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How Sound and Music Can Heal (featuring Renèe Fleming)
86 Plays2 years ago
The power of music and sound to heal the mind and body is being unlocked through new neuroscience research and education. Exciting developments are showing how music and sound can tap into important brain functions and even treat such conditions as Autism, concussion, Alzheimer's, and even aging. Yasi and Steven talk to two people at the forefront of this exploding field.
Acclaimed soprano Renèe Fleming is not only one of the most famous performers in our history, she also spearheads multiple health initiatives involving Arts and Health, such as the Healing Breath Initiative, the NeuroArts Blueprint, the Sound Health Network, and the Music and Mind Live web series.
She is joined today by Professor Nina Kraus of Northwestern University, founder of the BrainVolts Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory, and leader of an NIH-funded investigation at Northwestern to look at treating concussions with sound and rhythm. She also wrote "Of Sound Mind - How Our Brain Constructs a Meaningful Sonic World."
For more about Renèe Fleming, go to https://reneefleming.com
For more about Nina Kraus and her BrainVolts lab, go to https://www.brainvolts.northwestern.edu.
For Nina's book, "Of Sound Mind", go to https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/675902/of-sound-mind-by-nina-kraus/
For more about Athletes and the Arts, go to https://www.athletesandthearts.com
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction
00:00:06
Speaker
Welcome to the athletes in the arts podcast hosted by Stephen Karaginas and Yasi Ansari.
00:00:19
Speaker
Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Athletes in the Arts podcast, along with my co-host, Jassy Ansari. I'm Stephen Karaginas. Thank you very much for taking time out of your day to listen to our show. If you like what you hear, please leave a review and also click subscribe to make sure you get every episode when they come out.
Episode Theme: Sound and Health
00:00:34
Speaker
We represent the Athletes in the Arts initiative, so to learn more and get access to helpful resources, go to www.athletesinthearts.com.
00:00:42
Speaker
Now, our episode today is a big thrill for us as we get to talk to two amazing and highly accomplished women about the power of sound and music to shape and heal ourselves.
Introducing Guests: Nina Krauss & Renee Fleming
00:00:53
Speaker
These two individuals worked together to evangelize the intersection of art and health through research and advocacy and education.
00:01:00
Speaker
We're talking about groundbreaking work in neuroscience, the ability to use music and rhythm to treat things like concussions, Alzheimer's, autism, and even aging. First, we have Professor Nina Krauss from Northwestern University. She's the founder of the Brain Vault's Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory, where she has spent her career studying sound, its influence on reading and language,
00:01:21
Speaker
and conditions such as autism, aging, and even HIV. She leads an NIH-funded investigation into treating concussions with sound and rhythm. She also wrote the book, Of Sound Mind, How Our Brains Construct a Meaningful Sonic World.
Guests' Contributions to Neuroscience and Music
00:01:35
Speaker
Our other guest today is a special treat for us, one of the most famous and acclaimed singers in history, Renee Fleming.
00:01:41
Speaker
Now we can do a podcast just on her accomplishments, but as a performer, we can simply say that she's been nominated for 17 Grammys and won four, nominated for a Tony, performed in over 50 different operas, performed for numerous world leaders, played on numerous TV shows, movies, Broadway stages, awarded the National Medal of Arts, Sweden's Poer Music Prize, Germany's Cross of the Order of Merit, the list goes on and on.
00:02:07
Speaker
Now, if that doesn't impress you, consider this. She's the only classical singer to ever sing the national anthem at the Super Bowl, and she sings the songs in Lord of the Rings Return of the King. Spoiler alert. Remember at the end with the Eagles saving Frodo and Sam, that angelic voice singing in the background? Yep, that's her singing in Elf Tongue. Now, if that isn't impressive enough, Renee Fleming has also become a leading advocate for neuroscience research.
00:02:35
Speaker
She started the weekly web series Music and the Mind, presenting with Nina Krauss and other researchers at hospitals and universities all across the country. She's also helped start the Sound Health Network and the NeuroArts Blueprint, also published in JAMA with NIH Director Dr. Frances Collins, and received Research America Rosenfeld Award for impact on popular opinion.
00:02:57
Speaker
Very few performers have actually led the way in developing a scientific field through research, education, and advocacy quite like she has. Nina, Renee, we are so honored to have you on our show today. Thank you
Sound's Cognitive Power & Emotional Connection
00:03:10
Speaker
for being here. We're delighted to be here. Likewise. The first thing we want to talk about really is just the importance of sound and hearing to overall cognitive function because when
00:03:19
Speaker
people think about hearing. They really don't give it as much attention as like, say, vision or even like taste or touch. Tell us a little bit about how sound works with cognitive function. Well, sound is so powerful and it is such an under-recognized force in our lives. And one of the important messages is that the hearing brain is vast.
00:03:45
Speaker
And that means that it connects with our cognition, what we know. It connects with our feelings. It connects with how we bring together information from our other senses, and it connects with how we move. But, you know, sound is invisible. So it is really under-recognized, and we live in a very visually biased world, yet sound is absolutely fundamental
00:04:15
Speaker
to who we are. It's tremendously tied with our thinking, in fact, and our memories.
