00:00:00
- 4.4 million years ago,
00:00:01
an Australopithecine called "Ardi"
00:00:04
stood on her legs and walked.
00:00:07
And ever since then,
00:00:08
the rhythm of walking
has stamped human music,
00:00:12
but much more than that, pun intended,
00:00:15
that the first steps put us
00:00:16
on the path to forging links
00:00:19
between the brain and
muscular exertion and sound.
00:00:24
Hominids learned to hear
footsteps as a pattern-
00:00:28
and what patterns give
you is a sense of time.
00:00:31
You can predict what will happen next,
00:00:33
and it's willy-nilly
reflecting the experience
00:00:36
of walking through the Earth.
00:00:38
The condition of being human-
00:00:41
being midway between
the birds in the heavens
00:00:44
and the whales in the ocean-
00:00:47
we can situate ourselves.
00:00:48
Birdsong is as jerky as
the motions of the bird.
00:00:51
Just as whales have a
much more fluid rhythm
00:00:54
of floating through their own medium.
00:00:57
Human music reflects walking,
00:00:59
and this also gives
humans their fascination
00:01:01
with this metaphor that music moves.
00:01:04
And if you think about
it, music does not move,
00:01:06
but we imagine that one
note moves to the other.
00:01:08
And most of music,
00:01:10
be it a symphony or a
song, unfolds a journey.
00:01:15
And this journey takes us
from one point to another.
00:01:18
In our minds, it's an imaginary journey,
00:01:21
a very long, distant echo
00:01:22
from the journey of our
ancestors out of Africa.
00:01:36
What makes human music so
distinctive is our link
00:01:40
between sound and motion,
00:01:43
which is due to the
connections in the human brain
00:01:45
between the motor regions
controlling our motion,
00:01:48
and the regions controlling
hearing and sound,
00:01:53
the auditory cortex.
00:01:55
As a rule,
00:01:56
the deeper you dive into the human brain,
00:01:59
the more universal one's
propensity for music
00:02:02
and for emotion goes.
00:02:04
If you start with the brainstem,
00:02:07
our oldest layer, brainstems
flinch to reflexes in sound.
00:02:12
So shocks and loud bangs will
trigger the brainstem reflex.
00:02:18
The next layer up, the basal
ganglia, responds to pleasure.
00:02:23
Whether a sound is pleasant or unpleasant.
00:02:27
The amygdala is where emotions happen:
00:02:30
Sadness, happiness, anger, fear.
00:02:33
And the most modern layer, the neocortex,
00:02:36
is the point where you process patterns
00:02:40
and the complexities of music.
00:02:43
In terms of our music instinct,
00:02:45
one of our faculties, which are inborn,
00:02:47
is what's been called
'auditory scene analysis'
00:02:50
or the 'cocktail party effect.'
00:02:53
If you go to a party
00:02:54
and you are surrounded
by people jabbering away
00:02:57
in different simultaneous conversations,
00:03:00
you have an astonishing capacity to tune
00:03:02
into a particular thread.
00:03:04
It's the same faculty you
have when you're listening
00:03:06
to a line in a bar fugue
or in a jazz standard.
00:03:11
We can focus our listening.
00:03:14
Birds also have that:
00:03:16
Infant and a father
Emperor penguin surrounded
00:03:18
by 40,000 breeding pairs can hear
00:03:21
each other's voice in
this incredible hubbub.
00:03:27
Appreciating music purely as a form
00:03:30
of relaxation or entertainment
does a massive disservice
00:03:34
to all the things that
music helps you with.
00:03:37
The biggest draw to mental
health is loneliness.
00:03:40
Music can bring people together.
00:03:42
You don't have to actively
make music with somebody else,
00:03:45
just to listen to music plugs you
00:03:47
into a social network because
every note of music is social-
00:03:52
it's formed of social conventions.
