“Hey!
Look!”
“Over
there!”
“Oooh…
Look!”
“What is
it?”
“How should
I know?”
“What? You
mean THAT?”
“Let’s ask
Thy.”
“It’s Thy’s
break time – better ask Hypo, he’s in charge tonight.”
“Hyp! Hey
Hyp! Over here!” “Help us out Hypothalamus”
“What are
all you crazy AP’s going off about? Don’t you know its break time?”
“Gee, Hyp,
don’t blame us! We’re voluntary – she’s imagining this whole thing.”
“Right.
Well – IT’S DARK! Stop it! You’re throwing off my circadian rhythm!”
“I think
they are here for a tour…”
Sometimes my imagination
gets the jitters at night. This particular incident that you are witnessing
involves the rational for my obsession with music – and the neurological
effects of music on education and disabilities. It’s a mouthful, isn’t it? What
a crazy profession, music. I happen to be one of those believers who think
every child can learn to make music, regardless of anything standing in their
way; as a matter of fact, I have had a few things stand in my way. Enough for
some folks to think I should not be standing here and enough for others to
kindly deem me ‘persistent.’ But, hey! As long as we are here, why not join me
for the tour of a brain on music?
“The tour, eh? Gee… well, I guess I could take you on the
five-cent look around. Uh-Hmm. First, the introductions. I am Hypothalamus, in
charge of the pharmacy and sleep… and a few other things, of course. Not many
of us up here have simple jobs; why most of us have entire books – “
“Hyp, I think they are here for the music tour – you know, how music has affected our functions?”
“Right, thank you Glia. Now then, follow me… A few more short
introductions while we walk – Neuroglia here works in communications, between
synapses that is, along with the AP’s. The Action Potentials you already met.
They keep this place bouncing. Glia, do try keeping those AP’s in their place.
Somewhere they can’t distract me...”
“Ummm…”
“I know, not your job. Basal Ganglia hasn’t been keeping up with
the demand for dopamine and serotonin, so Pre Frontal Cortex is running a
little inattentively… along with a few of the other lobes. Well, Glia, we shall
just do the best we can, and if I get off topic, just give me a zap.”
“Now that I can do.”
(If Hyp over there has lost
you – I have ADD. ‘Inattentive’ does not mean I can’t focus; it means I focus
on everything - so things stay pretty interesting around here. Synapses
communicate through electrical signals, which neuroglia helps conduct; Glia is
well acquainted with shocking intervention.) Hyp, where are we going?
“Glad you asked – the inner ear. No, we’re not ‘hear’ to see the stirrup and
anvil – look past the cochlea.
"See that big bundle of nerves? That is the auditory nerve;
if we follow it, it will lead to the auditory processing center in the Temporal
Lobe. The Temporal Lobe does the real hearing; the tympanic membrane can
vibrate the inner ear bones in perfect synchrony, but until the AP’s travel the
nerve synapses to temporal processing, our girl won’t hear a thing. In our
case, everyone is doing their job, but the timing is off in processing somewhere.
The big name for it is ‘auditory processing delay’ but some folks call it
tone-deaf. A long time ago, our timing was way off; processing was so behind on
pitch processing that pre-frontal was only getting messages like ‘kinda-high’
or ‘low-ish.’ Now you can hardly tell we have a delay.”
Hey, Hyp - what changed? Why did the delay
get… smaller?
“Why music, of course! ‘Frequency, Intensity and Duration,’ the
recipe for neurologic expansion. The music lessons provided frequent
stimulation for the auditory nerve, enough for Glia to start producing myelin
and get the AP’s moving faster along the synapses. Of course, the intensity
from Orchestra class increased the number a AP’s entering processing, and
duration has been for – let’s see... four years old at the first lesson and now
we are…”
Hyp!
