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Hey, it's Alan. And I just wanted to let you know that you can now listen to the ongoing history of new music, early and ad free on Amazon. Music included with prime.
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Sean Bean and Connie Nielsen star in Robin Hood. From Sherwood Forest to the Norman Court, a classic tale reborn for today. The story continues to unfold. New episodes Sundays on mgm.
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A participating McDonald's here is a very simple question with a very complicated answer, and I'm not even sure we know the answer. I've asked it before and I'm going to ask it again. Why do we have music? There is no known evolutionary or biological need for it. We could probably exist as a species without it, but you know, that would make life pretty dull. But our brains come hardwired for music. There are at least six separate parts of the brain that deal with music, and they all work together. Let me give you some examples. There's the auditory cortex in the temporal lobe, which stretches across our brains just behind the ears. We use this for processing sound information, including pitch and melody when it comes into our ears. But it also goes into action when we just mentally replay a song in our heads without actually hearing. Appears that the auditory cortex is where the bulk of our music memories live. It's our musical database, if you want. It's strongly connected to the hippocampus, which is the source of the bulk of our regular memories, along with memories often tied to emotions. So this explains why music can trigger strong feelings. And it's also why a song can help us remember certain events. And musical memories can survive long after the rest of the brain has been compromised, has degenerated. There's the medial prefrontal cortex, which is found on the inner surface of the frontal lobe, which sits just behind her forehead. When someone is afflicted with dementia or Alzheimer's, the this is one of the last parts of the brain to go. Musical memories survive there even when all other memories are wiped out. There is so much wondrous stuff about music and the brain and our bodies. It's just fascinating. And if we know how it all works, we can devise and implement our own personal life hacks by using nothing more than music. You can see where this is going, right? I have a lot more to say on why music is essential to the human condition. Welcome to another edition of Medical Mysteries of Music. This is the ongoing History of New Music Podcast with Alan Cross.
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Music makes a people come together.
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Music from Calgary that's out of your mouth with a rocked up version of music by Madonna released back in 2004, a top 40 hit for them too. Did that bring back any emotions and memories? If it did, that's your audio cortex working. Not only did it have to identify the song and the artist, but it had to connect it to the Madonna original, recognize that it was a different version, recall the lyrics, and then search for any musical memories associated with that particular recording. With me, for example, it brought me right back to a showcase where out of youf Mouth did at the Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto. I remember the vocalist playing a bright red guitar. I remember who I was with that night and where I stood in relation to the stage. And it all came back in milliseconds just by hearing that song. If I had been in an FMRI machine to measure my brain activity, my audio cortex would have lit up. And had someone flicked a mute button on and off during the song, the scan would have showed that my brain filled in the missing parts. If that had been an instrumental, the scan would have revealed that my brain would have had to dig deeper because it's easier to retrieve musical memories. If there are lyrics, I wouldn't have noticed the difference, but my brain would have had to bring in other regions to bring it all together. Hello again, I'm Alan Cross, and we're once again going to explore the relationship, the organized noise that his music has with our brains and bodies. Let's start with another simple question. What are the benefits of listening to music? Well, that's simple. It makes us feel good. It can make us feel sad. We might involuntarily start moving with the beat. We might unconsciously start singing along. It can pump us up or calm