Brain Vaults Lab & Sound's Biological Importance
00:04:23
Speaker
And importantly, it connects us. It connects us like nothing else does. Even right now, we're talking, nobody has a script. This is alive. And it's a very intimate back and forth, back and forth connection
00:04:44
Speaker
that only sound can enable us to do. And studying this biologically, which is what I do, is just fascinating. So what led you to create your brain vaults lab at Northwestern University? You started like 30 years ago before most folks are even talking about sound as a health risk and work.
00:05:08
Speaker
Yeah, well, many things. If you look at our brain vaults website, you'll see that we study concussion and head injury. We study music, rhythm, aging, development, language. And you might wonder, well, what are they doing at brain vaults? And it's all under the umbrella of sound in the brain. I'm a biologist.
00:05:34
Speaker
What we have discovered is that, for example, as I'm talking to you now, the neurons in your brain that respond to sound are producing electricity. And we have figured out ways of measuring that really, really well so that we can get an idea about who you are. Your sonic self is very much affected by your life and sound.
Music's Role in Development and Healing
00:06:00
Speaker
And I came to this because
00:06:04
Speaker
English is not my first language. I grew up in a family where more than one language was spoken. My mom was a pianist. And my uncle, Hans, was a sports medicine man who very much believed that everyone should be physically fit in the same way as I think Renee and I believe that every child should have a musical education
00:06:34
Speaker
And it is not only, in fact, it is really for everyone and not for only the Renee Flemings and the star athletes, the people who make varsity. So, you know, I just kind of grew up with this idea, this holistic sense of we are what we do.
00:07:04
Speaker
And as a biologist, putting this together and also putting it together, you know, again, I mean, just kind of leaning on my uncle Hans, who first worked with Eisenhower and then Kennedy on the Council of Physical Fitness to help bring an awareness of physical education to everyone. It's something that I just deeply feel in founding BrainVaults and in writing my book,
00:07:34
Speaker
of sound mind, how our brain constructs a meaningful sonic world. That's my love letter to sound. And it's a message that I hope that everyone will read and realize how important sound is so that we can respect it, we can honor it, we can make the most of it, because who are we?
00:08:03
Speaker
We are our our memories and our sonic memories are tremendously, tremendously linked. And so what we do in our lives, the choices we make are really, really important. And if we can use sound for health. So with music, we know that making music strengthens the brain for thinking, for paying attention, for memory. And we know
00:08:33
Speaker
that the athlete brain is a very great brain for making sense of sensory events. And we also know, because making sense of sound is one of the hardest jobs we ask our brain to do, when you get hit in the head, you're going to disrupt that. So being able to measure sound processing in the brain, as we're doing it at brain vaults, we have an NIH grant where we're testing all of our
00:09:04
Speaker
big 10 athletes, all 500 of them before and after every season. And if an athlete sustains a concussion, we follow them very, very carefully. And it's very clear, you know, if you go to a sports medicine conference, everyone talks about vision, everybody talks about balance. And, you know, it is my hope as an ambassador, as an advocate, it is my hope that soon
00:09:33
Speaker
Um, hearing and the sound mind. Remember the hearing brain is vast that hearing and the biological health that it represents will become a major character in sports health. Yeah. One of the, it always, it's not lost on me that in a world in which we're constantly connected to, um, digital communication through texting and email, et cetera.
00:10:00
Speaker
The word tone comes up a lot being very careful about what you can't you can't actually replicate tone in that type of communication and so much is lost so much subtleties so much Of what it is We're actually trying to say gets lost for that reason and then the other thing that I always think about our lullabies lullabies are universal
00:10:21
Speaker
And infants can recognize a lullaby even if it's from a culture that's vastly different than their own. It's so much a part of our DNA. The bonding process with infants is so crucially important in their development. And a lullaby has been really one of the most important resources for that. In fact, Carnegie Hall has a great initiative in which they're teaching very, very young mothers from lower socioeconomic strata to
00:10:50
Speaker
Create their own lullabies and try to get them to connect with the babies They're going to have that means that they may be not if they may not have chosen to have and may not even Understand what it means for their lives, but this is a good head start Yeah, I mean you say babies Renee I mean everybody knows but you know, we don't think about this. Everybody knows when your baby is crying. What do you do? You rock him you rock him
00:11:20
Speaker
And so the rhythm in music is, again, part of our DNA. It's part of the rhythm of speech. But it's so fundamentally important that if we can recognize that, think about it in terms of the healing power that rhythm has, just that every parent knows.
00:11:49
Speaker
Well, and this is right. So much of this work is something that we take for granted that we kind of innately understand, but we need to see it through a scientific lens and it needs to be validated by science to gain respect and the type of validation that produces support, financial support for some of these therapies, some of these ideas. And as you said, I mean, if concussion can be identified early,
Renee Fleming's Journey from Performer to Advocate
00:12:16
Speaker
I love this work that Nina's doing with a hearing test. What a gift to these athletes who are risking their brain health to do something that should be fun. Go ahead. It's crazy that we don't always think about the auditory signs and how important it is to think about all that. Renee, what triggered your move from performer to advocate?
