Musicophilia - Sacks Is Back on the Brain-Music Trail

I've been delighted to see Oliver Sacks' book Musicophilia get widespread media attention and popular support. Dr. Sacks' earlier work was pivotal in turning me to mine. Before PET scans, MRIs, and other brain imaging technologies came along to start to shed light on the structural sources of music's profound and diverse powers, Dr. Sacks was telling the tale in human terms -- for instance, in The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, first out in 1985. Now, with the technological revolution in brain research well underway, Dr. Sacks is back with a book that brings new discoveries to bear (mostly in footnotes) but still focuses, insistently, on the human experience of music's workings on the brain, and the brain's workings on music.

I may be six months late in chiming into the commentary on the book, while I read and absorbed it and did a lot of other things, but this is a work with legs to last through time. So without worries that Musicophilia's fifteen minutes have flown, comment I will -- a bit at a time, as relates to braintuning principles, or not.

In Chapter 1, "A Bolt from the Blue: Sudden Musicophilia," Dr. Sacks examines people whose musical response or even talent intensify dramatically after a brain event. His centerpiece is a surgeon, medically adept but a music know-nothing, who gets struck by lightning, develops an unprecendented longing for piano music, and becomes an acclaimed concert pianist and composer -- as an adult and in fairly short order. If you've ever struggled away at the keyboard and cursed your parents for failing to give you piano lessons in your formative early years, perhaps you should keep an eye out for electrical storms.

This example and others in the chapter show how deeply interwoven our musical response is with our individual brain wiring, and how widely the results can vary between people. Brain differences may well account for at least some aspects of musical talent, and it seems less than far-fetched to think that our neural wiring may also affect our musical preferences, helping to explain how two siblings growing up in the same household at the same time can come out with a taste for Beethoven on the one hand and Limp Bizkit on the other. Trust me, it happens.

Ethnomusicologists and scientists wonder a lot about musical preferences, which can serve to unite and divide alike. As I've previously blogged about, research suggests a correlation between musical preferences and personality (at least within a single musical culture, which I won't try to define here). A common something underlies our individual responses both to music and to life at large. Taken a step further, music not only manifests individually in brain, but in some way lies at the core of our being as a self in the world.

Find out more about what your musical preferences say about you by taking the Short Test of Musical Preferences (STOMP - be careful not to scroll below the line to the scoring portion before you've completed the scale), then comparing your score to various sectors of the population.

More Music for Your Workout

The New York Times provides a reminder about that delicious, nutritious ingredient in meeting your new year's fitness resolutions -- music. "They're Playing My Song" describes a scale for rating the motivational power of music, called the Brunel Music Rating Inventory, developed by British doctor Costas Karageorghis. The components of great music to motivate exercise, according to the BMRI, should sound familiar to those of you who Energize in braintuning style: strong rhythm, positive mood, personal preference, variety, a playback system that blocks interfering sounds, and -- oh wait a minute.

The NYT piece doesn't hit the most important point until the bottom of the page: To optimize music's entrainment effect, you need to match the beats per minute of the music boasting all the above qualities to the speed of your movements. Reserve the 120-140 BPM range the NYT recommends for power walking and the breast stroke, and when it's time to run (unless like molasses in January), push the pace to 160 BPM or above.

I'm happy to say I don't know the BPM of Wham's "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" offhand, but if that tune passes your personal preference test, count away.

Merry Christmas

The Drifters melodiously wish for a Christmas that's white -- a nice nostalgia break after too much time with the new Wii.

http://www.thecompassgroup.biz/merryxmas.swf

Tunes to Defy the Headphone Ban

In an update to last week's entry, I just stumbled across an unexpected running tune. Keep the beat with your feet to Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get It On," and according to the treadmill, you'll clock 11-minute miles. That's hot. (Whether you're defying a headphone ban or not.)

Music for Your Marathon

The group that manages marathons around the country has finally figured it out: music gives athletes a competitive edge. So suddenly impressed is USA Track & Field by this fact that they've taken the unprecedented step of banning portable music players from marathons.

The ban has led to a rumpus on both sides of the issue. Old-schoolers who think music is anathema to a marathon competition, not least because of the performance boost, love the ban. New-schoolers are so devoted to their musical running partner that they're risking disqualification by defying the ban in droves.

Fortunately you remain free to wear earbuds at the gym or running around the local reservoir (for which you want open construction headphones that let you hear cars and such). Depending on your pace, your running tunes should clock in around 160-170 beats per minute and have Energizing characteristics. Build a playlist with your favorites and play it on shuffle so you can't predict the segues -- surprise adds to the energizing effect. A recent addition to my list (which I'm not admitting to my friends lapping up the new Radiohead) is "Hold My Hand" by Hootie and the Blowfish. It's the right speed to set the pace and spur endurance, and with Hootie intoning "I will run with you," the steps fly by.

You can get New York Times readers' favorite workout tunes, along with lots of comments on the headphone ban, here.

Internet Radio Day of Silence

Darn it's quiet today.

This Is Your Brain on Money

This is your brain on money: Write a check to charity, get a pleasure hit. Sell your sorry old Ford stock at a loss instead of your high-flying Google shares at a gain, and feel a deep pain in your brain that belies the fact that dumping the loser is the smart thing to do. Folks, welcome to neuroeconomics, a recent entry in the quest to link up brain structures and functions with how we are as humans.

Scientists are using MRI technology -- the same machines that have yielded much insight about how music works in the brain -- to study the brain centers involved in making money decisions. The results are standing the dismal science on its head. It turns out we might not make getting and spending choices in the rational way economists presume. Our money-related behavior may stem instead from rather irrational responses to pleasure and pain.

First, on why you'd sell Google and hold Ford: Behavioral studies show that people feel the pain of an economic loss about twice as much as the pleasure of an economic gain -- and recent research suggests it may be your brain to blame. In a study that used MRI to peek at the brains of people making gambling decisions, researchers found that as the potential for gains rose, the participants showed increased activity in the brain's dopamine systems. As the potential for losses increased, on the other hand, activity decreased. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter released not by higher thought, but by things like eating food, having sex, and taking drugs. Apparently, the prospect of losing yummy dopamine is significantly more terrible than getting more is good, and this drives our financial decisions.

Another recent study reported in the journal Science used MRIs to discover that giving money to charity lights up brain areas called the nucleus accumbens and the caudate nucleus -- pleasure centers, again, which might help explain why we give money away when any rational economic maximizer would keep it for herself.

Could we get an MRI study that introduces music into the mind-money equation? Retailers have long known that playing Energizing music makes consumers buy more, which may relate to the increased brain wave activity, confidence and drive to do that Energizing music can cause.

If your brain on money is less rational than you might like, counter by putting your brain on the right type of music. I recommend preserving your assets by doing all your online shopping and banking to the strains of Relaxing music. When it's time to do taxes or work up a budget, Focus music keeps the clear-thinking alpha brain waves flowing. But though it may make you spend more, feel free to let the Uplifting music rip when writing checks to charity. You deserve to feel good when doing good.