us down. It can help us endure being alone. Or it brings us together with people, even total strangers. And I want to go a little deeper into this. A study at the University of Buffalo found that music can function as a social surrogate. If you listen to music by yourself, it helps you connect with society even though you're alone. This is why music can help combat loneliness and isolation. It helps us with that universal need to belong, even during times when we are all by ourselves. In other words, we might put on our favorite song because we like it. Which is true. But it also turns out that in the words of the study's authority, music also fills up our social fuel tank. Not only that, but music can help reduce the effects of A social threat. So if the news cycle has you down and anxious and worried, put on a favorite tune. It's not going to change the world, but at least you won't be as freaked out. It might even help you feel safe, at least for a little while. Now that we're all feeling safe and sound, thanks to Capital cities, let's move on to this. Does your taste in music change with the time of day? Generally, yes. What we choose to listen to is incredibly contextual. Research done in Denmark analyzed over 2 billion data points derived from Spotify and found that listening preferences can be divided into five distinct time morning, afternoon, evening, night, and late night. They found that the music choices people make are connected to our natural circadian rhythms as our bodies follow the diurnal cycle, the 24 hour rotation of the earth. There are so many things our bodies do that are synchronized to all the different environmental cues of morning, noon, afternoon, evening and night. And unless we think about it, our music choices just, you know, kind of happen. It goes a long way to explaining why death metal might sound jarring first thing in the morning, or why a long house dance mix sounds brilliant at two in the morning, but is as irritating as hell at lunchtime. That's weekdays. On weekends, though, our wake and sleep patterns change. We're still synced to the diurnal cycle, but those musical preference reflexes start and end at different times and are different in length. Let's try an experiment right now. What time of day is it as you're listening to this show? Okay, let me play you this. Depending on where you are on the clock, it's possible, even probable, that this song will feel great or not so great going into your ears. How did that make you feel? Even if Nine Inch Nails is your all time favorite band, you may have noticed that if you are listening in the afternoon or evening, it had a greater emotional and physical impact than if you were listening at, say, I don't know, seven in the morning. Radio stations are keenly aware of circadian rhythms on musical tolerance. Heavy tracks just aren't played on the morning show or even much before noon. The only thing that blunts the emotional and physical response to a heavy song at the wrong time of day is familiarity. Even the heaviest songs may not feel as heavy when once they're sufficiently familiar. Okay, time for a hard left turn. Do psychopaths like music? Well, very often, yes. Okay, if so, what kind of songs do they prefer? You might think back to Alex, the protagonist in the movie Clockwork Orange, who was a massive fan of classical music, especially Beethoven, in between engaging in some of the old ultra violence and in out. Or maybe Patrick Bateman, the serial killer in American Psycho. He was into Huey Lewis in the News. Phil Collins and Whitney Houston New York University did some research into the musical preferences of psychopaths, I.e. people with deficient emotional responses, lack of empathy and poor behavioral controls. Some psychopaths love ultraviolence and Silence of the Lambs like murder, while others are just bad people who blend into society. This study tested 200 people for psychopathy. They were told to listen to a selection of 260 songs to see if there was any correlation between their mental state, their psychopathy and their musical preferences. First of all, the least psychopathic subjects in the study clearly gravitated towards My Sharona from the nac. The the top ranking song for people who scored high on the psychopathic scale included no Diggity by Blackstreet and this one from Eminem. Like that song no judgment for me, but you could be a psychopath or not. More research needs to be done. In a moment we're going to dig into the annoying affliction known as earworms.
