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Samuel Markind, "Music Between Your Ears: How Musical Engagement Powers the Human Brain" (JHU Press, 2025)
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Learn more at Go Amex Graphite welcome to the New Books Network welcome to the New Books Network. I'm your host, Gregory McNiff, and I'm excited to be joined by Dr. Samuel Markind, the author of Music between youn How Musical Engagement Powers the human brain. Dr. Samuel Markind is a neurologist with more than 30 years of clinical experience treating disorders of the nervous system. Alongside medicine, he has spent much of his life studying piano, dance, music and the relationship between the arts and the brain. I selected the music between your ears because it sits at the intersection of neuroscience, psychology, evolution and one of the most universal human experiences, music. The book asks a deceptively simple question. Why does organized sound move us so deeply? And answers it through science without losing the wonder of music itself. As someone interested in how the brain constructs meaning, emotion, memory and human condition, I thought this was a fascinating lens through which to explore the mind. Sam, thank you for joining me today to discuss your book.
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Thank you for inviting me, Greg.
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B
Sam, why did you write this book and who is the target audience?
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A
So I wrote the book for three. I would say there are three reasons that I wrote the book, and that's why there are three parts of the book. The main reason was to explore and convey the evolutionary value of music to the brain. But I felt that in order to do that, people had to know something about how the brain works and in neuroscience and in particular about music neuroscience, not to get into the weeds, but just to have the basics so that they could follow the trajectory of the discussion on evolutionary value of music to the brain. And then finally, I wanted. I want to encourage people to engage actively with music. A lot of musical engagement is very passive. We, you know, pop on the radio or Spotify or whatever way people consume music now. And I guess that's the thing. It's basically. It's more than anything else something that's consumed. But there's so much benefit from engaging actively in music that I wanted to encourage that. You also asked me about my target audience, which I would say their target audience says. I'd say that this book stemmed out of talks that I gave that were aimed for at health care workers. And that's a broad definition. Anyone who's in health care and who's interested in the intersection of music and healthcare, music educators, people who are in music in performance capacities, and frankly, an educated general audience, there's a tremendous amount of interest about music and music neuroscience out there, and we can tell that from the number of articles that appear in the lay press about this subject.
- [04:38]
B
Yeah, I want to get into that idea of music therapy. I know you address that in the latter half of the book, even for those who, quote, have a normal, healthy life, how music can enhance that. But before we go there, maybe if you could spend a few minutes just, you know, you talk about, I think in the first or second chapter, laying out what music is, namely rhythm, melody, harmony. Could you just describe those terms briefly for the audience?
- [05:05]
A
Sure. The most important aspects of music are rhythm and melody, and I would say in that order. Certainly that rhythm is the first aspect of music that developed, and rhythm is all about the timing elements of music. So imagine you have a graph, right? You've got a. A horizontal or x axis, and you have a vertical or Y. AIs. The horizontal axis is time and the vertical axis is pitch. So this is basically the way music is written. Music is written. It doesn't look like a graph piece of graph paper. It looks like music with the five lines in each staff, et cetera. But basically, we're looking at frequency of sound waves on the vertical axis and Time on the horizontal axis and rhythm is all about the time. Anything that think of rhythm as anything that's related to the timing aspects of music, and melody as related to anything that's related to the pitches in music. And I think that that's the simplest way to look at it. Yeah. And those are really, really, really the basic structures of music. Now. Their harmony adds lots of complexity to music. It gives styles of music. But it's a much later addition to music than rhythm. And melody. And timbre, as I talk about timbre is the uniqueness of the sound, the uniqueness of your voice, the uniqueness of an instrument. But even a rock banging, even yourself bumping into a chair, that produces some sound, and there's a timbre to it. So I tell people, don't get too hooked up on timbre because it's more a property of sounds. It doesn't have to be related to music. But, of course, if you're a composer, it's going to be very important to you because you want to know how the sound is going to sound, the quality of the sound. But I really stress focusing on rhythm and melody.
- [07:20]
B
I want to follow up on that notion of time. Because one of the most striking sentences of your book, you talk about a paraphrase. The brain receives raw timing data from sound waves, but then has to construct a mental concept of time. Could you maybe talk about what's happening from a neurological perspective there? What is the brain doing to convert maybe sound waves to time?
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A
It's interesting because it's not totally understood how this happens, because we know, for example, that there's a hearing center of the brain. The sense of hearing has a home in the brain. The sense of vision has a home in the brain, but there's no home for the sense of time in the brain. So it's not totally understood how the sense of time is derived. We know that the parietal lobe, that's the main sensory portion of the brain, is involved with this, and probably more on the right hemisphere than the left hemisphere. How we get information about time, how we receive information about time, and how that is then turned into a mental construct of time, though, is not totally understood.
