Daniel J. Levitin He's no ordinary neuroscientist and writer. With his background as a musician, songwriter and producer, he helped Stevie Wonder and Joni Mitchell contribute to compilations, signed contracts with new wave bands in the 1980s, and had a special pass to the Police reunion tour, where he was able to hang out with the three musicians after shows and listen to them explain each gig.
In his first book, the groundbreaking study he conducted in 2007, This Is Your Brain During Music: The Science of Human ObsessionLevitin writes—through a scientific but accessible lens—about our connection to music and what it can evoke within us. His eye-opening new book, I heard there's a secret chord.: Music as medicine (W.W. Norton & Co.), takes the idea a step further, exploring the ways music can play a role in treating Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and other diseases. Levitin also recounts what he learned from watching musicians like Mitchell, Glen Campbell, Bobby McFerrin, and Tony Bennett struggle with their debilitating medical problems—and how music played a role in their treatment.
The idea that music might help treat Alzheimer's or Parkinson's, as you write, is very recent. When did these findings reach your desk?
The evidence initially came in drops. The first big study that interested me was a study done in an operating room, where patients were either played soothing music or given Valium, which is the normal thing you do. The people who listened to the music did better. They recovered faster. Their blood pressure was lower. They reported lower levels of stress and anxiety.
Then studies showed that if you play music at a similar tempo to their walking rhythm, that person with Parkinson's can start walking again. This makes sense, because Parkinson's causes a certain set of circuits in the brain that work with an internal clock or timer that helps you maintain a smooth, steady gait go bad. We need an internal timer to give us a steady gait so we don't stumble, and that's what goes bad in Parkinson's.
Have you noticed any particular types that help with recovery?
This is probably the question that people are most interested in. And I think part of it is that people want to know: Is classical music better for you? Does it make you smarter? Is it better for your brain than heavy metal? No, absolutely not.
Is playing Mozart music to children just a myth?
Yes, it’s a myth. Classical music is great, but musical taste is very personal, and it’s very subjective. It’s not like a music therapist says something like, “Well, you’re depressed. Listen to a couple of Joni Mitchell songs and call me in the morning, and we’ll see how you feel.” Music therapists and clinicians will help you build on the musical tastes you’ve already established to find music that will help you achieve your therapeutic goals.
What surprised you about these results?
But what surprised me most was not the results, but seeing real musicians with brain injuries or diseases. This is no substitute for science, because these are not scientific experiments; every brain injury, every case of Alzheimer’s, every stroke is different. But it certainly adds a lot of color.
Let's talk about the late Glen Campbell, for example, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.
I have never met or interacted with Glenn. Kim Campbell [Campbell’s wife] You reached out to me and saw Glenn’s brain scan. I knew that half of his brain wasn’t working on his last tour, and yet he was still the best guitarist on the planet. In the field of neuromusicology, learning to play an instrument at that high level creates what we call cognitive reserve, which means you have a lot of capacity in your brain as a result of your mastery of the playing. What that means for Glenn is that he can basically do this—play guitar and sing—while he’s asleep. He can do it with half of his brain offline.
He needed a lyric machine. On the last tour, he would sing the song two or three times in a row, because he would forget that he had just done it. He would forget what city he was in. But when it came to playing guitar, once the beat started, even if he had forgotten the lyrics, he knew what song it was, he knew some of the words and what he was supposed to do. So the insight he got from Glen Campbell was not something a neuroscientist could have predicted. It was just a vivid and wonderful demonstration of the brain’s ability to withstand a great deal of disease or injury through the power of experience.
He – She It was amazing to read that many of the musicians you know have stuttering disorder, and that many of them stutter.
I don't want to mention names here, but most of the professional rock stars I know have this disease. They don't relate to people in the way you would expect. I'm thinking of a couple in particular, whose music makes you think they really understand human emotions, that they're very sensitive and have deep empathy. But they don't understand emotions in the real world.
If you think about it, becoming a great musician requires a certain amount of obsession and compulsion. You have to practice for hours and hours and hours. If you’re writing songs, you have to keep track of where they are. You have to be extremely organized so you don’t lose them. You have to label the tapes and know where to find them. That level of detail is very close to what scientists do. And scientists, as you know, are a lot of us, on a spectrum. [Laughs] When we look at the definition of autism, it includes things like repetitive, stereotyped movements or obsessions. If you're going to practice a piece of music every day for three hours for a month, that fits my criteria, right?