00:12:46
Speaker
Well, I'm still performing, but I've added the advocacy piece, which has definitely made my day an even more busy one than it already was. But passion, I would say passion. I mean, I was really struck by the day that I met Nina was at a conference at the National Institutes of Health. It was kind of a convening, really. Francis Collins and I had just started working at the Kennedy Center as a consultant.
00:13:16
Speaker
And I met Francis and said, why can we look at this interest that scientists seem to have in music in the brain? And why are they studying music in the brain? And he said, it's because the brain is extremely complicated. We want to understand it. We have a brain initiative and music has a vast effect on the brain and many, many more parts than other activities do.
00:13:37
Speaker
even just with listening. Activity is, of course, even more. So he said, you know what, it's time to kind of bring folks together in this field. And so we had, you know, researchers and therapists. And of course, those of us representing the Kennedy Center came for two days and listened to presentations and Nina's was one of them. And I was completely hooked. I just said, this is so fascinating.
00:14:03
Speaker
And I really think if people understood what the science and basic science, evolutionary science, all of that, behind this is we would definitely not be abandoning our lessons that we give to children. Or we would think about creative aging in a different way. We would add that as an important part of aging. We would take care of
00:14:27
Speaker
people with a variety of disorders, up to 50 different disorders with arts therapies. I mean, think of how it helps veterans. I mean, if you look at creative forces that the NEA has funded with Walter Reed, the help that they're giving these veterans who had tremendous brain injuries is just extraordinary. So anyway, that's why I'm an advocate because it's clear to me that there is a there,
00:14:55
Speaker
And in fact, the field is exploding at this point. What kind of therapeutic applications have you seen now with all the different people you've met in your Music in the Mind series in conditions like Alzheimer's or autism?
00:15:11
Speaker
Alzheimer's is so complicated. One of the things we already know is that music memory is the last memory to go. And I saw this with my husband's aunt, who for the last almost two years of her life could only sing songs. If you started with one word, she could sing the whole song, but she didn't know anyone around her.
00:15:32
Speaker
and was not mobile at all. So I just thought, this is amazing. And you have heard this story for many people. So, you know, and science doesn't really understand that yet. They guess that it has to do with
00:15:47
Speaker
you know, sort of muscle memory and parts of the brain that it has to do with plasticity, of course. But the improvements that are made with various therapies are extraordinary. And I know Connie Tamino, who's in Mount Vernon, is trying to utilize that music memory to maintain the connection for a little bit longer.
00:16:08
Speaker
Certainly Oliver Sacks was working on this before he passed away. The film Alive Inside, which is on YouTube, shows us a lot about this type of memory. And so there's potential. There's a lot of potential with arts therapies and various forms of dementia.
00:16:26
Speaker
My son has autism, and he actually plays video games that are very musically oriented. And his mood and everything gets so much better when he plays certain video games and have music involved in most Nintendo games, for instance. He talks about the music all the time. He's jumping around. He gets his exercise playing video games. And he becomes healthier because he's playing them because the music's driving him. So I always noticed that the musical aspect of his autism is so tied to his well-being.
00:16:56
Speaker
Oh, that's amazing. It's used a lot. Miriam Lentz in Nashville actually works with autistic children and it's a huge part of the type of therapies that they use. And I think actually music therapists are probably more active with autistic children than almost any other subset of our population. Yeah, you know, with music and autism,
Therapeutic Potential of Rhythm & Sound
00:17:22
Speaker
One of the things that we've discovered over the years is if you measure the brain's response to sound in a person on the autism spectrum, some of the aspects of sound, so the ones that really give you the information about what you mean, so if you're asking a question and your voice is going up or you're making a statement, your voice is going down, that really gives you intent
00:17:51
Speaker
Am I mad? Am I sad? Where am I going? What are my feelings? And we see that some kids on the autism spectrum, not all of them, and again, this is important because people are so different, but some of them, really, their brains don't follow a very simple contour that goes up and down. And again, we can measure this on a kid on the spectrum.
00:18:15
Speaker
just with scalp electrodes, we can see whether this is part of the problem. And again, as Renee says, the music therapy has been really, really big with autism, and especially the rhythm component. Because, you know, rhythm is an important part of both music and speech. And it's really a way to help with
00:18:45
Speaker
It helps improve language and it helps improve cognitive function, which is also somewhere that I hope we'll be able to take our athlete work to be able to someday really utilize rhythm as a therapeutic method to help with concussion recovery
00:19:14
Speaker
especially in, you know, as you know, most concussions resolve within a day or so, but there are a great number of concussions that have that where people have persistent symptoms and it takes a while to recover. And so to help speed that up, I think that there is a really big, big role for rhythm and rhythm therapies, especially digital rhythm therapies.
