♪ (guitar music) ♪
(Peter) These days, we hear music all the time.
It wakes us up, motivates our workouts,
keeps us company on our commutes.
It doesn't matter what kind of music it is,
music itself has the ability to affect our moods and our bodies
in all sorts of ways.
We nod our heads, we sway, dance.
Music can give us chills,
even make us cry.
Music activates every area of the brain that we have so far mapped.
There's no area of the brain we know about
that music doesn't touch in some way.
But what's behind all that?
What exactly does music do to us?
To find out, I went to a whole series of tests
designed to measure my responses to music.
I met some kids whose brains may actually be changing,
thanks to those hours of learning, practice, and performing.
I spoke with a therapist who used music
to help former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords
learn to speak again,
and got a glimpse inside the brain
of a two-time Grammy-winning artist
while he played...
♪ (playing and singing) ♪
...all to find out how music affects us.
♪ (upbeat music) ♪
So what's going on when we listen to music?
We visited the USC Brain and Creativity Institute,
where I had my head examined, literally,
to try to figure it out.
I'm going to go into this fMRI machine.
A tiny tube will surround me.
We'll get a baseline reading of my brain.
Then I'm going to listen to some music,
and we're going to see how my brain responds.
Just close your eyes, relax,
and try and get into the music as best you can, okay?
♪ (classical music) ♪
(Peter) And here's what we saw.
These are scans of my brain.
The areas in red are where my activity is above average;
in blue, below average.
As you can see, there's red activity all over my brain,
not just in one specific area.
(Daniel) Twenty-five years ago,
the idea was that language is in the left side of the brain
and music is in the right side of the brain.
But now that we've got better quality tools,
higher resolution neuroimaging, and better experimental methods,
we've discovered that's not at all right.
How does that play out in different regions of the brain?
When music enters and then gets shuttled off
to different parts of the brain,
it stops at specialized processing units in auditory cortex.
They track loudness and pitch and rhythm
and timbre and things like that.
There's visual cortex activation when you're reading music as a musician
or watching music.
Motor cortex when you're tapping your feet,
snapping your fingers, clapping your hands.
And cerebellum which mediates the emotional responses.
The memory system and the hippocampus,
hearing a familiar passage,
finding it somewhere in your memory banks.
Music is going on in both halves of the brain,
the left and the right, the front and the back,
the inside and the outside.
♪ (singing) ♪
(Peter) So what about a musician's brain?
To play a piece of music engages so many things:
motor systems, timing systems,
memory systems, hearing systems.
There's all sorts of brain activity happening.
It's a very robust thing to play music.
♪ (Chopin, "Fantaisie-Impromptu") ♪
I'm Alex Jacob Robertson.
I'm Nathan Glenn Robertson.
(Peter) We asked these 11-year old musicians
to tell us what's going through their minds when they play.
Some of the most important things are, I think, good postures,
getting the note right,
legato, staccato.
♪ (violin) ♪
For the violin, you need to hold your hand at the right place,
and you need to be in tune,
and then you also have to have not only the right intonation
but the right sound,
and then you also need to have great vibrato.
There's a lot of things to think about.
(Peter) Back at USC,
researchers have been studying kids who play music over the past five years
to see how it affects their development.
The multi-tasking areas of their brains understandably lit up,
but they've seen other results, too.
Music training over the course of five years
has had benefits in cognitive skills and decision making.
It also had some benefits in prosocial behavior,
and we've also seen changes in the associated brain structures.
(Peter) Did you hear that? Changes in brain structures!
They found that the brains of children who have studied music
have stronger connections between the right and left hemispheres,
and that can make them better, more creative problem-solvers.
And then there's emotion.
♪ (cello) ♪
When you hear a piece like this...
♪ (Saint-Saëns, "Le Cygne") ♪
...it's easy to understand why emotions play such a big part in music.
This song by Camille Saint-Saëns
is known as the music for The Dying Swan in ballet.
While it might move ballerinas to dance,
it inspires different reactions in others.
♪ (cello continues) ♪
Some people get goosebumps, the chills.
That weird tingly sensation that you get
when a great piece of music just hits you in the right way?
It's called frisson, and not everyone gets it.
But it turns out I do.
Now we're going to have you listen to some pieces of music.
When you experience a chill, if you do,
I want you to just press this space bar so we have an indication
of when the peak moments of enjoyment are happening.
(Peter) Matt Sachs, a PhD candidate at USC,
wired me up to measure my physiological response.
So when I'm feeling that emotional connection
that has a physical manifestation,
we'll see what my body is actually doing?
Exactly.
♪ (cello) ♪
♪ (Saint-Saëns, "Le Cygne") ♪
Alright, how was that?
That was-- That had a lot of them.
We got them all.
(Peter) Now full disclosure: back in the day, I played the cello,
which might have something to do with why that particular song affected me.
Nice hair!
But it turns out the brain is at work here too.
We processed the difference between this pathway
that connects the auditory regions, which is on the side of the brain here,
to the emotional regions,
and we showed that the tract actually that connects those two regions
is stronger.
There's more fibers in that region in people who get chills.
(Peter) Which means some people's brains might have better communication
between what they hear and how they feel.
The music itself also plays a role in frisson.
