Music on your mind

Angharad Yeo: Hello and welcome to Sydney Ideas, the University of Sydney's flagship talks program. My name is Rad Yeo, or Angharad Yeo. I'm a TV and radio presenter, MC, critic, and a music and science nerd, so I am particularly excited about our chat tonight.

Tonight's event, Music on Your Mind, is presented with the Brain and Mind Centre and Sydney's Conservatorium of Music. We've got a really fascinating conversation in store for you where we'll be unravelling the links between music and the brain.

We've long known about the benefits of music on mental health and well being. Studies have shown that listening to music improves mood, mental alertness, and memory, whilst learning to play an instrument is shown to increase neuroplasticity, which is the brain's ability to reorganise connections and rewire itself, which is vital for development and recovery.

So, if we want to train our brains, we could take up musical activity to boost cognitive performance. But how does it work? What are the mechanisms and can music be a viable health intervention to slow down cognitive decline? I cannot answer these questions for you, but thankfully I have a panel of experts who can who I'm going to introduce now Joining me are the great minds of Professor Lee-Fay Low, psychologist at the University of Sydney.

Lee-Fay is a professor in aging and health and chairs the Sydney Dementia Network, which brings together researchers, clinicians, and consumers to fast track research into practice. Professor Neal Peres Da Costa, world renowned performing scholar, researcher, and educator. He's a professor of historical performance at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. And Helen Mitchell, who has a multidisciplinary background in music, a singer, a music scholar, and music performance researcher.

And her research is situated at the intersection between music practice and scientific discovery. Welcome.

First, what led you to undertake this research? And also, what is the research? What are we talking about here tonight?

Lee-Fay Low: We're running Neuromusic, which is a study testing whether learning to play the keyboard or singing in a choir can improve cognition in people with very mild memory difficulty.

We're not just measuring memory and thinking, we're also doing brain scans and looking to see whether we improve the brains of the people in the trial.

Angharad Yeo: This might be quite exciting from the musician perspective to be doing something that really looks at this kind of clinical, neuroplasticity brain side of the equation. Because I can imagine as a musician working at the Con, it's quite possible that your perspective would be very much just within music as a theory thing, as an enjoyment thing.

So how has being involved in this kind of study shifted your perspective on music? Or were you like, the person who prompted it all, and you always thought, you know, there, there is a place for music in this.

Neal Peres Da Costa: Well, being a performer myself, I'm still performing now, I just turned 60, so I'm still going with it.

I was always aware that being a musician, performing, learning music does keep my brain going. I can just feel it, the cogs going all the time. You have to practice to keep up with it. It's like, you know, being an Olympic trainer, really. You have to just keep up the way that you play in the facility and that sort of thing.

So it makes sense that, that music would have a positive effect on the brain. But what sort of effect is what we're fascinated to find out about.

Angharad Yeo: Absolutely. So could you tell me a little bit more about this study?

What are you trying to test and find out and how are you actually going about doing that?

Neal Peres Da Costa: So Lee-Fay talked about it a little bit. The way it's working is we try to have a 12-week intervention. We're running those one after the other, obviously, and in each one of those, there's three groups.

There's a piano learning group, and we try to get about 12 people into that. That's the maximum. There's also a choir and that's also 12 people. And then there's also a control group. And they are currently watching movies, and they have some socialisation. And that happens on a Thursday during the 12 weeks.

So we've got groups of people coming through which is absolutely magnificent. They're all met up at the foyer, they come down to the classrooms, and they have their one and a half hour lesson with wonderful teachers that we have involved in this. And then at the end of that, they have a half an hour socialisation. So we have coffee, tea, we just talk generally about how they're feeling and that sort of thing.

And then every four weeks we run a focus group with targeted questions to discover how they're feeling about what's going on, what's going on for them in their brain, how did they enjoy coming to the Con? It's a really interesting process.

Helen Mitchell: It's fab and we hear much more about how people are, it's trepidation at the very beginning and then eases by week four.

And then again, the confidence that they leave with. It's fantastic to see.