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B
Okay, I want to maybe drill down or focus in on the brain aspect here. I believe in the book and you just spoke about, there's no real music center or melody center in the brain.
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A
Correct.
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B
It's almost the different regions of the brain cooperating or working together. Can you talk about, I guess, how we hear, how we process music from the perspective of the brain.
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A
Whether we're talking about melody or rhythm, we're talking about sound waves that come into the earth and go up the brain stem and get up to the, what we call the neocortex, the hemispheres of the brain, the two sides of the brain. Then there's clearly a hearing center, or we will call it auditory cortex in the brain. And then signals are sent from there out to be processed for both rhythm and for melody. So the really cool thing about rhythm is that not only is it an auditory phenomenon, it's also a motoric phenomenon. There's a really tight tie up between hearing and movement with rhythm. And that is true even if you're lying perfectly still. Even our perception of rhythm activates our motor system. And that's really one of the very cool things about rhythm.
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B
Yeah, I wanted to ask you about that. I mean, this idea of rhythm we can actually perceive even subconsciously. Right. I mean, it bypasses our conscious thought melody too.
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A
I mean, a lot of these operations of the brain occur below the level of consciousness.
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B
Yeah. Could we talk a little bit about the evolutionary aspect of music in the brain? In the book you lay out this sort of three layer model which I think may have evolved over time, the triune brain. Could you that and I guess where music fits in evolutionary. I was surprised to hear it actually, based on studies you cite, may begin very early in our neurological development. I think you talk about babies there and that it may have served a role from an evolutionary perspective as well for our ancestors.
- [11:11]
A
Okay, so that's a, that's a lot to unpack on that question. So let's take it a step at a time here. So the triune brain, or three layer cake model of the brain, is of simplified but very useful way of looking at the brain. So the lowest level, which is corresponding primarily to the brain stem, is responsible for biological regulation, Our breathing, our heart rate, blood pressure. The brain isn't the only place that dictates what these things are. But brain has significant input into these housekeeping functions. We're not aware of what our brain stem does. It's on automatic pilot. The second or middle layer corresponds to what's sometimes called the limbic brain. This is where the seat of our emotions are. Also, certain types of memory are located in this part of the brain. And the middle part of the brain also is where we're going to find biological clocks for motion, for our motor activities. And then you have the real analytical thinking part of the brain, which is what we consider the most upper part of the brain or evolutionarily most recent. And that's the cortical cortex of the brain. Cortex means surface. And sometimes people have the clang association. They hear the word cortex, they think that means the core, the center, but actually means the opposite. It means the surface comes from the same, the Latin ruda that we use for the bark of a tree. It's the same idea there. So that's basically the triune model of the brain. Like I said, it's very simplified, but it's very useful. And these three layers are not independent of one another. They're in constant communication with one another. And so that's an important thing to keep in mind.
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B
That is very helpful. And then Sam. Yeah, I think I hit you with a little too many questions there. But could you talk about the evolutionary development of music?
- [13:34]
A
You talked about it with baby. So let's start there. The auditory system, the hearing system develops before the vision system, for example. And babies have musical skills even before they're born. There was a really clever experiment that was done a number of decades ago to show this. The experiment involved a group of mothers in the last month of their pregnancy and they would listen to a soap opera. I guess it was a daily soap opera, Monday through Friday kind of soap opera. And there was a theme song with the soap opera. So they would hear the theme song. And it turned out the babies heard the theme song too. Because when the babies were born and they were exposed to the theme song, they reacted to it. How did they react to it? Well, their heart rates changed, their breathing rates changed. Things that could actually be measured. Now this was compared to a group of babies whose mothers had not listened to the soap opera for a month, hadn't listened to at all. And so after these babies were born, they didn't react to this theme song. It was totally new to them, they had no exposure to it. And so their heart rate stayed the same, their blood pressure stayed the same, their breathing stayed the same, as opposed to the group of babies who had heard it in utero who did react to it. So it's a really, really, really strong point in, you know, showing how music is innate. And also the fellow who wrote my afterword or wrote the afterword for my book, Scott Schuller, he also told a somewhat similar story about a. Let me just grab us here. It was. Okay, so I'm just going to read this because it's so interesting. So he writes. A well known conductor once told a story about preparing to accompany a cello concerto that he believed to be unfamiliar because he knew he had never performed the work previously and didn't recall ever listening to it. But as he was preparing the work, it proved hauntingly familiar. And turned out that his mother, who was a professional musician, had prepared her perform the work while she was pregnant with him. So the conductor concluded that his familiarity with the work was the result of a prenatal memory before he was born, because his mother's abdomen had been in contact with her cello and transferred the vibrations to him in utero.