00:19:44
Speaker
because rhythm is so key and it is because the hearing brain is vast. Rhythm is so tied to our emotional health and to our cognitive health. And of course to how we make sense, how we connect with others and with the world.
00:20:08
Speaker
Now, I wanted to ask, what kind of impact did the arts and sound and rhythm therapies have on developing brains across the lifespan, especially in our youth? I know that we talked a lot about autism and Alzheimer's, but what about the youth and children? Speaking as a scientist, as a biologist,
Impact of Music Education on Brain Health
00:20:32
Speaker
I
00:20:33
Speaker
We've studied sound processing in the brain for across the lifespan and the data are resounding that biologically people who make music and it really is the actual making of music. It doesn't matter what instrument doesn't matter what genre of course singing counts. It is the making of music.
00:20:54
Speaker
that actually strengthens sound processing in the brain, which is absolutely essential for learning, for thinking, for connecting. So this is important throughout our life. And we can really see this biologically. And, you know, I mean, people came to Brainvault, some of the founders of music education programs, and they said, you know, we already know, the teachers said, we already know that
00:21:23
Speaker
The children who play music are the better students. What's going on in their brain? And through years and years of longitudinal studies, we were able to see that over time, and it takes time, because fortunately, the brain doesn't change every second. We have a very stable brain. But in time, when we do things again and again and again, as one does when one makes music and learns music,
00:21:49
Speaker
You rewire the brain in a way that is not only important for making music, but for communicating through sound, for reading, for thinking, for memory. It's always amazing when you see the schools cut arts right away when they have to make budget cuts, yet it's so intrinsic to normal brain function for intelligence.
00:22:17
Speaker
I saw Habibi in USC actually added to that by saying that the numbers of children with hyperactivity with ADHD went down. So it improved their ability to, when we know this again intrinsically that you have to, in order to practice an instrument, you have to focus.
00:22:35
Speaker
It takes time, it takes discipline, it takes self-discipline. So programs, for instance, especially in the lower socioeconomic groups are extremely helpful for them to be able to catch up to other kids and even surpass them because of this type of instruction. But it's the only programs that have the ability to measure the brain that can absolutely prove the changes.
00:23:01
Speaker
with FMRI and other kinds of scanning initiatives, then we can finally say, yeah, definitively, this child is a better student having been in this organization, having studied this instrument, et cetera. Yeah, I think a really important thing to remember is this is true for athleticism and for playing an instrument. When you do something again and again, your brain changes.
00:23:30
Speaker
you know, we really know that your brain can change in very measurable biological ways. But, you know, so much of what we do and when we are on the field athletically or on the field musically, we bring who we are, all this learning that we have done, our biological brains, we bring that to the moment.
00:24:00
Speaker
You know, the brain is a phenomenal predicting organ where everything that we've done up until the moment that we're performing is a part of us. And so learning biologically what makes us us, what makes Renee be able to walk out on the stage and
00:24:27
Speaker
perform the way she does is something that is only possible because of the hours and hours and hours of work that have gone into making her her. So she doesn't even have to be, she can't be thinking about every note she's singing. There's so much more going on. And so trying to understand
00:24:55
Speaker
who we are biologically is a great big deal. And we really find that the sound mind, the sound mind and really, and being able to, if I put sensors on your brains right now, I have a pretty good sense of your strengths and bottlenecks in terms of how your brain makes sense of sound. And this is,
00:25:25
Speaker
because of how you have spent your life in sound. Oh, gosh, I feel like the effects of music, it truly does heal. I think that any time that someone may be going through a challenge or a difficult time, music truly is, it's almost like medicine, really. Renee, in your work, what most surprised you about music's effect on health through your own career up until this time?
00:25:55
Speaker
You know, what are some of the things, how is it? We mostly think about kind of the emotional connection that we can create with the audience. So our relationship as performers is with the audience. And it's impressed me throughout my whole career. First of all, that people like Yo-Yo Ma, myself, those of us who perform internationally are real cultural ambassadors.
00:26:19
Speaker
for us, for our lives. And I've always been impressed by how welcoming other audiences are, no matter where they are, how open-minded, how we would be a much more happy crowd if we can understand how much we share. And so that's where I came from. But I also had issues myself. I had terrible stage fright from time to time. I had somatic pain, which is sort of
00:26:47
Speaker
You know, it's a mind-induced type of pain that can distract you from something you find distressing, which for me was performance anxiety, performance pressure. And so in order to kind of work on those things, I had, I read a lot. I started to learn and discover this mind-body connection, which wasn't particularly
00:27:05
Speaker
I'm really embraced when i was a young singer and that's why when i discovered that this was all of interest to science i thought no this is really this has potential but i would say that you know music intonation therapy is interesting to me that someone could have a
Healing Breath Initiative and Arts in Healthcare
00:27:22
Speaker
stroke.