Angharad Yeo: What's the demographic of participants like in terms of experience with music?

Helen Mitchell: Technically, we're looking for people who haven't got experience with music. So you can have listened to music, you could have done bits and pieces, perhaps at school or when you're in your younger self.

But we're looking for people who haven't had music lessons before, haven't had that kind of music training or consistent music making. So we're often checking up. We have to, see when people come in to apply to be in the study, have we done too much music or too little music? So it's really interesting to try and to find out.

Lee-Fay Low: Part of the reason is because we know that the brains of musicians, trained musicians, look different to the brains of non trained musicians. So we wanted to start with a group who are all musically naive, if that makes sense then they have unpracticed brains.

So that the group is, starts on a similar level of skill, because you don't want to be playing the piano and the person next to you is really brilliant. Right? I don't want to be, I don't want to be in a class with Neal, okay? Because that's bad.

Helen Mitchell: It's kind of like MasterChef, right? It's got to be home cooked, it's not professional.

Neal Peres Da Costa: That's right. And I think what's happening which is special to this particular program, is that the participants in it are having MRI scans beforehand, and also some psychological testing and questionnaires and things like that and so that's sitting there and then they do the 12 week program and then they will have another MRI.

And so of course we're looking for, but Lee-Fay should answer this because she knows all about it. Yeah.

Lee-Fay Low: So we're looking for changes in the hippocampus in particular, which is the area of the brain responsible for memory, but also throughout the brain. So, you know, whether the brain is, I guess, bigger is not probably the appropriate word, but more robust.

Yeah, denser, exactly. And also whether it works differently functionally as well.

Angharad Yeo: So when you say it looks different, tell me more.

Lee-Fay Low: On an MRI scan. So we're looking at white matter changes and grey matter. Now this is just words right

Angharad Yeo: No, I love the nerdy stuff. We're here for the nerdy stuff.

Lee-Fay Low: So, we're going to look to see if the brain's changed at all over 16 weeks.

Angharad Yeo: And so would you see that mostly in matter or is that also in kind of like the firing of signals and the way that works? Do you look at live activity of the brain?

Lee-Fay Low: Both. Yeah, both. I mean, this is the really novel bit of this study.

So there have been some studies already showing that music making improves cognition in older people. But no one's really done a study comparing singing to keyboard playing, and no one's looked in the brains yet.

Angharad Yeo: It also seems like the study has quite a social focus to it you're doing it in groups, and you've also got that social period afterwards. How important do you think that is to the overall experience and I guess, effectiveness?

Neal Peres Da Costa: And that's what we're testing as one of the things.

Helen Mitchell: I mean the beauty for those who are in music, music is social. The whole nature of it, you're playing with others, you're playing for people. Yeah it can be solitary sometimes, but there's so much communication, nonverbal communication.

That kind of honing when you're learning to play an instrument or learning to sing together. So that's really special.

Neal Peres Da Costa: One of the things that does come out with the focus groups and also the socialisation is just how much fun people are having together. You can feel the bonding that's going on.

At the end, with the two groups that we have had through now, that really the comments are, 'Oh gosh, has it come to an end? You know, I don't want this to stop and how can we keep going' and those sorts of things. So it's very clear that people in that age group between, you know, 60, 60 and 90 really, who might have thought, well that's it, I'm retiring now and I don't have such a great social group.

And then suddenly they've found it. And then the whole thing of even traveling into the Con, people make it a special day in the week for themselves. That's what they've said. They meet up beforehand, go to cafes or they might go for walks in the botanic gardens, that type of thing, so it's become a really big, like people have said Thursday is an important day in my life.

That's great.

Lee-Fay Low: And I know you're thinking well, then why don't we just keep you, give people social groups. And that's why the control group and Joseph who runs it and I have many discussions cause I say he's too engaging and the group, the social group is too fun, but so that, but the control group is a socialisation control group.

So they watch movies and chat so that we can control for that socialisation to know whether it's the group or the music.

Angharad Yeo: You're so good, because that was going to be my next question.