As you write this, Billie Eilish has admitted to having Tourette Syndrome, and Elvis Presley had a stutter.
It's not much different than [old-school country singer] Mel Tillis and Elvis Presley, who stuttered when they spoke but not when they sang. With stuttering and tics, there's an internal organizer that's not working. Music gives you a road map for timing and for putting things in a certain order, like writing on an instrument, which is very similar to playing an instrument. Once you learn that, the brain takes over and puts that order in place almost flawlessly. Music has this internal momentum that pushes you forward, so it acts as a stabilizing force.
And as you may have noticed, Johnny herself is an example of this.
I've been friends with her since 1996. I've been writing to her. Grammy I was reading The Daily Mail and interviewed Johnny, and we struck up a great friendship. In 2001 she gave me her number and asked me to stay in touch. I started going over to her house whenever I was in town, and we'd have dinner together, and she'd play me whatever she was working on. I remember the first time she sat down at the piano and she played me “Bad Dreams,” which ended up being “Bad Dreams” in 2001. ShinesI thought, 'Oh my God, this song could be played at the Hollywood Bowl.'
In 2015, her aneurysm burst and she went to the hospital. It was a brain hemorrhage. She came home and couldn’t talk or move, and she was under 24-hour care. My phone number was on the bulletin board in her kitchen, and the nurses saw my name and called me and said, “We’re Johnny’s nurses and your name is on the bulletin board. Why is that?” I told them what I had done and they said, “Sometimes when we listen to music on our cell phones in the other room, she seems to pay attention.” And I said, “Well, that’s really weird.” good Maybe you should play some music for her. Most importantly, even if she can't really talk, make sure you get a clear signal from her that she He wants “To listen to music.”
They started playing the songs she had chosen for her. Artist's Choice I said to them, “Let her listen to this record.” They did and within a short time, she was nodding her head to the record and hinting that she wanted more. What the music did for her was what it did for Bobby McFerrin. [who is battling Parkinson’s]It was a reminder of something they loved so much, and it was a motivator for them. And now we know that listening to music that you love releases dopamine, which helps you maintain a steady gait, walk smoothly, and control the irregular rhythms that you might have in Tourette syndrome. And when it's in the prefrontal cortex, it helps you pay attention and focus. And when it's in the limbic system, it promotes feelings of pleasure, but a very special kind of pleasure.
What do you think of Johnny's recovery?
It was extraordinary, and it's a complete testament to her willpower. Because no one saw it coming. Given where she is, and the level of willpower and dedication and spirit that she brought to Newport and will bring to the Hollywood Bowl in the fall – I don't think anyone else could have done it. And as much as I like to think of music as a force, it's equal parts music and equal parts Joni and her indomitable will.
What about the role of artificial intelligence in music therapy??
This is the golden age of music. 100,000 new songs are uploaded to streaming services every day. The real trick is to help you discover music that you didn’t know before, that is new and innovative but still similar to the music you love so that you are drawn to it and it can affect you immediately.
The role of AI in two years will simply be that it will be able to automate the selection and evaluation process. Whatever streaming service or whatever way you get your music, it will play you a song, and your smartwatch or smart ring will call you in real time and tell you whether your blood pressure has gone up or down, whether your oxygen levels have gone up or down, whether your heart rate has gone up or down, whether your breathing rate has gone up. Eventually, we’ll be able to track brain waves like physiological activity, and we’ll be able to know: Did that song calm you down physiologically or not? Did it help you focus or not? And if it didn’t, we’ll play you another song, and we’ll work on improving the algorithm that chooses so that we can get better and better in real time.
Speaking of music, I was a talent scout at 415 Records in San Francisco in the early 80s, home of Romeo Void, Translator and other Bay Area new wave bands. How was that experience?
The most interesting thing that happened while I was there was that I had the opportunity to sign MC Hammer but I didn’t. We were getting mailboxes full of demo tapes, and one of my jobs was to listen to the tapes. We weren’t doing hip-hop or rap, so maybe that was a stretch, but we got a tape and it was local. And I listened and I heard [hums the Rick James “Super Freak” riff]“I was thinking, ‘Well, this is Rick James’ “Super Freak,” and it’s also in Falco’s “Da Commissar,” and the same song by After the Fire and Laura Branigan’s “Deep in the Dark.” And I thought, ‘The public isn’t naive enough to believe this.’” Fifth time!”