00:27:22
Speaker
not be able to speak at all. And with one session with a board-certified music therapist, using singing, they can regain the ability to communicate because singing takes place in a different part of the brain than speech does. And so that, to me, was just mind-blowing. Or that a therapist could kind of breathe along with a
00:27:49
Speaker
Unfortunately, there are premature infants who are also born drug addicted and they can't take any sensory touch. There's so much that you can't do with them. They're just in constant distress until the withdrawal is complete and that a therapist can actually just sit next to the incubator
00:28:08
Speaker
and sing tones in training with the child's breathing and get them to calm down. I mean, so that's another way of connecting with a human being. But there are just so many different fascinating therapies, I think, definitely dealing with veterans and trauma, trauma in general.
00:28:25
Speaker
being able to use arts therapy to help with trauma. And music is one thing. There's also art therapy, visual art therapy that works incredibly well for some of these issues that people face. And right now there's no question that after
00:28:42
Speaker
the pandemic with the incredible social division that we're experiencing now in our country, the need for social cohesion, which typically over our history, human history took place by sharing a drumming or chanting or
00:28:59
Speaker
creating songs that were indicative of the tribe that we were in, that this kind of cohesion, the fabric of our society is really frayed right now. And so I just feel that this is one way we can contribute to trying to remember who we've always been and the ways in which we used to connect.
00:29:22
Speaker
And definitely the arts was one of them, some kind of expressive sharing. And we saw this in the beginning of the pandemic when people were on their balconies and singing outside of windows and on roofs. To me, I was just struck by people returning to that. There was no question that there was huge power in it.
00:29:45
Speaker
when we couldn't be together. But one of the things that I've been working on is creating an initiative for post COVID, long COVID patients using the breathing techniques that we are so much a part of our training and sharing that. Google arts and culture has taken the initiative with 14 of my friends who contributed their own breathing, favorite breathing exercise and a thong. And then we're now looking to create technology and create a way to collect data.
00:30:16
Speaker
to sort of see what works, what helps people. Because long COVID is one issue in which people have difficulty breathing, but there are lung disorders that are massive, that are completely, it's not known, I don't think, by the public how many people suffer from various lung disorders. So I'm working with Johns Hopkins now to try and figure out a way to create something that would
00:30:43
Speaker
be effective that people could take home therapist use harm the harmonica for instance to measure breathing they can use a kazoo so you know it should be you want it to be fun you want there to be patient by and you want people to actually want to use these things and.
00:31:01
Speaker
and share it from their homes, I think, with their doctors. So that's one of the things that I'm working on right now. Is this all part of the healing breath initiative? Exactly. We're creating some different groups of organizations also to help musicians and artists develop some sort of sensitivity around being in a healthcare environment and give them a little bit of a certification so that they can not just work
00:31:29
Speaker
in their chosen field, but also contribute to their communities with this type of work as well, which many organizations are already doing, especially orchestras are already working in this area. Now, what kind of effect have you seen with the healing breath initiative? What have researchers noticed in those that have taken
00:31:50
Speaker
We're just starting with this, but there's no question. I mean, I visited Houston
NeuroArts: Integrating Arts in Healthcare
00:31:55
Speaker
Methodist not too long ago and saw the harmonica in kazoos kind of working. And when you think about it, I mean, I said, is anybody requesting blues harmonica lessons? Because that's what I would be doing. I would definitely want to learn how to play the instrument. But just for someone who can't breathe, to kind of try to increase their ability to create a tone,
00:32:20
Speaker
with rhythm, with the rhythmic keys, which can take away the anxiety. So anxiety is a huge problem in a hospital setting. And so having these initiatives be part of a hospital setting can increase
00:32:36
Speaker
So press gamey scores, it can kind of make people much calmer and then they can be treated more easily. So that's one thing right there, but we have, we have to develop actually the strategy and the way for actually collecting the data. So that's, we're just starting on that journey. But if they're already using, uh, these initiatives are already being used. They do work. Actually, um, Todd Frazier who runs the program there said he, his biggest concern right now was keeping
00:33:05
Speaker
is keeping a hold on growth. So it's really being used and he needs to be able to make sure he has enough people to actually work with patients. Right. Good problem to have. Yeah. It's so important. I think what is happening in Houston is that people are now learning and understanding the
00:33:31
Speaker
strength and importance of sound and music and music therapy. And I think, you know, part of being an advocate is to try to bring that understanding to many people. And, you know, I certainly know in writing my book, the idea to communicate
00:34:00
Speaker
in conversationally, while at the same time rooting what I say conversationally in science. 20% of the book is actually references citations. But it's spoken in a conversational way.
00:34:25
Speaker
The other thing, from what you said, Renee, you talk about communicating in your relationship with the audience. That is key. And so again, it's something that we're even doing a little bit right now. It's this betweenness, this back and forth, this reverberation between them and you.
00:34:48
Speaker
And Ian McGillcrest calls this betweenness, which is something that we need more than ever in our very polarized society, where we need to be able to connect so much. And we have lost that. We're losing it day by day in many ways.