Lee-Fay Low: I knew, I knew you were like there's something wrong with the science, yeah.

Angharad Yeo: But instead my question will be that there seems to be a large emphasis in the study is using music as a preventative approach to dementia, but can music still be leveraged in kind of later stages of intervention?

Lee-Fay Low: I mean, we've been using music in residential nursing homes for quite a while now. The evidence is pretty good that personalised playlists for example, are really good in calming people down, improving their mood, activating them. I don't know. Hand to Helen.

Helen Mitchell: Oh yes. Playlists for Life is a program in the UK.

Where actually music making, music listening is prescribed along with the medicines of the day by the doctor to make sure people are engaging. It can affect, it can calm, it can lift your moods, there's all sorts of things. The idea of having a playlist for life is also that you make it with your family.

So it's kind of all the music that you remember. So all your favorite tunes, all your favorite songs, favorite anything, and that becomes your connection again with your community, your connection with your family, your connection with the rest of the people in your community.

Angharad Yeo: I mean anecdotally, that is something that you know, I've definitely seen in my life of spending time with a loved one who has dementia and watching the way that their demeanor changes and the connections that they're able to form as soon as you put on a piece of music that they're really familiar with.

Like it's a very powerful thing that is deep in there somewhere.

Lee-Fay Low: Yeah, and it is deep in there because they've done some studies that show that even though the person might have dementia and bits of the brain aren't working very well, the bits of the brain that still remain, activate a lot when they're listening to a personal song, a personalised playlist, and the rest of the brain activates as well.

Angharad Yeo: And do you, I assume you do, but do you see a big difference between a song they have an emotional connection with versus a song that 's similar genre?

Lee-Fay Low: Yeah, definitely it has to be like, tailored to them. Yeah, it has to be something that, from their past, or that they relate to.

Helen Mitchell: The 'darling they're playing our song' phenomenon.

It's the thing that takes you back, not just the song or piece of music takes you to a period of time, maybe an event. And it sort of links, must link into all sorts of other bits of your brain.

Neal Peres Da Costa: Yeah, there's also the other aspect, which is those people who, for example, did play the piano, or they sang in earlier life, but they're suffering with memory loss. Suddenly when they go to the piano, they can still play. That's the one thing they can actually do. They even remember who's with them in the room, but they can actually play. We hear that a lot. That type of story all the time.

Lee-Fay Low: Yeah, we did a project in the nursing home where we got like people to do their creative talents and we had this wonderful lady who played the piano and we showed her a video of her playing and she was surprised that that was her. She had kind of forgotten that she could play but she could totally play.

Angharad Yeo: And when you sat her back down at a piano was she able to just go again?

Lee-Fay Low: Yep, she just went again. It was like all there somewhere. Her procedural memory was there somehow.

Angharad Yeo: Yeah, that's pretty incredible. So this is a three year study and you're about two years in so far.

Is that correct?

Neal Peres Da Costa: It's probably going to be a bit longer than three years because it took quite a while to actually get going with all the protocols that needed to be put in place and ethics approvals and COVID of course slowed things down.

So we're trying to test 216 people and we've covered about 80 by the end of this next 12 week wave, and we are sort of now almost eight weeks through this one. So another four weeks and we'll be finished. And yeah, so there's a bit to go obviously. And you can only do a certain number of these waves in a year cause it takes all the background organisation, all the MRI testing, all the psychological testing.

There's a lot of work going on.

Angharad Yeo: So you are , relatively early in the stages. Obviously, you can't give any complete findings.

But are there any notable observations that you've had so far?

Helen Mitchell: Gosh, people are having a ball.

Neal Peres Da Costa: They're having a ball, absolutely. I don't think one person said you know, I hate doing this. Sometimes, I know that with the piano playing and also the singing in choir, there are lots of challenges.

Early on in the piece, it's very challenging, first four weeks, and then people settle a bit, and they are being pushed each week to do something new to learn basic skills of music making. And so it's pretty full on. I mean, it's a crash course in becoming a musician in 12 weeks.

