If you would like to submit a question or make a comment, please email Dr. Taylor at thebrain@arlenetaylor.org.
A. Let’s start with the second part of your question. Embarrassment can be defined as an acute reaction to the perception that we have not met expectations. What are your expectations for your children in relation to studying music? Is your goal to stimulate brain function, to provide them with a wide range of learning opportunities, and to enrich their lives? Or are they taking lessons and playing in recitals because of your veiled need to feel okay about yourself as a parent? Are you trying to make up something you missed in your childhood? Do you expect your child to performperfectly? If so, you may be creating a stressful situation for your child, as well as yourself. As to the first part of your question, emotional stress has been found to temporarily interfere with receptors in brain synapses. This can help to explain why a child can memorize a piece of music (or a poem), and under the stress of the performance, go blank. Confidence and the ability to recall memorization may go hand-in-hand. If you are very anxious about their performance, they will likely pick this up and internalize your expectations as stress.
Of course, other factors influence the quality of one’s performance: brain lead, level of extroversion, amount of practice, and a balanced high-level-wellness lifestyle to name just a few.
You may want to explore personal growth aspects in your own life, and learn to reward effort as well as outcome, your own as well as that of your children. In an environment where excellence is encouraged, but where mistakes are viewed as opportunities for learning, embarrassment becomes less of an automatic reaction.
Research led by Daisy Fancourt found that “singing modulates mood, stress, cortisol, cytokine and neuropeptide activity in cancer patients and carers.” Members of the study group were “regular participants in five choirs across South Wales and took part in one hour of group singing.” With the new discovery last fall that immune system lymph vessels run throughout the meninges (three coverings) of the brain, whatever benefits your immune system likely benefits the brain, as well. Anecdotally, it appears that many community and church choirs have gone by the board…too bad, in light of this research. You might want to read the abstract yourself.
Interesting question and I’m glad you asked. Aphantasia is a label for a lack of all mental imagery. Some brains can imagine things like the soft feeling of a kitten or the sound of thunder with lightning but there is no accompanying “picture” or “internal mental image” in their brain. This research is quite new and it reminds all of us, me included, that every brain is different.
Relative new research on ”Aphantasia” reported that approximately 95% of individuals are able to picture things in their mind’s eye—at least at some level. That means that the brains of about 5% of individuals do not. That’s what is difficult about making presentations and writing articles and so on, as there are always outliers—brains that do things differently. Before you automatically relegate yourself to the 5 %, I suggest you do some experimenting with picturing objects or faces in your mind’s eye. You may be surprised that you can learn to visualize at some level—if not, no worries. There are other things your brain can do…enjoy those!
When you are listening to music, the short answer is a GREAT DEAL! While ears are designed to transmit sound waves, you hear with your brain as it decodes and interprets what the sound waves mean. Multiple areas of your brain are engaged and activated at the same time. Here are six things that happen in the brain when you listen to music:
When you perform music, however, that is a “horse of a different color,” as my father used to say. Performing music engages almost all areas of the brain at once—especially the portions that process and decode visual, auditory, and motor activity. Anita Collins compared playing an instrument to a full brain-body workout. Brain scans have shown that performing music actively lights up almost the entire brain. It is both complex and amazing. Think of it like a party is going on inside the brain complete with exploding fireworks. In fact, music may be the only known medium that at once activates, stimulates, and engages the entire brain.
More than 300 years ago Francois Couperin (the French composer) declared that by the age of 6 or 7, children should begin studying instruments. He was perhaps ahead of his time! Research has shown that the study of music can be advantageous to the human brain.
Music lessons and accompanying practice can stimulate the growth of dendrites on neurons (thinking cells) at almost any age. Increasing the number and length of dendrites can help to age-proof your brain. And about your age—I heard a brain research say that there is a growth spurt potential in the human brain between the ages of 50 and 60. Taking music lessons could help stimulate your brain and help set you up for a healthier retirement.
You are giving your children a real brain gift by providing them with the opportunity to study music. Why not give yourself the same gift?
The results of a study led by Dr. Bernhard Ross and colleagues were published recently in the Journal of Neuroscience (24 May 2017, 3613-16; DOI: https://doi.org/10.1523). The researchers found that playing a musical instrument can help protect against cognitive decline, a goal of healthy aging. Learning to play, versus just listening, was found to change the brain’s “wiring.” You’ve heard no doubt about brain plasticity; the ability for the brain to change its software, if you will. The sound-making actions led to immediate “plastic” changes in the brain after just one learning session. That’s more reinforcement for the value to the brain of learning to play an instrument. Of course, the earlier in life the better, assuming you would like to become exceedingly competent. Nevertheless, unless you are comatose, my brain’s opinion is “better late than never.” Some individuals began taking music lessons in their eighties, which is helping to keep their brains sharp. The report is that they’re having the time of their life! Eighty is the new sixty, you know.