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B
That's amazing.
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A
You could see. Yeah, it's easier. Just amazing points that show how basic music is to us and how it's innate, how it's functioning even before we're born.
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B
Yeah. And from an evolutionary perspective, we think it served a role for our ancestors as well. I know you talk about, you know, mate selection and reproduction, but maybe could you talk about the sort of the evolutionary benefit of music?
- [16:48]
A
Sure. So I think that when you really ask, where did music first enter human, you know, our life. Life of human. The human species, Actually, I think it entered probably before human species, but in species that preceded humans but are no longer existing. Because I think that rhythm played an important part in her being able to walk on two legs. None of the other gorillas, chimpanzees, they don't walk on two legs. They're not bipedal. They're kind of quadrupedal. They're what are called knuckle walkers. They don't really have bipedal locomotion, and they don't really have music. They're not musical. Why was that important? Well, because it takes a lot of balance to be able to walk on two feet, because most of the, you know, much of the time you're only on one foot. And by having a keen sense of rhythm, humans are much better equipped to be able to walk on two feet. One of the ways that we see this also is in what's called rhythmic auditory stimulation. For people with Parkinson's disease, they have a lot of difficulty with walking, and the disease affects some of those. What I was talking about, the internal clocks, the rhythmic clocks for our motor movements, walking as being. Being one of the most basic. And yet, if you take a metronome for a lot of these people and just give them a metronome, so there's an external clock that's cuing them about their walking. Their walking is much better just by having that externally cued stimulus, because they have an impairment of their internally cued stimulus because of the disease. So I think. And we can't prove this, but I think that that's where rhythm and music first showed up in human evolution. Now, where did melody first show up? Again, this is speculative. I suspect that it showed up in the social context of defining groups. And so we had our songs and they had their songs, and you have your songs. It was a way of being able to identify with a social group. We know that music plays a large role in social living. Some people say it's the most important role for music now. But I think that's where rhythm and melody, the two most basic ingredients of music, showed up.
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B
I wanted to just ask you to define a few terms you use in the book. The first is spectral discrimination. I have that right? And why is that important in how we perceive music?
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A
Sure. So spectral discrimination means the same thing as frequency discrimination. We're talking about the frequency of sound waves, and that's what determines a pitch. A pitch is the same thing as a tone, is the same thing as a musical note. These are all synonyms. But what separates, you know, the note A from the note C? It's the frequency of the sound waves. Every octave, for example, is a doubling of the frequency of the sound wave. So what's called concert A, the A above middle C is 440 hertz, and that's what an orchestra tunes to. So the note A in the next Octave up is 880 Hz. Hertz means free cycles per second. So how you know how many cycles per second there are? In a way, in A, in A, in a, in the up sound. So one of the things that's so key for us to be able to even have music is spectral discrimination. So we can tell what one frequency is from another. If we had no ability to distinguish the frequency of sound waves, we wouldn't have music because everything would just sound the same. But because we have frequency discrimination or spectral discrimination and they mean the same thing, we can tell one note from the next. The other thing that's important to keep in mind is what's called temporal discrimination, which becomes more important for language because there are. Temporal discrimination is being able to distinguish one sound input from another. So in music, we'll call them notes. In speech or talking, we call them phonemes. And when we speak, especially when we're excited or we're talking very fast or we're doing a television commercial, for example, we can speak with a tremendous number of phonemes per second. And because of our ability to separate them out in time, what's called temporal discrimination, we can understand one Another music, even fast music. Music generally, let's put it, music generally is going to be a slower speed than speech in terms of how quick one note is to the next as compared to one phoneme is to the next. So temporal discrimination becomes more important in speech than in music, but both use temporal discrimination.
- [22:24]
B
Could you talk a little bit about the brain's reward system and prediction error in the context that music plays a little bit with our expectation and surprising us. We don't want it too boring, but we don't want it twofold surprises where it's just difficult to grasp.