We don't do that at the Conservatorium and people for a long, long time. Right. But they love it.

Helen Mitchell: And they learn in a group. So both the choir and the piano group learn together and play together, so are kind of not just playing the same thing, but learning, learning to harmonise,

Neal Peres Da Costa: yeah

Helen Mitchell: which is fab.

Angharad Yeo: Well you've cracked some kind of code because who amongst us was forced to take piano lessons as a kid and hated it? Yeah, uh huh. Imagine where we would all be now if we got to do it in a lovely social group. I actually have a friend who's a piano teacher and he once said to me that the line that he uses, this is a tip if anyone's a piano teacher, the line that he uses to get parents to keep their kids in the program if they're thinking of leaving is, no one ever regrets learning how to play the piano.

So he's like, now you just gotta tell them to push through because no one ever regrets learning. But you do regret not learning. And I'm like, you're exactly the kind of teacher I would have hated. All right, well we also have a video now to show you giving some insights from the participants perspective.

I can say that even when we were raising children, he never sang. He wouldn't even sing to the kids. And even when we started the program, he would shut himself in a room, he wouldn't let me listen to him. And now he just sings all the time. That's really lovely. And it's gotten better.

I'm Bob, and I was a part of the choral group.

And I went from not singing at all to being a happy singer. I'm part of the keyboard group and it's been a great gift to me, I will continue to play piano probably as long as I can. I wanted to be in the choir and I ended up in the keyboard and I thought, oh no, I have two left hands.

The mind processing isn't very quick. It's gonna be hard. But our teacher was wonderful, encouraging, and even when we were bad, he would say well, not bad, but let's try it this way. So for instance, the scales, we'd be able to do one hand and you know, we could do it two at a time, in a way, but, eh. So, and I'm still playing.

And we could actually see ourselves progressing, getting a little better, a little better, every week. Now go back to the old music and I can play it. And it's like, wow. I've noticed I can remember numbers. So if you give me, you know, four or five, six numbers, I can write it down now. It's like, let's say the code is blah, blah, blah, blah.

And I can do that. I always had difficulty. So that's something that's like, wow. I've tried to observe that. And I've come to the sort of terms like, can I remember things better? And I can't really honestly say I do. But what is different and what is really beautiful for me is, is I'll wake up in the morning with a song in my head.

Or when I'm just doing things, instead of having anxiety brainwaves or cycles going on in my head, I'll be singing a song. And that's great. When we're learning these songs, I mean, we went at a pretty fast pace, and none of us were experienced singers so at the beginning we sounded really bad.

And one that was particularly challenging for me was 'Moon River'. And I just couldn't get the right pitches. It's still a challenging one for me. But Phillip would break it down and he'd go, "Okay, forget about the words and just say it as 'quack'." So you'd go quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack.

And so he would do things like that that make it really fun. Speaking of not sounding good, I think it was our last lesson. Peter said, "You know you folks, you were all in the beginning, just really", I'm not quoting him word for word, but he said, "you all were really nervous and really anxious and scared and very not confident and now, what have I created? Perfectionists!" The choir is very intimate in a way, so Philip was teaching the rounds and then breaking up the ten of us into three groups say, each singing the rounds starting from a different point. You really have to be in sync with the people that are next to you in your group singing. And so, there's a really powerful moment when we're doing this and you're looking at the person on either side of you or next to you, and singing together, and making eye contact.

It's hard to describe, but it was really a magical moment. At the end, one guy that I was always singing with, he says, I really like singing with you. And I said, yeah, I really like singing with you.

That's gorgeous, and I think that there's something particularly special about being able to hear their voices and their stories and the excitement. I think the thing that really stood out to me from that, even though you've already said it is how much everyone loves it and the warmth behind all of it as well. So, you know, it just must be such a delight to get to do this work. I wanted to ask, many of us have heard things like playing classical music for your plants is good for them and helps them grow. Is there a specific style or genre of music that's more effective or is it more down to just what people like?