00:35:18
Speaker
some headway in terms of music and initiatives, but we're also just in terms of our society. And the way we are disconnected is in many ways getting worse. And I think that if we think about, you know, people have been communicating with each other using sound for hundreds of thousands of years. And in fact, people are often surprised when they listen to audiobooks
00:35:48
Speaker
how much they remember, how easy it is for them to follow the story and really stay engaged. And this is because, from an evolutionary standpoint, way before we began reading, that happened 5,000 years ago. But for hundreds of thousands of years, organisms have needed to communicate and to
00:36:17
Speaker
really engage with their world through sound. So this is a very deep, important way to connect with the world, which we are losing and one that really stands to gain a lot through music initiatives, through
Sound's Evolutionary Role & Modern Implications
00:36:45
Speaker
You know, I think that part of what, you know, I see this passion in Renee of wanting people to understand what she sees so clearly in terms of the importance of music for connection. It's so embodied and it's embodied by what you do. But, you know, how do you help people understand that
00:37:15
Speaker
which once they do, I think this is really a change and a direction for the better.
00:37:29
Speaker
So going back to the issue about trauma and helping and using music to help heal trauma, we discussed that a little bit earlier. And Renee, you mentioned about the veterans and military injuries. And then Nina, you're doing research with concussions. And I've done work with concussions for 22 years. And we use noise canceling headphones to help control
00:37:49
Speaker
of the early symptoms. So we're actually just starting to utilize or at least use modalities help with sound. But it sounds like you're actually using rhythm in music to help heal and help treat concussions. Yeah. Can you discuss that a little bit? Oh, I just I would love to because, you know, it really joins, you know, all the work that that we've been doing with music and that Renee has has been championing with
00:38:18
Speaker
with music into the field of athleticism. And again, when you think about it for a minute, it is not such a long shot. It's in fact very natural. I was at a concussion legacy foundation dinner a while back. And at some point, they made us dance.
00:38:44
Speaker
And I found myself on the dance floor with some enormous football players who moved so responsibly and elegantly and
00:38:59
Speaker
It was actually, it was really made an impression on me. How sensitive, of course, if you think about it for a minute, of course, an athlete is going to be tremendously sensitive to another person's movements, to how they can adjust their own movements. You know, this is this betweenness, this reciprocity, which we get, I mean, in music, my best example is when you sing harmony with someone, you know, you are listening to them.
00:39:28
Speaker
and adjusting your voice and listening to yourself. And then they're listening to you and you're kind of going back and forth. Well, rhythm and movement is very, very much this way. So the athletes have this already and to use rhythm. And we know that rhythm is very tied
00:39:50
Speaker
to sound processing in the brain and the kinds of disruptions that we see with head trauma. So when we measure the response of athletes who have had a concussion, we can really see that certain rhythmic aspects of sound, the processing of sound is disrupted. And so, you know, we have,
00:40:17
Speaker
reason and some early data to show that this would really be an effective way to help an athlete who is experiencing concussion symptoms recover faster. And at the same time, I think it will really help us understand
00:40:46
Speaker
sound processing in athletes and enable us to then use the sound processing to gauge the effectiveness of therapy. And I think really importantly, we can see that one of the reasons that an athlete often, when they have a single concussion, they often get a second concussion.
00:41:14
Speaker
And, you know, I would venture to say that that's because the athlete is returning to play before his brain is ready. And if we have a way of assessing brain health and, you know, we can see as we measure the athletes who have had a concussion, we measure their responses to sound.
00:41:37
Speaker
week after week after week. And we can just see, oh, at this point, even when other measures are showing that the athlete might be clear to play, we see that, well, the brain's response to sound is still not quite right. And it's a matter of waiting another week or two weeks. And the brain heals, the brain changes quickly.
00:42:04
Speaker
And again, if you can bring rhythm therapy into this to make it happen even better, all in all, I think we can use biology to enhance athlete health in the same way as we can use biology to better understand what makes us us and how we can engage with the world better.
00:42:34
Speaker
through sound and music.
00:42:37
Speaker
So Renee, we're talking about performers and musicians and such. Is there a place for music therapy to help heal those who are having problems performing themselves as far as performance anxiety, as far as stage fright, those kinds of things? Is there a way to? Yeah, I think Joanne Lowey in New York City, in Mount Sinai has a wonderful program. There are a lot of hospitals actually around the country now that serve performers.
Arts Therapies & Addressing the Opioid Crisis
00:43:05
Speaker
because there are repetitive stress injuries, certainly a lot of vocal injuries, purely. I mean, so we need some kind of therapy to kind of recover. That's usually the kind of the domain of the SLP and voice therapists. But yeah, there are definitely many things that can be done. And you know, there's another thing we haven't discussed that we all share, which is pain. And arts therapies for pain can be enormously useful. And
00:43:32
Speaker
And it's definitely a point of inquiry now for researchers, because so many people in the country suffer from pain. We have a horrible opioid epidemic as a result. And finding ways, and whether it's for rehab or, in my case, it was somatic pain. So it was kind of trying to figure out why avoiding performing was such an important thing when it's my chosen field. And I actually love to do it.