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A
So first let's talk about the reward system. The reward system is mostly a property or associated a property of the limbic brain. It's in the middle layer we've talked about the triune brain. It's mostly in the middle layer is where the limbic brain is located. And when it's informed that there's something to reward, it activates a suite of responses. Mostly those consist of both nerve signals that go through the autonomic nervous system and do things like speed up our heart, give us goosebumps, those kinds of things. And also a suite of chemical releases like dopamine especially is probably the most studied, which is often associated with pleasure. But there are also endorphins, cortisol reduction, which lowers stress, all of these things, these chemical releases and nerve signals pass out a lot of them through the brain stem, the bioregulation mechanisms of our body. But they're told to do this, by the way, limbic system. So that's basically what happens in the reward with the reward system. And then our brain notices these things in our body and that's when we have the feeling of what has happened because our brain is not aware of the reward system activating these processes. But when these processes hit our body, then the brain becomes aware of it.
- [24:22]
B
And is this dopamine, when you say the reward system?
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A
Dopamine is one of the things, one of these neurochemicals that's released in reward. For sure, it's not the only one, but it's probably the best known and perhaps the most studied. So then the question is, well, what stimulates the reward system to do its thing? And in the case of music, it's the difference between what we anticipate in the music and what the music delivers. This is one of the main schools of thought about why music is rewarded. It's not the only one, but it's probably the best known one. It's very much associated with the work that Robert zatori up at McGill has done. He's really one of the world's leading music neuroscientists. And his, his model is that mostly through learning, and that could be both. You know, we're intentional learning, or more commonly is just listening to music. In your culture and in your society, you develop tastes and what you like in music. And your brain is constantly anticipating what's going to happen next. There are actually specialized cells in the brain to do this that have been shown what's the next note that's going to happen, what's the next thing that's going to happen. And if what actually gets delivered is better than what the brain has anticipated, then the reward system is triggered to do its thing and send out that suite of neurochemicals and activate the autonomic nervous system that I just mentioned before that, before now. And it's been found that the most preferred types of music are the kind that deliver some surprises, but not too many. So there's a sweet spot if there are no surprises, boring if there are too many surprises, chaotic. So it's the sweet spot in the middle.
- [26:40]
B
I want to hit on that brain concept because I think you define it as basically the brain's job is to support the body and at its essence it is a prediction machine. Is that okay? Perfect. Yeah. I thought that was really interesting.
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A
Yeah. And if you don't mind my saying, Dr. Zatori, one of the things that he points out in his arguments is how important prediction is. It's, it's vital for our survival. It has evolutionary value. Being able to predict isn't something that just, you know, oh, wow, that's nice. We have this ability to predict. No, it's got real evolutionary value because we can have a much more effective response to whatever is happening to us if we're able to predict it.
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B
Yeah. And there's a recursive or self correcting element there, right, Sam? That we predict, we adjust the results and I guess update our, quote, mental model.
- [27:37]
A
Correct.
- [27:38]
B
Yeah. No, it's fascinating. I remember interviewing a mathematician who said we're all Bayesians at heart. Even if.
- [27:46]
A
Yeah, I mean, the, the reward reward system and word prediction error system are involved in all sorts of things, not only music, but I just confine my remarks to the context of music.
- [27:58]
B
Yeah. No, very interesting. Sam, you briefly talk about two perspectives on how the brain processes music. You label them maximalist and minimalist. Could you, could you briefly.
- [28:10]
A
Sure, yeah. So when people get. When, when I see articles in the lay press about, you know, Music. Music signs. A lot of times they're going to show these lovely scans in colors and the brain is all lit up like, you know, like you're in the middle of Times Square or something like that. And I think that's what really turns people on and gives us the impression, and this is not an incorrect impression. I don't want to miss to say this is wrong. It's not that the brain is widely activated by music. Our whole brain, not, not the whole brain, but much of the brain is affected and activated by music. And that's true. I mean, that's absolutely true. But another way of looking at it is to raise the question, well, what if this part of the brain wasn't working right? What if it wasn't there? Could we still have music? Do we really need that part? And this is where the minimalist concept comes in because, and this is the traditional way that neurologists are trained to look at things is to say, okay, well, if there were, if that part of the brain wasn't working right, could we still do music? And it turns out that much of the brain, much of the parts that light up, if we didn't have them, we could still do music. There's great work that's being done in Helsinki by Dr. Sivonen, and I apologize to him if I'm mispronouncing his word. I did communicate with him by email, but I didn't actually catch the exact pronunciation of his, of his last name. But he's a neurologist and a music neuroscientist and in a great position to, to think about these things and study. And, and he showed that, his work, showed, his team showed that there are parts of the brain that we absolutely, positively must have in order to do music. But a lot of the places that are lighting up, we could do it. We don't, we don't totally need them. Of course, that raises the question, well, what are they doing? What are all these areas that light up doing if we don't absolutely, you know, if they're not indispensable for the function? And that's debated. There are number of possibilities. Probably a lot of these places, these areas are redundant. There's a lot of redundancy in the brain, so which serves as a safety net for the brain. But the amount of brain tissue that's absolutely, positively we must have in order to do music is a much smaller amount of the brain than parts that light up when we just look at our brain and stimulate with music. And I think that that's totally cool that the brain operates this way. And it's important for people to have both of these perspectives in mind when they take a look at something. And this is how we move, how the field moves forward also.