Neal Peres Da Costa: I was just thinking about this answer yesterday. And the thing about it is we tend to chop up genres of music, classical, jazz, pop. Before the 20th century, there was no difference between classical and anything else. It was just all music. People sang the same thing, and they sang folk music, and all of that sort of thing.

All of this music is made up of melody, rhythm, harmony. And it's all put together in very similar ways, but just the feel of it is slightly different. The rhythms are slightly different. So, from my point of view, just from an intuitive sense, I don't necessarily think that classical is going to be better than pop or, in fact, jazz is so complicated, it's even more complicated than some of the classical music that we do.

I think it's simply that you're being challenged by those different parts of music composition and learning how to play and sing in that way. I'm not sure there are more studies that do this but certainly from an intuitive point of view, I think it's not going to be one type or another.

And probably what you love to listen to is going to be the thing that's going to get you going.

Angharad Yeo: So intuitively speaking, maybe it's more about ensuring there's like a progression of challenge rather than a particular genre.

Neal Peres Da Costa: Yeah. We've probably also forgot to say that people don't just come in on Thursdays and have their lesson.

The piano group are given a piano to have at home. They're home delivered, a keyboard, electric keyboard, and both groups are set tasks each week. They're meant to do regular practice, and they're asked those questions the next, how did you progress? So it's not just about coming in and doing it, it's also work.

Angharad Yeo: You have homework, and yet they love it.

Lee-Fay Low: They seem to do the homework, so.

Angharad Yeo: Yeah, there you go. What are some other like at home accessible ways that people could kind of move into this space of learning music?

Helen Mitchell: Wow. Gosh, well, everyone sings in the shower, right?

Angharad Yeo: We all live in apartments with paper thin walls now.

No one sings in the shower.

Helen Mitchell: Well, but there's so many community choirs out there. It's such an easy pop choir. There's all sorts of different opportunities for learning music. Now you've come in through these doors once, come in again. You can come and listen to music, but you can come and make music as well.

And there are lots of courses, courses for adults in different instruments. Obviously the lovely Peter takes multiple groups for piano, but we've other activities that happen for beginners at all ages.

Neal Peres Da Costa: Yeah, we have a thing called the Open Academy here. So it's to bring people in from the community to learn music.

Lee-Fay Low: What if you feel like you don't have any talent?

Helen Mitchell: Oh, rubbish. We are all musical. That is what's so fabulous about it. Challenge anyone. It's really tough to be amusical. That means something's going wrong. A little bit like aphasia where there's something gone wrong and you can't remember words, but there's so few people in the general community that are actually amusic.

We all have music, it's just how well you use it.

Angharad Yeo: And I love the point as well that a lot of what this study is the social side of music and the way that music is a tool to connect. And maybe it is worthwhile not just looking at at-home things of playing music, but finding spaces where you can step in with others and have that social side to it.

So how does music participation stack up against other neuroplasticity developing activities such as sudoku, chess, or learning a language?

Lee-Fay Low: Well, we don't know head to head, but I could posit a guess, because people say to me, I'm not going to get dementia because I do the Sudoku every day. And I say, doing the Sudoku every day is like exercising like your little pinkies.

Your pinky, that bit of the brain that's good at Sudoku will get really strong.

Angharad Yeo: Really? It's not enough?

Lee-Fay Low: But it's not enough. And you really need to try and exercise all your brain. So different memory, coordination, rhythm, thinking, performance.

Neal Peres Da Costa: Well, it's also the physical side of things, using the muscles in your throat.

Angharad Yeo: So music covers all of that?

Lee-Fay Low: More than Sudoku and probably even more than chess, I suspect. There's no research, but that's my theory.

Angharad Yeo: Is there anything that would be more than music that covers that even more?

Lee-Fay Low: We haven't done a dance versus music study, but I mean, we've done some studies looking at dance, which has music but has a different physical component.

Maybe one day we'll do a dance versus music study, but do we need that? If they both work and they have, you know, then the different people will want to do dance who then want to do music. So I don't know if we need to prove that.

