered from heart disease (although perhaps sometimes he pretended to escape from inopportune situations). Bach was highly myopic, diabetic, and possibly arteriosclerotic. Mozart had kidney failure (but it is unlikely that he had Tourette's syndrome, as it is sometimes said). Chopin had more problems: emphysema, cystic fibrosis, bronchiectasis, tuberculosis, cirrhosis of the liver, pancreatic insufficiency, and various other disorders. But also Haydn, Rachmaninov, Gershwin... In addition to making us reflect on how much medicine has evolved today compared to even the beginning of the XNUMXth century, a relationship could be made with the style of music.

Wanting to extract a moral, addressed in particular to musicians, but not only for them: it is good to consider music not as a spiritual or even magical phenomenon (as we often tend to believe, through anecdotes and stories about certain musicians and certain interpretations), but as a human phenomenon that can be investigated with the methods of science. It is not the author who mentions this noraleja to us, but Roberto Prosseda, a well-known pianist and soloist, who wrote the initial presentation of the book.