- [31:17]
B
Absolutely. I want to ask you about the relationship between music and language, specifically with respect to the brain, because I believe in the book at some points you suggest they are. Yeah, I want to get this right, that to some extent the brain cooperates or works together with certain aspects. But there's also this parallel processing in distinct parts of the brain, namely on different ends, for music relative to language. Could you, can you talk about how the brain treats music and language either distinctly or in tandem?
- [31:49]
A
Yeah, you know, there's a. I, I use the terms parallel processing and shared processing. So shared processing means that in this context means that language and music are using similar brain real estate, and parallel process means that they're using different real estate. Okay. So there are a lot of things that are common to language and to music. For example, syntax. Syntax in language is called grammar. But syntax is also important in music. Each system of music, each genre of music has its own syntax. What notes come after what notes? How did the song progress? So every system of music and language has rules. It's often referred to as being very rule based. Another thing is working memory. Working memory is common to both. What is working memory? Well, if you go to the art museum and you look at a piece of art on the wall, you can just keep looking at it. But sounds are ephemeral. They are gone almost as fast as they came. And if we didn't have working memory, we wouldn't be able to keep a series of sounds in mind, and we wouldn't be able to do anything with it. Imagine if every sentence, when you get to the last word, you've already forgotten what the first word of the sentence was. Wouldn't be very useful. I give people the telephone analogy, telephone numbers. But you know what, Greg? Nowadays with smartphones, nobody knows their telephone number anymore. So it's kind of getting old, that analogy. But to remember a string of anything, you need working memory. And that's true for language and for music. Also on the output side, a lot of it involves breathing, articulation, mouth movements, especially with singing, of course, fine hand movements. These are common pathways. The speech or language and music can use the same parts of the brain to make these things happen. So those are examples of shared processing, whereas in parallel processing we have separate and distinct areas. I mentioned earlier that temporal discrimination is the main Component of speech, because we have a lot of phonemes coming in per unit time. Music, Spectral discrimination is more important. Being able to identify notes one from the other. So those functions are parallel. They're not the same. They're on in different areas. So why is it that they're on opposite sides of the brain? Because the auditory system, our sound system, our hearing systems, are very compact. And they have, in order to be compact, I mean, you know, compact space wise in the brain, in order for them to be compact, they need to be near the hearing, the primary hearing center of the brain. And the best way to do that is for them, one, to be around the right hemisphere's primary auditory cortex and the other to be around the left hemisphere's auditory cortex. So it solves that space, that compact space requirement.
- [35:17]
B
Yeah, that's fascinating, the way the brain handles music distinctly from language in certain respects.
- [35:24]
A
Correct.
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B
Could you briefly describe the entrainment hypothesis?
- [35:29]
A
Entrainment is really one of the coolest things about music.
- [35:32]
B
Yeah, it was a great part of your book.
- [35:34]
A
I really. Yeah, I love entrainment. It's basically being able to synchronize our movements with rhythm. And that's the, that's the most basic concept about entrainment. So entrainment was really understood, began to be understood when clock makers started making pendulum clocks a few centuries ago. And if they put two pendulum clocks on the same table or mounted them on the same wall, they noticed that over time, the pendulums would start moving exactly the same way on the two clocks. And so that's where the concept of entrainment first came into. Came, came, came to the fore. So it's the same with music. We can move our bodies to a rhythm. Walking, for example, is an, is an example of that. Dance is an example. And then multiple people can move to the same rhythm. So we can synchronize our movements with one another. So we now have the ability to physically coordinate our movements as a group. Look at, for example, in the old days. Well, prior, let's say up to the Civil War, right. In the 1800s, soldiers moved into battle formation to music. Now. Yeah, as I said, as I say in the book, they don't do that anymore, but they still march in the military because it really helps with group cohesion. And that's the other great demo. You can imagine that being able to move together in synchrony is great for going and hunting woolly mammoths and things like that. It really gives us a leg up, so to speak, on our ability to hunt our prey. But also does another thing that is it increases social bonding. There's more trust and generosity among people who synchronize their movements with one another. And so that's what leads some people to say that music, more than anything else, is a tool for social living. Just by moving together in synchrony with one another, even just singing, I mean, you don't have to move your whole body. Just singing and moving your vocal apparatus in sync with other people increases trust and social cohesion. So it's a really important piece about music and its evolutionary value.