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We have all had a song stuck in our head. Estimates are that this happens to about 98% of all people and this is colloquially known as an earworm. Other names are Sticky Music and Stuck song syndrome. The worst cases are debilitating and it makes it impossible for people to function. This is where we get into the world of involuntary musical imagery and musical hallucinations. These are real conditions that require medical intervention. The word earworm first appeared in a 1977 novel called Flyaway by Desmond Bagley. Its origin Is from the German word earworm, which refers to an ancient medical treatment when earwigs. Yes, the insect were dried, ground up and stuck into ears to treat various ear related diseases. Earworms aren't confined to just music. Recent studies indicate that random lines of dialogue from video games can also get stuck in a loop. Hanukkah, Finish him. Remember, no Russian. That kind of thing. But let's concentrate on music. Musical earworms are usually a loop that runs 10 or 15 seconds. Why that length? Because that seems to be the audio cortex's buffer before the music heads to the rest of the brain for processing. It's the equivalent of a spinning beach ball or a stuck hourglass on your computer. Earworms are equally common in men and women, Although in women that loop tends to stick around longer. Women also report being more irritated by earworms than men. People with obsessive compulsive tendencies tend to suffer from more earworms than the general population. It's thought this is because they struggle with various intrusive and bossy thoughts that are difficult to control. It's also been reported that creative people and those classified as perfectionists get them more often than everyone else. If a person is diagnosed with neuroticism, the tendency to experience negative emotions like anger, depression and anxiety, they get them a lot too. Stress seems to be a factor. Cortisol, the body's stress hormone, may temporarily try to reorder the chaos in your head by summoning a song that's both melodic and repetitive. So it's a defense mechanism. So yes, the earworm is annoying, but it does divert your attention away from whatever may be causing you to be anxious. So yes, a self defense mechanism. If you run into this issue, try calling out We Will Rock youk by Queen. Doctors say that might help with your stress. Although it does introduce an annoying loop of Queen that might go on for some time. The cause could be environmental. Maybe you're somewhere that somehow brings up a memory attached to a song. If that song is extra repetitive in its construction, the stronger the earworm. This is because our brains are wired to recognize patterns. The patterns in catchy songs are especially, well, catchy, causing the brain to latch onto that memory. Earworms are related to our evolutionary survival instincts. What makes for a good earworm? The major characteristic is melodic content and can be summed up like if a part of a song follows the simple rhythmic rules of a nursery rhyme, it has a greater chance of being an earworm. Which explains that Cars for kids jingle. Oh no. That's in my head. Oh no. Anyway, let's move on. The second feature involves tempo. Faster songs with frequent changes in tempo are more likely to get stuck in your head. I once saw a formula that describes things mathematically. I don't know how real this is, but it's kind of cool. Receptiveness plus predictability minus surprise plus melodic potency plus melodic repetition times 1.5 equals earworm along with Queen's we will rock youk Shake it off from Taylor Swift, the Village People's ymca, and this one by Baha Men are among the worst. Sorry about that. You're now probably wondering, okay, I got that who let the dogs out thing in my head. How do I flush it out? Well, I have several suggestions. First, locate the song in the real world and listen to it all the way through. This may give your brain the closure it craves. Another option is to distract yourself with a mentally demanding task such as a Sudoku puzzle or some other brain teasing activity. You can also sing or play another song that might override the earworm. And finally, and I know this sounds weird, Chew some gum. This simple act disrupts the brain's activity to process rhythm. Now let's conduct another experiment. This song has been determined to be earwormy, especially the doo doo doo in the chorus. I'm going to play it, but you might want to have a pack of chewing gum standing by to get me.
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Through this semitone alive.
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Baby, baby, I want some Here are a few more studies about music and the brain that you might find interesting. It sounds weird, but the science here is solid. Stay with me. Researchers collected a bunch of guinea pigs, and I mean the actual furry little animal, and forced them to listen to an uncompressed version of the song I Miss yous by Adele. Over and over and over again, this is what the little guys heard. Now why would you do that to a group of cute little guinea pigs? Well, hang on. Like I said, the science is sound. The experiment wasn't just about playing the same song over and over. The word in what I said was uncompressed, meaning that the recording had all the original dynamic range. In the original performance, the loud bits are loud and the quiet bits are quiet like it was intended. In most recordings today, the digital signal is compressed to reduce the difference in dynamic range. Taken to the extreme, the results are awful. The music sounds mushed and listener fatigue sets in very quickly. This fetish of compressing songs to make them appear louder is known as the loudness wars. The scientists goal with the guinea pigs was to prove that there is a limit to the amount of compression that should be used on a recording. One group of guinea pigs listened to an uncompressed version of the Dell song, while the other listened to a compressed recording. In both cases, the volume level was 102 decibels, which even for a human, is pushing it. Here's what the researchers Extended exposure to this music at this volume damaged the inner ear. At first the impairment was temporary, then it was permanent. Duh, right? Compressed music can damage hearing in ways that uncompressed music will not. The middle ear's stapedius muscle, a tiny 1 millimeter thing, gets very stressed by compressed music, and that can lead to permanent damage. There's more enjoyment derived from uncompressed music because the quiet bits give the brain time to process what it just heard and to anticipate what might come next. So would someone please pass along this information to the Red Hot chili peppers? Their 1999 album Californication is is one of the most compressed, most mushed up recordings ever released. The music is actually distorted and it gets worse when you hear a song like this on FM radio because radio stations add their own level of compression. And don't get me started on what happens when this is ripped to an MP3. If you find it hard to get through the entire Californication album in one listening because something feels off, we have just diagnosed the problem thanks to some guinea pigs.