00:44:01
Speaker
Yeah, there's lots of ways in which creative arts therapies can be extremely useful. Neural arts, I kind of encourage everyone to do two things. It's to go to the Sound Health Network website, which is based at UCSF. The NEA actually has funded this initiative to kind of bring together all of these therapies under one resource center, one roof,
00:44:22
Speaker
And they have tremendous programming that touches on all aspects of this work. And then the other one that I would check out, which is new, is called NeuroArts. And they just have released a blueprint for creating a field. Climate change is a recent field, climate science. It didn't exist 20 years ago or something.
00:44:44
Speaker
We're trying to do the same thing and basically to reduce all the silos because right now our work is quite siloed. You're going to try to bring together diverse disciplines and communities.
00:44:58
Speaker
to kind of bring it together and give it a center of gravity of research that will foster innovation. And then also create these education and career pathways for people to kind of join in and create this new field. So you need funding, policy, leadership, and especially communications outlines so that people, the general public is aware, but also that other people interested in the sector are aware of what's going on.
00:45:26
Speaker
So I recommend those two initiatives in terms of seeing what's happening. And of course, I'm still loving my work at the Kennedy Center. I'm also working with Los Angeles Opera, and they have many multiple health partners. They're doing tremendous work in the Los Angeles community.
00:45:45
Speaker
So arts organizations can combine with health care institutions and researchers to further shore up our populations and we need this. People are desperate for that kind of caring handoff from all these different organizations.
00:46:09
Speaker
What do you see that the main goal for neuro arts will be in the future here? Do you see a certain aspect of this field in the future as far as making this more applicable to hospitals all across the country or just kind of making it its own discipline? What do you see in the future as far as the goals for neuro arts?
00:46:31
Speaker
Well, it's a very ambitious program. My personal desire, and I'm just starting to formulate a plan for this, is to create art hubs that go hand in hand with all of the AI, big box store, health care that people will be receiving in the next 10 years. I do think that whether it's an app or a concierge system,
00:46:56
Speaker
The UK, for instance, has developed this public prescribing and this arts prescribing system. Massachusetts is working on this as well in Rhode Island. I think there are some states that are understanding that allowing people to kind of get what they really need and not just uphill
00:47:17
Speaker
is serving the extraordinary healthcare costs that we have. It's really helping immensely, I think, to also free up doctors and nurses to do the thing they really should be doing, which is caring for people's bodies.
00:47:34
Speaker
these various arts therapies can kind of support them in a tremendous way. So to have an arts hub connected to AI, you know, you can get your nails done in a Walmart, you know, why couldn't you say, wow, I could get music lessons for my, for my child, or I could, you know, my uncle had a stroke, he could be part of this choir, there's a stroke choir in our community, I didn't know that.
00:47:56
Speaker
Or we could get that kind of therapy for someone who's lost the ability to speak. You know, there's just so much that the public is unaware of. And I know this because I didn't know. I didn't know the difference between a music therapist and somebody who goes in place in a healthcare setting, plays an instrument or plays, you know, an orchestra. So there's just a lack of knowledge about what's available and how it works and how
Maintaining Brain Health Through Arts
00:48:23
Speaker
well it works.
00:48:23
Speaker
So that would be my big dream. But neural arts, I mean, have a look at the blueprint. It's really ambitious in a great way. And it brings in not just music, but everything that affects us aesthetically, nature, the humanities, architecture, all of the arts. And of course, this is not the classical arts. This is anything that moves us.
00:48:47
Speaker
You know, all of these arts therapies are taste-based. So a therapist will work with us and say, what music do you like? And work off of that. So just, you know, there's this kind of idea that the word art is somehow elitist. But what we're really talking about is who we are as creative beings and our ability to want to connect through beauty. Yeah. Yeah.
00:49:18
Speaker
I'm always so inspired when I listen to you, Renee, because I think that's something that we both share is
00:49:30
Speaker
a way, an ability to see that seemingly disparate fields are connected in ways that are often not recognized. And so your efforts to make people understand, to help people understand, to help us understand, because you and I have been discovering this firsthand for ourselves.
00:49:55
Speaker
as well is really important. I have a much more modest agenda, but I do hope that the audience listening to this will read my book
00:50:23
Speaker
because I wrote it for you. It really is a way to connect fields and to bring these different ideas together in one place, which is something that you have so marvelously done with your various initiatives. It is important to give people a handhold, right?
00:50:51
Speaker
So you go someplace and you find a lot of information in one place, as you have shared for your work. And so in my own modest way, I try to do this in the book and also over the years at our website, our brain vaults website, which is really created to communicate
00:51:22
Speaker
the science, the biology to anyone who is interested in that. And you'll see on the homepage, there's a little video from Renee's, from the Music in the Mind, one of the times that we got to spend time together, which I always value.
00:51:44
Speaker
One of the first things I heard you talk about Nina too, because you've become such a force, the success of your book, I mean, you know, any book that makes it to NPR is going to have a wider audience right there. And it's so well written in the sense that it's really accessible for anyone. But one of the things you first talked about was how
00:52:04
Speaker
how picking up an instrument or doing something like this as we age can really increase our ability to maintain brain health. And that's something we're all worried about. As I go around the country and the world and perform, people ask mostly about dementia and Alzheimer's. They're afraid.