- [38:04]
B
Yeah, I apologize. I can't remember who you quoted, but it was, let me control the music of the nation, and I care not who makes its laws. And that. That really struck me as sort of just how powerful music is.
- [38:17]
A
Right. And I think I'll. I'll look it up while we're talking. But I think that I have to give Scott Schuler, the fellow who wrote the afterword, credit for that particular comment. I'd just like to mention that Scott is former president, a past president of the national association for Music Education, and has tremendous breadth of knowledge about music and music education.
- [38:44]
B
Yeah, I really enjoyed that afterward. I thought he did a great job of the book. And actually, I do want to ask you about music education, but if we. If we could talk a little bit about the emotional impact of music, and we've talked about the brain, but, you know, I guess to ask why, when we hear a familiar song, it brings back these emotions and memories that are a little more sharper or poignant than ordinary conversation. Why is that? What's going on there?
- [39:14]
A
So there are a couple of things. When we hear a song, it's something that's remembered, but in conversation, it's not remembered. I don't say the same thing to you that I would, that I said, okay, I did. I only mention now. But if I talk to my wife, I don't go and start talking to her and say the same things that I did 30 years ago. Because every time you talk, basically, you're coming up with new words, new ways of saying things. So there really isn't a memory. You might be a memory of those specific words. You might be referring to an ep and I remembered incident. But the language itself, the words themselves are not the same. Whereas when we hear a song, yes, of course, there might be a little bit of variation. We might hear a slightly different orchestration or something like that, but it's a highly remembered piece of information. So that's one reason. And the second is Music, frankly, is so well remembered in the first place. It's remembered well in the first place because it calls up so much emotion. There's so much emotion attached to it, and things that have emotional attachment are much better remembered. And another thing that I think just about everybody recognizes is there are times in my life where I remember music so much better than other times. And there's a real sweet spot, like in your teens and twenties or maybe your early twenties, where you, you know, I don't know about you, but I'll. I'll listen to 70s music, which was when I was in that age group. It's like, oh, my God. I mean, I remember every one of these songs, but then I'll listen to something from the 90s. I don't. I don't ever remember hearing that before. I have no memory of these things. So we have a good, great ability to remember music because it's emotionally charged, and that was an emotionally charged time in our lives. So music is well remembered. The second thing is that. And I think you're probably referring to it in the. In the. Okay, before I get to that. Sorry. So it was well remembered, and it's remembered with the emotions that go with it because it's highly emotionally valenced or has a lot of emotional importance to us. That's in the normal now. So what people especially notice is what happens in individuals with dementia and how it is that they can remember these things. And yet if you have a conversation with them, it's like they don't seem to remember what they even had for breakfast.
- [41:56]
B
Yeah, exactly. I mean, obviously, Sam, they remember the music. Memory is much stronger in the. Alzheimer's then is to your point, like factual information, basic factual recall.
- [42:09]
A
Yeah. So remember what I was mentioning about people with Parkinson's who've lost the internal clock function, that you can put a metronome, give them a metronome, and that's an external cue. Well, the same thing exists in memory. There are internal cued and externally cued memories. So an internally cued memory is when you try to remember yourself what happened. And, you know, sometimes you have to stress, you have to strain, you can't remember. But then if you go, let's say you lost something, you lost something, what do we do? Well, you know, probably your mom and dad told you to do this when you were little, was, well, go retrace your steps and see if you can find it. Well, what is that retracing your steps all about? Well, you're looking for external cues to help you help jog your memory. So it's the same thing here. The people are with the dementia, they can't remember it on their own, but if you give them the external cue, they hear the song, it triggers the memory because the memory's in there, and the memory's in there with the emotion because they were remembered together. So that's what people are referring to. It's got a official title, a Meme Music Evoked Autobiographical Memory. And it's really fascinating to watch. I have to be honest with you. It's not only a phenomena. I mean, a meme is a phenomena of music. But old photos sometimes can do the same thing. For this age group, it's an externally cue. It's an external cueing of something that has emotional content, especially if, like, they're with family members. I. I'll tell you a story that I will just never forget. For as long as I. For as long as I live. My mother and her cousin, and they knew one another since they were children and they were close, but when they were in their, like, 80s and they're both in wheelchairs, I remember there was a family meal and the two of them were sitting next to one another and had nothing to do with one another, which was so not the way it used to be. So I got the idea. I saw a photograph with the two of them in it lying on a table in the dining room there. And I showed it to my mother, and she immediately recognized her cousin. So her cousin, they're both in their twenties. In the picture, she remembers she saw herself. She saw her cousin, even though she's sitting right next to her cousin the whole dinner, and then they're in their 80s. But it was just so amazing the way this externally cued visual memory triggered her recall of her cousin. But sitting there in real time, it didn't. Didn't register. It was really fascinating.