Sachs uses different songs in his lectures to see if students get it.
I'll say, "Raise your hand when you get a chill,"
and I play a piece of music, a classical piece,
and maybe half the people will get it.
(Peter) But then he plays this...
♪ (rock music) ♪
...Rolling Stone's Gimme Shelter.
Have you ever seen the movie 20 Feet from Stardom?
- The documentary about backup singers? - Yeah.
There's a part where they isolate the vocals from Gimme Shelter.
♪ (backing vocals only) ♪
I play that, and 90% of the people experience chills,
sort of independent of where I go.
I have to tell you, bringing that up made me think about it,
and I got that little kind of thing at the back of my neck.
(Peter) But why would that happen?
The high-pitched notes that she hit almost sounds like a scream,
and it's very important ancestrally for us to be able to pay attention to a scream,
figure out what's going on,
and either run or fight, whatever we need to do.
(Peter) So how come that manifests as pleasure?
Well it's because our pre-frontal cortex,
the more rational thinking part of the brain,
kicks in.
So you realize very quickly,
after you have this really quick startle reflex,
that there's nothing actually threatening about the piece of music,
that you're sitting in a safe space with your headphones on,
and it's in that reappraisal
that we tend to think of the pleasure responses emerging.
And whether you find listening to music so pleasurable you get chills
or you absolutely despise a song,
it can produce absolutely fascinating effects in the brain.
According to Levitin, music we enjoy
triggers the brain's internal opioid system--
yes, opioid system.
Just like the opioids that come in pill form,
these chemicals make you feel good and help relieve pain.
And music you don't like? Well, that releases cortisol,
the notorious stress hormone.
But that's not even half of what music can do in the brain.
- Can you turn on the l-l-l-l-lights? - L-l-l-l...
merry chicken.
(Peter) When former congresswomen Gabrielle Giffords was shot in 2011,
the left side of her brain was severely damaged,
leaving her struggling to speak,
a condition called aphasia.
(whimpering)
Gabby, are you frustrated?
(Peter) But to get an idea of just how powerful
music's effect on the brain can be,
watch this video.
You ready?
(both) ♪ This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine ♪
(Peter) That word that she'd been struggling to say-- "light"--
came easily in song.
Why would she be able to sing a word when she's unable to say it?
What we know about the brain
is that the left hemisphere controls language,
and there are many other parts of the brain
that have music access.
(Peter) Music therapist Maegan Morrow's job
is to help patients use those other pathways to regain language.
(Maegan) Sometimes I compare it to being in traffic,
and you can't move any further,
but you might need to exit and take a feeder road
to get you to your destination.
So music is basically like that feeder road
to the new destination.
(Peter) Like a detour.
So we know that music can help us relearn things like speech
by accessing alternative pathways in the brain
and that learning to play music can help strengthen brain connections.
But what about making music?
♪ (upbeat music) ♪
To make music is like--
it's the language of humanity.
No matter where I go in the world,
man, if I'm playing something,
it doesn't matter if someone can't speak the language--
if they're into it, they're into it.
(Peter) This is Xavier Dphrepaulezz, better known as Fantastic Negrito.
We brought him to UCSF to meet Charles Limb,
a neuroscientist who studies musical creativity.
The Duffler's up next.
(Peter) To understand how Fantastic Negrito's brain works
when he's making music,
Dr. Limb had him play one of his songs while going through the fMRI.
♪ (Fantastic Negrito singing) ♪
(Peter) So how did his brain respond?
The areas that process sensory and motor skills, along with sounds,
lit up.
You can see them here in red and yellow. Makes sense, right?
But here's the really interesting part.
Limb asked him to improvise
to see what happens when he's creating something totally original.
♪ Like Star Wars in my head ♪
♪ It's like Star Wars in my head ♪
♪ I don't like this crazy sound ♪
♪ Makes me feel like I can't get down ♪
- Stop. - (laughter)
(Peter) Now watch what happens to his brain.
The areas that were active before,
the ones that deal with motor skills and sounds,
are even more active.
But see how there's way more blue in the front of his brain?
That's the pre-frontal cortex,
and it's associated with effortful planning
and conscience self-monitoring,
and it's blue because it's less active.
We see that the pre-frontal cortex appears to be really shutting down
in these moments of high creativity,
kind of like letting go
of these conscious self-censoring or self-monitoring areas
that normally are there to help control our output.
(Peter) And Limb says it's about more than just letting go.
You view it from a perspective of survival.
If human beings only could do memorized responses,
we'd be long gone.
It's not just the thing that happens in clubs and in jazz bars,
it's actually maybe the most fundamental form
of what it means to be human, to come up with a new idea.
♪ (blues) ♪
(Peter) So, music is so much more than notes on a page.
It can change the way we think and speak and feel.
But is there a limit to what science can tell us about music?
Just when I discover the answer to one thing,
five new questions pop up that are more interesting than the first,
and I've gained an appreciation
for how complex the music-making
and music-listening system is.
It's not demystified for me at all.
It's more mysterious than ever.
♪ La-la-la la-la-la ♪
♪ La la la la-la-la-la ♪
♪ La-la la ♪
♪ Lord... ♪
♪ the people ♪
(applause and cheering)