00:03:54
Music lowers stress by reducing cortisol,
00:03:58
it gives you pleasure, makes you happy
00:04:00
by flooding the brain with
neurotransmitters like dopamine.
00:04:05
Music is an excellent
way of tagging memories,
00:04:08
remembering the past-
00:04:12
expressing your deepest
emotions and your identity,
00:04:17
which can't be captured by language,
00:04:18
because music is far
too precise for words.
00:04:23
All these things increase
your mental health
00:04:25
and ultimately music becomes a mode
00:04:27
of mindfulness, of contemplation.
00:04:30
It's not purely relaxing
00:04:32
because there's too much going
on when you're listening.
00:04:34
And the word relaxation
gives a sense of passivity,
00:04:38
whereas to listen is a very
active and creative activity.
00:04:46
- 'And today,
00:04:47
even the youngest children
learn to toodle an instrument.'
00:04:54
- We also love to imitate rhythm,
00:04:58
and that's due to the existence
00:04:59
of mirror neurons in our brains.
00:05:04
When the brain sees an action,
00:05:07
you don't have to move
to experience that motion
00:05:11
in your brain
00:05:12
because the mirror neurons are
responding sympathetically.
00:05:15
We've always had an
instinctive faculty to imitate.
00:05:19
We call it 'mimisis.'
00:05:21
Yawns are contagious.
00:05:23
If I see you yawning, I yawn back.
00:05:24
But also emotions are contagious.
00:05:27
When I hear a sad song, my body,
00:05:29
my mirror neurons are
instinctively sympathizing,
00:05:32
are mimicking, are mirroring.
00:05:35
The sadness of the song
isn't just acoustic,
00:05:37
it's also encoding the
behavior which we associate
00:05:40
with sadness, which is grieving.
00:05:43
Emotion isn't just feeling.
00:05:45
Darwin was the first to observe
00:05:48
that emotion had an
adaptive role in the field:
00:05:51
that animals and people,
00:05:54
they experience emotions in relation
00:05:57
to goals which help them survive.
00:05:59
So happiness is when you achieve a goal.
00:06:02
Anger is when the goal is blocked.
00:06:05
Sadness is when you lose a loved one.
00:06:08
Fear is the most archetypal emotion.
00:06:11
When you are exposed to a threat,
00:06:13
you have an instinctive response
00:06:15
to either freeze or to fight or to flee.
00:06:20
Music is full of similar responses,
00:06:24
as an extreme reaction to music,
00:06:25
which has been called "the chills,"
00:06:27
or 'frisson,'
00:06:28
or the sublime.
00:06:30
There are moments
00:06:31
in music which are so intense
and they're often triggered
00:06:34
by breakthrough moments
of loudness or extremity.
00:06:37
You have the same parts
00:06:38
of the brain which responds
to that as responds to fear.
00:06:42
Which is why the chills
give you goosebumps
00:06:44
or piloerection.
00:06:45
The hairs on your skin
literally stand on end.
00:06:49
But you enjoy this fear.
00:06:50
And this is very strange,
00:06:52
and we have a similar experience
00:06:53
when we go on a fairground ride
00:06:54
or when we're watching a volcanic eruption
00:06:56
in the safety of an observation platform.
00:06:59
It's almost as if music is
violence without the danger.
00:07:03
Nobody dies in music:
00:07:06
it's why we think that music
is able to express emotion
00:07:10
in a very visceral way.
00:07:11
So when you are listening to music,
00:07:13
it's a kind of mental time travel.
00:07:15
When you are absorbed in the work,
00:07:18
you are traveling back
through layer upon layer
00:07:20
of your brain, almost biologically,
00:07:23
which is why I call music a sort of
00:07:25
umbilical cord back to Mother Nature.
00:07:32
- Get smarter, faster,
00:07:33
with videos from the
world's biggest thinkers.
00:07:36
And to learn even more from
the world's biggest thinkers,
00:07:39
get Big Think+ for your business.