00:52:22
Speaker
And and with good reason because the numbers are increasing and there's no question that we want to kind of have activities built into our life. Absolutely. Athleticism is part of that. A huge part of that is staying active and keeping cardiac health in order, which feeds that blood feeds the brain.
00:52:41
Speaker
And this is me talking as a total layman, obviously. I have no idea what the correct terminology is, but I have gotten that message. And another piece of that is that learning an instrument, doing something new, something that kind of takes you out of your routine, your comfort zone is fantastic for brain health. What kind of government support have you had for neuro arts, for music in the mind, all these other initiatives, how much funding and grants and grant support have you had?
00:53:10
Speaker
Well, I was so fortunate to meet Francis Collins, which is what started me on this whole trail, because the fact that the NIH has now funded much more than $20 million and will continue to fund research on particularly right now music and health.
00:53:31
Speaker
research validates the field entirely. So people who have been working in this for a long time, like Nina and other great researchers, now see that the NIH has really been outspoken about the fact that, hey, we really think this is important. They also have a whole institution as part of the NIH that's for integrative medicine alone, which I didn't realize. I now go to the NIH website a lot to look up anything.
00:53:58
Speaker
because you'll find out what the latest research is. So you'll see who's gotten these grants and how much they are and what they're doing and if they've gotten them repeatedly. It's a fantastic resource for understanding any kind of healthcare issue.
00:54:13
Speaker
So the funding is coming. I know that Susan MacSammon and Ruth Katz who spearhead the neuro arts blueprint are definitely going to be able to raise money. There's a lot of interest in this right now. And I do think the pandemic to some degree has been helpful because people have kind of seen firsthand that it works, that it's important and that it's something we should be supporting. Certainly healthcare is
00:54:40
Speaker
is not getting any less expensive. And so if we can find non-invasive, non-pharmaceutical initiatives that can support healthcare inexpensively, it's win-win. So it's definitely growing. Excellent.
00:54:57
Speaker
Yeah, I would, I would love to see in medical settings, especially the one that I work at, we actually have music therapy for pediatric populations. And it's really
Conclusion & Call to Action
00:55:07
Speaker
nice to see the impact that it makes, especially on anxiety. I work primarily with patients who are struggling with eating disorders. But even through that therapy, it's just really great to see that it is being implemented. And I hope that
00:55:20
Speaker
We can increase this implementation. Sound and music, this is our universal language. It brings us together, connects us, it can help heal us. How do we do our part in spreading awareness about all of these initiatives? And for those looking for additional resources, you mentioned a few, Renee, what else? Where else can people go, especially for musicians and those who may be struggling mentally?
00:55:49
Speaker
Um, actually the initiative, there's a, there's a convening, um, through the sound health network in, I believe it's June that will focus on mental health. So I would highly recommend that people just all you have to do is sign up to receive their newsletter and you'll keep track of that important information. And I'm going to guess that it would be open to the public.
00:56:10
Speaker
This is something also that I'm encouraging everywhere I give classes to young artists and young performers in conservatories and universities. I say double major.
00:56:21
Speaker
and think about healthcare as a career path, as a sort of even something to support the career path you're on. We all of course want to be the next major star in our field, but for those of us, for those who can't reach that and attain that, it's just so rewarding. The fact that Yo-Yo Ma and Emmanuel Axe were playing for patients who were very ill in the hospital with COVID on Zoom
00:56:50
Speaker
tells you that even for them, this is extremely rewarding and how generous and how wonderful. But that I would say, you could look at the NEA website, look at Creative Forces. I would definitely go to the NIH. And for funding though, for sure, the Sound Health Network, they actually are doing workshops that are helping people get funding.
00:57:15
Speaker
and teaching you what it is you need to provide. And I also tell musicians, reach out to your local med school and see if you can't do some research with the med student who might be interested in this. Try to connect with people who are in health care. That's great. That's great.
00:57:33
Speaker
Now, we are so grateful for this conversation. It's been a pleasure getting to speak with you both. Steve, as always, a pleasure. Nina, thank you for being here and Renee, thank you so much for sharing your expertise and sharing your journey with us and all the amazing initiatives that you're working on. We can't wait to share this podcast with those listening and to increase awareness about all of these initiatives and how we can support through music. Thank you.
00:58:02
Speaker
Thank you. Chasing can share a list of these initiatives and other ones that people might be interested in following too. Great. Thank you so much. A pleasure speaking with you and thanks for sharing the success that athletics have had in terms of research and rehabilitation with us. We so appreciate that. It's amazing. It's all working together so well. So we really appreciate your time and have a great rest of your day.
00:58:28
Speaker
All right, take care. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Well, that wraps up our show for today. Remember, if you like what you hear, please leave a review and subscribe to our podcast. For Yasi Ansari, this is Stephen Karaginas, and this has been the Athletes in the Arts podcast.