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It's the edge of the world in all of Western civilization. The sun may rise in the east. At least it's settled in a final location. It's understood that Hollywood sells Californication.
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Let's try another experiment. Music can change your sense of taste. This is from a study conducted by the University of Bristol. They determined that songs with high frequencies will make food taste sweeter. If the song has a lot of bass, you will taste more bitterness and saltiness in your food. If you have some chocolate nearby, grab it. A square of basic milk chocolate will melt in your mouth in around 80 seconds. What happens is that the coca coats your palate, the sugar dissolves, and your brain registers that you're tasting something sweet. But if you listen to music with high frequencies at this same time, that same square of milk chocolate will taste even sweeter. Researchers even composed a song to prove this. It's called the Sweetest Melody. It runs just over a minute at 78bpm, which coincides nicely with the melting of the chocolate in your mouth. Remember, a square of milk chocolate will melt in about 80 seconds. If you want to test this out? Pop in that chocolate or whatever sweet thing that you have on hand and listen to this. If you didn't have anything sweet to experiment with that music, just look up Sweetest Melody on YouTube and you can try it anytime and I swear to God it works. I have a few more medical mysteries of music for this episode and we need to talk about your friend who just doesn't get music.
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Hey friends, it's Karamo, talk show host, life coach, and your next best friend. You just don't know it yet. I'm hosting a new podcast called Start it on Brotherhoods. We're going around the world to explore male friendships and all the wins, challenges and bonds that are made in WhatsApp group chats. And that's exactly where you can listen to it, right in the app. It's streaming on the official WhatsApp channel. Just open the app and go to the Updates tab to start listening. While you're at it, message your best friend and make sure they listen too. I'll see you there.
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This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Listening to this podcast Smart move. Being financially savvy. Smart move. Another smart move having State Farm help you create a competitive price when you choose to bundle home and auto bundling. Just another way to save with a personal price plan like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer, availability, amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state.
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Let's continue with a few more medical mysteries of music. Chances are, you know, someone who just doesn't really care about music for some reason, listening to music just doesn't do it for them. This could be a neurological condition known as amusia. There are two types of a congenital sort and the kind that might be acquired after some kind of brain trauma like a head injury or a stroke. Researchers put volunteers through state of the art MRI tests and played the music. Those who claimed not to enjoy the music were found to have lower blood flow in the brain's reward networks. Their brains just can't process or recognize pitch, melody or rhythm. It's just the sound. It's flat, it's emotionless, and to them it's pointless. It can be so severe that if just one note in the world's most popular song, just one note, if it is off, like slightly out of tune, then that person may not be able to recognize the entire song. Basically, music enters the auditory cortex and it doesn't know what to do with it. Nor do other parts of the brain. So this suggests that these people have less functional connectivity between the auditory processing center and reward centers. So in other words, music does not prompt the brain to produce dopamine, the body's feel good hormone. And no dopamine, no pleasure. Why? Nobody knows. About 4% of the general population is born with musical amusia. The others have suffered something like a stroke. So it's, I guess, time to shove more people into the MRI machine. Here's something insanely cheerful from Coldplay. To those with musical amusia, it's just noise. Time to burn through a few more medical mysteries of music before we wrap things up. Mosquitoes are not just annoying, but they're the most dangerous animals on earth. More people die from diseases transmitted by mosquito bites than any other animal related death. You can look it up. Personal insect repellents like DEET work, but there's gotta be a more organic way. Other than what? Citrus candles? But what? Well, music. A study has suggested that dubstep is best for repelling mosquitoes. And the best track of all scary monsters and nice Sprites, the 2010 track from Skrillex. It buries deep into the brains of mosquitoes and sends them packing.
