Inside PBS Blog

NOVA asked: What can music tell us about our minds? And what can our minds tell us about music? Acclaimed neurologist and author Dr. Oliver Sacks answered in an episode called “Musical Minds.”

Here on Inside PBS, you had a chance to ask Dr. Sacks your own questions… and here are his answers. If you still want to know more, check out NOVA’s Q&A with Dr. Sacks.

I have a six-year- old son with autism who loves to listen to Mozart. For him, it has a calming effect, and he just loves it. Over time, should we try to vary the types of classical music that he listens to (i.e., different compositions or different composers)? Or, in your experience, will persons continue to accrue the same mental/emotional benefits from the same pieces of music over long periods of time? Heidi (via NOVA’s Q&A)

Musical taste is highly individual -- some people may be calmed by Mozart, others find that Chopin works best. Still others might prefer the Beatles. Familiarity is comforting, and I know that there are certain pieces of music (Bach's Preludes and Fugues, for example) which I can listen to almost daily and never tire of -- each time I hear something new.  If your son prefers Mozart, by all means stick with it -- but you might try to introduce other sorts of music, as well.

Why are many of us more in love with music as youths than at any other time in our lives? Maya

Because youth, for whatever developmental reasons, is ardent, lyrical, impulsive, and reactive, whereas age usually makes us more deliberate, perhaps more reflective, and less reactive.  The music which one has heard in one's youth seem to be most deeply imprinted in the mind -- and this is the music that has the most power to reach us at the other end of life, as well.  I have often seen people with Alzheimer's for whom familiar music -- usually music they loved as youths -- can have a uniquely orienting and organizing effect. This can be more powerful than any medicine.

I was wondering about music in terms of human evolution. It seems to play such a big part in our lives as humans...we also seem to be the only species who listens to and creates musical pieces. Obviously we have highly complex brains. Perhaps music evolved for some reason? Perhaps it provided some benefit to our human ancestors? I'm wondering if you could speak to this a bit. Andie

There is a great deal of debate about this question.  It has often been suggested that music did not evolve on its own but emerged as a by-product of other capacities with more obvious adaptive significance -- such as speech. But musical rhythm, with its regular pulse, is very unlike the irregular stressed syllables of speech. Did song precede speech, as Darwin suspected (he thought it might have some role in sexual selection)? One writer, Steven Mithen, proposes that speech and music developed simultaneously, as a sort of song-speech, and only later diverged.  We may never know the answer to these questions, but whether parts of the brain evolved specifically to process music, or music happened to make use of neural pathways that arose for other reasons, it is clear that music has been central to the human enterprise for 40,000 years or more. Bone flutes, some of which date back even further than this, have been found at Neanderthal campsites. Sharing music is one of the most powerful ways humans bond together, and this has obvious survival value. We still use music in this way, to come together in singing religious songs, holiday music, national anthems, protest songs, even "Happy Birthday." Music moves us, and makes us move, much more when it is shared communally.

When it was 'discovered' I had chromasynthesia, I talked with a few other chromasynthetes to compare notes, as it were. I further discovered we had no consensus regarding color and key, i.e., I see D Major as yellow, and another colleague sees it as green. Is there any research to reveal why amongst us chromasynthetes our perceptions aren't unified? (Or, perhaps, the question is: Why do we expect each other to share the same view, as we would when seeing an object?) Sue

People with synesthesia experience an involuntary commingling of sensory perceptions -- commonly, they perceive certain musical sounds (keys, tones, or timbres) as having specific colors. (But other synesthetes may associate particular musical intervals, say, with a specific taste, or particular days of the week with specific colors.) As children, synesthetes may naturally assume that everyone experiences things just as they do, and it comes as a surprise, even a shock, to realize that each synesthete has his or her own correspondences. Thus comparing notes with another synesthete may produce an intense sense of “wrongness." One woman wrote a letter to me, saying: "I have been reading your book and have just started the chapter on synesthesia, but could read no further than the third page because the person you cite defined D major as blue. I couldn’t believe my reaction at a person not feeling the same color as I do for D (vermilion red) -- it actually made me feel slightly dizzy and nauseous. I have never discussed with other synesthetes their perceptions, so I was shocked at my reaction."

Can an aging brain be more vital longer by performing and practicing music?
Harry

Yes, there is much anecdotal evidence to suggest this. David Randolph, at almost 95, is the oldest conductor working at Carnegie Hall. He has the mental agility, the spontaneity, the playfulness of a man a quarter his age, but combined with the experience and wisdom of almost a century of fully-lived life. And even if there is some intellectual frailty or dementia -- as with the great pianist Artur Balsam -- musical passions and abilities may be preserved to the end. 

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