BW: You said musical training changes the brain over the long term. Can you elaborate?
JG: In terms of brain changes, we see that sound processing and movement areas seem to have more brain devoted to them in musicians. And there’s more communication between their movement areas. That makes sense, because a lot of musicians have a lot of coordinating between the two hands.
Whether that makes us smarter or not, is a real chicken-or-the-egg problem. People with musical training do generally score better on various cognitive tests. However, they also tend to come from families with higher socio-economic backgrounds — something we also know influences test performance. Often the personalities of people who persevere at music might be personalities that also lead them to do better on these tests.
BW: Several studies have demonstrated the therapeutic effects of music. Are we ready to use music in therapy?
JG: There are benefits for music in hospitals and clinics, for those with dementia, for example, or people who are in long-term care facilities, because music can be used to improve mood. People with dementia often have mood problems. They become irritable because they’re confused. They’re frustrated because they’re not allowed to do things they think they should be allowed to do. There’s also evidence for music in pain relief. Listening to music you like — so it’s often something you choose — can reduce the amount of painkillers required for certain procedures, or during recovery from surgery. I’ve been looking at particular patient groups who have movement problems, like Parkinson’s disease. There’s some evidence that music or rhythm that is presented to them at close to their walking rate helps with movement.
BW: When scientists look at the response of the brain to music, does it tell us something about brain function in general?
JG: That’s one of the main arguments for looking at music. It’s a complex activity, particularly when people participate in music. Some people get a lot of training, some get hardly any. So we can see how exposure to these complex systems affects the brain. It’s a nice way to examine, for example, what training can do to the brain because people who learn musical instruments practice hours and hours.
You can look at what it does to their auditory and movement systems. Do their auditory-movement systems communicate more? Are there structural differences? We can’t study music perception in other species, because a lot of other species don’t respond to music the way we do. So music can tell us about some brain functions unique to humans. It tells us what’s special about being human.
BW: Do we understand anything about the responses to music in animals?
JG: Animals that are our close evolutionary relatives have not shown response to music. No monkeys or primates seem to respond this way. However, birds are the closest we see this sort of response in. Certain types of birds, such as parrots, parakeets, cockatiels, seem to be able to synchronize beats. Some seem to be able to move to music the way we do. There’s recent evidence that a sea lion was trained to move to beat. And the sea lion first learned a simple set of clicks but it was spontaneously able to do this with music later. But it’s unclear if they can do it spontaneously without human intervention.
BW: If you had the liberty to set the agenda for the research on the neuroscience of music, what areas would you focus on?
JG: One thing our culture has done in the last 50 or 100 years is take music away from being a participatory thing that everybody does to something we just consume. Local dances would be a thing that everyone would go to. Everyone would know Christmas carols, hymns, and folk songs, and they would sing those together. There was a lot of music as part of the community. So the songs that they knew crossed generations. We have moved away from that — we have people who perform music and people who consume music. People who consume music don’t feel qualified to participate in that experience, and I think that’s something we could study more. What are the effects of not participating in music in the same way and telling people when they’re young: “Oh, you can’t do music. You don’t have talent.” I would be quite interested in that.
BW: People are curious about musical genius. Is it genes, the environment, early exposure, or cultural effects?
JG: It is probably a combination of all those things. No one has found any genetic variants. There might be a little bit of genetic component to something like perfect pitch, but starting early seems to help for sure, and so does having lots of exposure, but even with all of that, there are people who seem to pick up things faster than others. It’s not entirely clear why that happens. It’s probably the same with any other skill. Practice will get you a long way, but there will be people who, with the same amount of practice, will be better than others.
BW: Have researchers succeeded in figuring out the basis of variation in musical preferences?
JG: Most of the evidence suggests that culture does play a big role. But different people in the same culture have different preferences, too. I don’t think anyone has pinned down anything from the neuroscience perspective about what might lead to those differences.
BW: There has been some research showing a connection between blindness and musical talent. Some studies have shown that blindness might aid hearing ability, and some great musicians like Stevie Wonder were blind.
JG: It makes sense that if you don’t have one of your senses, you are going to develop the others to a slightly greater degree. It could mean that you spend more time on other things that relate to those senses and that’s why you have a tendency to be better, or that there’s a brain tissue that should have been visual and now can be used for these auditory things that couldn’t possibly be used before. Someone like Stevie Wonder was probably always going to be that talented and maybe the blindness meant that he focussed more on that side of his life. It’s a little bit hard to know.
BW: I have no talent for music at all. I have been trying to learn the guitar for a year now, but failed to master even the bare basics. Is there hope for someone like me?
JG: I think there’s absolutely hope for people like you. Learning an instrument is a complicated and difficult thing, and sometimes we don’t cut ourselves enough slack, for the fact that we are doing something that is incredibly difficult. You may need tips from people who play about how to deal with some of the issues. Maybe you’ll never be Jimi Hendrix but you can definitely develop the competence. It is about getting feedback and dedicating time.
This article was first published in Brain World Magazine’s Summer 2015 issue.
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