Early in life you may have learned to identify the five senses by pointing to your eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and skin. Unimpaired you can use all of those senses, too, although you may be much more aware of one sense over the others in specific situations. For example:
You are most likely to feel most comfortable, affirmed, understood, nurtured, and even loved when you receive sensory stimuli in your preferred sensory system. Consequently you tend to gravitate toward, and feel most comfortable in, environments that acknowledge and reward your sensory preference. The ideal is to know your sensory preference and build sufficient skills in all three systems so you can access any or all by choice, as required by the situation at hand.
Based on your own sensory preference, you may approach the study of music quite differently from others, and may find specific musical activities easier or more energy efficient to accomplish.
Visual Sensory Preference
The two occipital lobes interpret data related to sight. Estimates are that 60% of the population has a visual preference. This sensory system helps you recognize the signs and symbols that represent musical sounds (reading music).
The occipital lobes are active when decoding visual data and during visual imaging. In combination with the frontal cortex, it enables you to maintain the image of an instrument in consciousness. Individuals with a visual preference may be inclined to memorize music by mentally seeing the notes on the page or by noticing musical patterns on the keyboard. They may find it easier to notate music legibly.
Kinesthetic Sensory Preference
The two parietal lobes interpret data related to taste, touch, position sense, physical stimuli, and odors. In combination with the frontal cortex these portions of the brain enable you to hold onto position sense (e.g., the way in which you hold a musical instrument, maintain your position on the piano or organ bench). These neurons fire when decoding kinesthetic data and during movement imagery.
This sensory system also helps you to decode vibrations that beat against the skin and/or that are felt in the 2nd brain layer or limbic system. Perhaps that was what Keats had in mind when he wrote, heard melodies are sweet but those unheard are sweeter. Incidentally, odors can trigger memories faster than any other type of sensory data. The nose is one synapse away from the amygdalae in the emotional brain that routes incoming sensory information to higher centers of association in the thinking brain.
Estimates are that 20% of the population has a kinesthetic preference. This system helps you manage your relative position to bounded shapes such as instruments, and to sense nuances of sound, including vibrations, and perhaps musical interpretation.
Individuals with a kinesthetic preference may gravitate toward tactile memorization (sensing positions of fingers, hands, and body, and how it feels to reproduce the music). They may use musculature to represent the music, modeling important features of musical patterns by means of physical memories (e.g., tap toes, “dance it out” from head to toe).
Auditory Sensory Preference
The two temporal lobes interpret data related to sounds that are heard. Estimates are that 20% of the population has an auditory preference. This system facilitates emphasis on tone color, pitch, and dynamics. It fires when decoding sounds and during auditory imaging. In combination with your frontal cortex it allows you to decode patterns of vibrations, and enables you to sustain musical anticipations for several seconds as you await their resolution.
Individuals with an auditory preference may tend to memorize by recalling the sound of the music, the intervals between notes, volume-of-sound differences, and the distinctive tones typical of the key signature(s). They may hum along with the music, or use the body as a resonator for the music, allowing themselves to be played as an instrument, as it were.
I suggest that all individuals (any age) take some type of music lessons whether or not they plan to perform. The study of music is one way to begin building competencies (skills honed through practice) throughout the brain.
PET Scan studies suggest that while innate musical ability resides in the right posterior lobes of the cerebrum, all four modes are stimulated through music lessons and practice. Studies by the Albuquerque School District showed a positive correlation between student participation in school instrumental programs and increased mental ability.
This is a very interesting question. Music Scholars refer to whistling as ‘momentary musical performing’. Other types of this form includes drumming a beat on the desk, humming while doing housework, and singing in the shower—which was found to have a calming and refreshing effect, soothing the nerves and elevating the spirits. I used to enjoy whistling. Then the dentist talked me into getting my wisdom teeth pulled and the rest of my teeth straightened. Whistling disappeared along with my wisdom teeth. The choice of tune appears to reflect the person’s whistler’s mood, or it is chosen to enhance their mood. Whistling has been found to be something humans tend to do as a way to break up the silence, the humdrum, the normal and boring, or in self-entertainment. Some people whistle while they work. You may remember seeing the 1937 version of the animated Disney film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and its song: whistle while you work. It suggested that whistling provided a pace for cleaning up the place. In the Broadway production of The King and I, many enjoyed “I Whistle a Happy Tune” as an antidote to feeling afraid. In Universal Pictures Les Misérables, the Song of Angry Men was about people who will not be slaves again. Bottom line? People whistle or sing for many different reasons, each likely as unique as each person’s brai