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Yes.
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Oh, my God.
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Here's a trick you might want to try. If you're trying to listen to a conversation but the music is too loud, start by concentrating on the person as much as possible. And then surreptitiously, so they don't think you're being rude, start tapping your fingers in a steady rhythm. That's it. That's all you have to do. Researchers in France found that the simple act of tapping your fingers in a noisy environment will make it easier to pick out speech and other sounds. Why? Don't know. They're not sure. It seems to have something to do with the connection between our ability to process speech and our body's motor system. Tapping your finger somehow contributes to the integration and reuse of temporal function. But again, let me go through that tip. Do your finger tapping out of sight, because otherwise it looks like you're fidgeting impatiently. I learned this the hard way from my wife. And when I tried to explain it to her, she didn't buy it. So take it from me. Need to get into the right headspace for something? Use music. I ran across this study. Listening to music at home will make you on average 11% happier and 24% less irritable when you're looking for music to increase your productivity. When it comes to repetitive tasks, the best choices are the songs you like best. There is no one fits all size solution. If you're looking for music to boost your creativity, go with music between 50 and 80 beats per minute. That helps induce the alpha state within the brain, a zone in which we're both calm and alert. Our imagination is fired up and we can concentrate more deeply. Bring that up the next time your boss yells at you for wearing headphones at work. However, if you are studying for an exam, do not use music at all. British researchers say that studying in a quiet room no music could boost your final mark by up to 60%. How about this study? Researchers looked at 9,000 twins and found that some people are just wired to connect with music on levels deeper than everyone else. This may be a genetic thing too. Some people get the full dose of those genes, while others are only provided with a small serving. The difference in music connection can be as much as 70%. And finally, there's this. When you're feeling lonely, something happens to your hearing. A 12 year study of nearly half a million adults in the UK found that loneliness increases the risk of hearing loss by 24%. Sensorial hearing loss, the type that affects the inner ear and auditory nerves, was most strongly linked to loneliness. Who's most at risk? Women, especially those going through tough financial times. Music just won't sound the same to them if they're in that headspace. But music can help with that too. Hebrew University of Jerusalem says that music can be used to navigate through isolation, grief and general emotional distress. How they looked at 2,800 people in 11 countries and they found that sadness can be mitigated by listening to songs with lyrics dealing with loss, death, life and belonging. In other words, listening to sad songs can in fact end up making you feel happy. Tempo, harmony key played no role. It's all about the lyrics, which somehow allow for better emotional self regulation. Which explains the popularity of the Smith.
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Said so for once in my life, let me get one.
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There. Feel better? Science says you should. The body, the brain and music exist in a strange and wonderful sense of harmony. The more these relationships are studied, the more it becomes clear that music is extremely important to our mental and physical well being. This is the topic that just keeps on giving. This is the sixth time I've done a Medical Mysteries of Music episode and most of them are available as podcasts. If you want to go back and check them out, they're available wherever podcasts are. Other notes I'm on most of the social media networks. Maybe we can find each other there. I have my website ajournalofmusicalthings.com which is updated with music news, music recommendations, analysis and quite often stories that link music with medicine. And you can keep track with everything with my daily newsletter which is also free. And I have this other podcast which is a true crime meets music thing called Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry. I'd love it if you could check that out. All email can go to AllenCross CA and yes, I read and answer all my own email. Technical productions by Rob Johnston. Talk to you next time. I'm Alan Cross.
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You know the words that dominate our news cycle.
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Private equity keeps investing Generative article Gains.
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Tax on home America's fueled by market volatility.
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Do you truly understand how they impact your world and your wallet? In a world that skims the what, understand the why. Because context changes everything. Subscribe to Learn more@Bloomberg.com the global benchmark for business news.