“Oh, pardon me. Well, duration has been almost every day for… a
lot of years. With that kind of detailed stimulation, auditory processing
started building new pathways to sort out the information. After a while, pre-frontal
was getting information detailed enough to attach labels to, like whole steps
and intervals. Those pathways helped with language processing, too, helping us
sort out sounds in the right order instead of backwards and upside down.”
(Dyslexia is one of the
more noticeable ways my ADD manifests itself.)
“Music was just the stimulation temporal processing needed; why,
if you really want to make our girl squirm, just play a pitch a quarter tone
off from its diatonic buddies! All those years ago, she never would have
noticed, and now it’s better than a bug on a bed post. No sir, this temporal
processing unit can’t be called tone deaf anymore. Now then, on to the Optic Nerve.
“The optic nerve is at the back of each eye, but crosses
hemispheres before reaching the occipital lobe. Printed information being
processed by the occipital center was pretty jumbled up in the beginning, and
tracking was a foreign concept to them! Why I remember when the information occipital
processing was sending to prefrontal could have been called modern art!”
“ZAP!” (That was Glia)
“Refocus! Once again, music provided the stimulation to help
processing build the pathways they needed. Printed music does not change shape
for different sounds, like an alphabet; it changes position. In essence, the
contour of musical notation draws a picture of sound – ups and downs and jumps.
With enough frequency, intensity and duration, occipital processing began
connecting pathways with the temporal, and the shapes took on meaning. With sound
association in place, left-to-right tracking became smoother. Eventually those
pathways made the shift to more abstract sound associations and tracking –
reading language. And thank goodness! Some of the skeptics were starting to
wonder about us.
“One more stop. Command Central – the Thalamus. From here I wanted
you to see the bigger picture, how music has changed our function on a larger
scale. Music is one of the few elements of life that affects nearly every part
of the voluntary nervous system – and a few of the involuntary nerves, but we
won’t see those tonight. I have already shown you the connection between the
temporal and occipital lobes. For an instrumental musician, they have been connected
to the Parietal Lobe – Sensation Station. The parietal lobe processes the
sensations felt in the hands and face, helping the cortex make adjustments in
movement when needed. Parietal, Occipital, and Temporal are all connected to
the Frontal Lobes. The motor cortex in the frontal lobes use the AP’s from sight,
sound and touch to tell our hands (and faces of wind players) how and when to
move. And let’s not forget the emotions expressed through music; those are
provided by a network in the temporal lobe - the amygdala to be precise. The
sequence of these connections is recorded in the cerebellum as a skill.
“Each lobe of the brain is connected to all the others. But for a
musician, these connections happen simultaneously - in every part of the brain;
frequently, intensely and for the duration of every practice session.
Frequency, intensity, and duration, you will remember, are the recipe for
building new pathways, strengthening and accelerating them. Each time a
musician plays a note, the thalamus goes crazy relaying the messages that come
from literally every direction. The thalamus of a musician gives new meaning to
the concept of multi-tasking. When our girl plays music, these pathways light
up with AP's brighter than a Fourth of July night sky. And that’s only the
voluntary crew!
“The best part of all – I see you yawning, Miss ‘I don’t need a
circadian rhythm’… right, back on track – is that all those interconnected and
accelerated pathways support learning, memory, skill development, coordination,
and information retrieval in every other discipline of life. The more pathways
we build up here, the faster we can build another one.
“Well, there you are. That’s my version of the music tour. Now go
to bed! And your reader friend too. Before I call in the Pituitary Squad!”
~~~~~~
There it is – if I were to
give up music now, I would be leaving behind the stimulation that built my
white matter… and made me who I am. Music makes the brain a better place, and
it gives the world a little more beauty – it expresses the beauty that should
be. Music can be therapy, for learning disabilities, developmental delays, and
so many other possibilities. Yes, every child can learn to make music and
benefit from learning it. Maybe I’m in this crazy profession so a few children more can make
some musical connections.
For a well done video on this topic, check out this Ted-Ed Video