- [44:57]
B
Yeah, that's. And, I mean, it's the emotional element, I think, that plays a part here as well as just the memory. Is that right?
- [45:05]
A
Absolutely. Because she and her cousin went through life together. You know, they had same set of grandparents, they had a lot of the same relatives. They were. It was a family that we were close to, so we had a lot of shared experiences. So there was a lot of emotional content there.
- [45:22]
B
I want to move to sort of the. I guess the health benefits.
- [45:26]
A
You.
- [45:26]
B
You note the primary reason for writing this book is to discuss evolutionary aspects of music. But there's also a practical element to this book, how music can improve the qualities of Our life and our health. You know, for someone in their 40s or 50s who's either, you know, taken their last music class or played an instrument decades ago or maybe never, what would you suggest for them to incorporate music into their lives if it's not too late?
- [45:53]
A
Okay. Well, it's never too late.
- [45:55]
B
Good answer.
- [45:57]
A
That's the first thing that I always say. But keep it simple. I mean, music can be very complicated or it can be simple. Learning to play most instruments is really a daunting thing later in life. But singing is much more open to people. And if you get yourself involved in a choir. I. I interviewed a woman who directs chorale in this area, and she is totally open to anybody coming. There's no auditioning or anything like that. And she says if. If you think that you can't do it, well, yes, you can. And so just getting the support from her and the group is such a great thing. So singing certain dances are not super hard to learn to do. Both couples and. And folk dancing or line dancing. Now, anything with dancing, make sure that you have the physical stamina and balance to do it. And if you are not sure, then it might be good to consult your doctor about that. And there are a few simple instruments I talk about, like doing drum circles. I don't mean that you're going to become a drummer in a rock band, but drum circles, vowels and chimes groups, these are. These are things that are doable for people at any age. And that's what I wanted to get at in the last chapter of my book was things that are approachable, accessible to people, no matter what age they're at now. What are the benefits? So improved lung capacity, improved blood oxygenation. I mean, these are real physical benefits. Better breathing, better vascular function, better balance. If you're doing something that involves movement, These are all things that improve life quality and prolong life expectancy.
- [48:12]
B
Sam, you have another chapter, I think, towards the end as well, on just the benefits or the effectiveness of music therapy. Could you briefly talk about that?
- [48:23]
A
One of the things that I did in writing the book was I wanted to work with the music therapist as a. As a collaborator, as a consultant. In fact, I'll even back that up a little bit and tell you about Cynthia, who I mentioned in the book. She was a physical therapist in my neurology practice. And hats off to my former senior partner, who had the foresight to have physical therapists working in our office with us. Learned a lot from them. And one of the physical therapists happened to also be a Very accomplished violinist, and she brought music into her toolbox with physical therapy. And that's how I first got my exposure to music therapy. So what I knew was what's called neurologic music therapy. There's a whole branch of music therapy work for neurologic illness. And so I found a fellow out in the Cleveland, Ohio, area, and we had many interesting conversations, and he told me about all kinds of stories about what he would do and how he would work with patients to get them walking again, moving again, rehabilitating them from strokes so that they could communicate again. And I worked them into a few patient vignettes that were sort of a composite of the stories he told, plus, you know, some fictionalized elements to make them into. Into stories in the book. Since then, I've met other people in that field and also learned about some other areas of music therapy. And it's not. I think it's an underappreciated therapeutic modality. There are, you know, relative to, like, physical therapists, there aren't a lot of music therapists out there, but they can offer some really interesting takes on. On rehabilitation.
- [50:32]
B
Yeah, I. I can't. I'm sorry. Oh.
- [50:36]
A
Yesterday, I was talking with a woman who does a lot of neurologic music therapy out in the Kansas City area, and she was telling you about work that she's done with people who have respiratory problems and how the study. The work that she's done has helped people to be able to breathe better, to have more lung capacity, better oxygenation of their blood, those kinds of things. These are real, real gains.
- [51:04]
B
Yeah. And you even talk about how it can be used for language as well. That was. Yeah, yeah.
- [51:11]
A
The technique is known as melodic intonation therapy. And basically what it tries to leverage is that music skills are often intact and working normally for people who have language problems. And so you can get them to sing things that they can't say. You try to focus on very practical things, a small, you know, maybe a couple dozen things that people can say. And we're talking about language problems that severely impact, decrease ability to communicate, to express what you're trying to say. So if you can say it musically, some people can say things musically that they can't say in just ordinary speech. And that leverages the musicality of the brain that's intact in a lot of these people.
- [52:11]
B
Could you talk a little bit? You know, this book is such a great, deep dive into the brain and music and how we understand it. But as I mentioned at the beginning of the bio, you have A pretty strong musical background. You're certainly far from a beginner and maybe a very accomplished amateur professional. Could you talk about your own experience with music growing up and even today?
- [52:36]
A
Okay, I am definitely not a professional, so I'm kind of like a lot of people. I didn't practice enough when I was a kid is what it gets down to. And, boy, that makes a difference. You know, when you get kids who practice and they come good at something, it is so second nature to them. Wouldn't it be great if we could, you know, what's the old saying about I wish I knew now what I knew. I wish knew then what I knew now. And something, you know, sayings like that boy, wouldn't he redo our childhood, like, practice a lot more? So I was introduced to piano when I was in. I guess I was about second grade when I started taking lessons. And I was one of these on again, off again, people with it. I didn't practice enough kind of thing, but I still do it. And I'm. I mean, I'm at a level where when I give talks, I can play music during the talk, but I'm certainly nowhere near any kind of level that somebody would call professional. But I enjoy it. And lately, and I've always enjoyed singing lately, my wife and I have gotten into dancing, which is really fantastic. There's so many, you know, it's real exercise. We went. We went to a swing dance this past weekend. That's a lot of aerobic exercise, and it's a lot of fun. And it doesn't take a lot of, you know, experience to be able to do that kind of dancing. You could see people out on the floor. Some of them were real experts, but some of them were pretty basic, but they were having a good time. And that's the important thing, is to do what you can do and enjoy doing it. That's one of the things that I really like about the dancing, is that you can just be at your own level and just enjoy doing it.
- [54:43]
B
Yeah, that's great, Sam. That's probably a great segue to the final question. What do you hope readers take away from music between your ears?
- [54:53]
A
That they engage actively with music. And that's why I have the last section of the book. It's a bit of an ask. Of course, I want them to understand the things I'm talking about. Basic brain science, how the brain works, which is so fascinating, and the evolutionary value of music to the brain. I do want them to understand that. That's the main reasons I wrote the book. But as far as doing is to engage actively with music. And I would just like to say that that's one of the reasons why I asked Scott Schulich. Right. The afterward about music education. But there were some things that he, he wrote, you know, he was involved in setting up some national standards for music, but there were some things that he didn't touch on that I, as coming from a more scientific background, feel strongly about. And that is to. I would like to see music viewed more as a science or at least taught in conjunction with sciences, like at the high school level, for example. I mean, for example, what about physics? There's a lot of physics involved with sound and music. They can be taught conjointly. History. History can be taught through music, not just through literature, math. I mean, so much of music is mathematical and the ancient Greeks even knew this. This is not new, but it's sort of been forgotten. But there is also one other thing that I really would like to encourage the music educationist field to think about is what kind of goals can we set up? Lifetime goals can we set up for people who aren't going to be professional musicians, which is most of us, because a lot of people are exposed to music by the time they finish high school, but very few people continue with any kind of musical engagement past the age of 30. What kind of goals can we come up with for people to continue to be involved with music throughout the course of their life? I think that that's a question that needs some thought. Would benefit from thought.
- [57:18]
B
Excellent. Yeah, I think you definitely make a strong case for that. Sam, thank you so much for joining me today. I really enjoyed the conversation. Highly recommend Music between your ears to audience. Like I said, it's wonderful in the science, but also on the practical benefits, make a very strong case for everyone incorporating music into their lives.
- [57:40]
A
Thank you. Greg. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you. I'd also like to send a shout out to my publisher, Johns Hopkins University Press, for believing in the book and for supporting me in this adventure.
- [57:52]
B
Absolutely. If ever there was a science press, that's about as good as it gets. So thank you to them as well for publishing the book. Thanks again, Sam.
- [58:01]
A
Thank you. Thank you for listening to this episode of the New Books Network. We are an academic podcast network with the mission of public education. If you liked this episode, please share it with a friend and rate us on your preferred podcast platform. You can browse all of our episodes on our website, newbooksnetwork.com Connect with us on Instagram and BlueSky with the handle ew booksnetwork and subscribe to our weekly Substack newsletter at newbooksnetwork.substack.com to get episode recommendations straight to your inbox.