Angharad Yeo: I guess it's that, that mentality where sometimes people are looking to kind of min max their life and find the most effective thing that they can do rather than focusing on the enjoyable thing, which means that they'll actually do it.

But I do think that music has that kind of edge in that it is a very physical activity as well. It is for anyone who plays music you understand that feeling of just gliding through the music, sitting in pocket, being with others, which is. Yeah, I guess something that you don't get when you play sudoku unless you're I don't know playing competitively trying to beat someone else.

Lee-Fay Low: I have a friend who was world sudoku champion and she gets that –

Angharad Yeo: – Really?

Lee-Fay Low: Yeah, it's a separate story.

Angharad Yeo: Is that a sidebar?

Lee-Fay Low: So they have massive sudokus and they put different people and they're all solving the sudoku At the same time, like on big giant screens and then people watch themselves to do it.

Angharad Yeo: Does that mean you can cheat and like watch where someone else?

Lee-Fay Low: No, because they put them so you can't see the other person. Yeah.

Angharad Yeo: I would watch that. All right, right on. Because music is quite an interesting beast. Not only is it physical, but it's this sort of like math meets art space where when you look at music theory, it's all actually very mathematical, but at the same time, it feels very intuitive.

It feels creative. It's an art. People say that music is the song of the soul. Maybe the soul actually speaks maths. Where do you find these two things intersecting and is learning theory a big part of this kind of work, or is it more about the connecting?

Neal Peres Da Costa: Well that's a big question so to answer that, there is a certain amount of theory having, you know, having to be taught in, in something like this intervention, but it's not full on theory.

It's been very cleverly put together by our wonderful teachers our leaders in this so that it doesn't just become theory heavy and it's not just reading stuff and trying to understand it, but actually embedded into making music. From a professional musician point of view, you do need to know the theory in order to then be free to create music.

If you don't know the theory, it can often hamper you. You can often feel like, well, I'm not quite sure what I'm doing here. There are a certain amount of basics that, that really need to be known and embedded. And then you can break away. I mean, for example, improvisation is one of these big things.

I mentioned jazz before, jazz improvisers have to absolutely know how harmony works and where they're going. And then they can be, you can watch them go, how do you do that? That's just unbelievable. But it's all based on theoretical knowledge. So the creativity comes on, on top of that.

Helen Mitchell: I guess in learning to read music as well, it is a language, but it means that you can go forth from this course.

And it doesn't look like dots on the page anymore. It's something that you understand or can follow and gives you access the next time you do it. So the next time you open a music book, it won't look so foreign. And the next challenge is right before you, which is great. Learning to read music is actually one of the key roads to membership of the musical community.

We want to be able to do certain things. We do want to be able to improvise. We want to be able to play from sight and also to play reading music is really critical.

Angharad Yeo: This is such a multi-layered study that you're doing. And when I first heard about it, it was pretty obvious that it's quite an extensive, exciting piece of work.

But when you really start to break it down and start to pay attention to all of these ways that music is used, affects us and things like that, it, it's actually quite eyeopening. which is, this is my favorite part of this job. I just get to talk to really clever people and learn about what they're doing.

And I'm kind of taken aback even though I did all of the reading of multiple things of work in this space, I think hearing it from you kind of as people who are working in the space firsthand and the experiences that you have is just such a delight.

Neal Peres Da Costa: I also just wanted to add one thing in here that we've noticed quite a few people we've had come through had a little bit of a musical experience when they were younger but were put off for some reason.

It could even be that a parent said, no I don't want you to do that and sort of stifled, stop singing I don't want you to hear it. And they've come back to it with this kind of slightly negative idea and by the end of the 12 weeks they've gone, I did not know I I would be able to do that at my age. It's a really you know, it almost brings tears to your eyes because it's, they're just freed up and music has become so important in their lives.

Angharad Yeo: What next? What happens from here? Do you just wrap up this study and then stare into the deep, dark void? Or do you have plans of where you want to take this?

Neal Peres Da Costa: I think there'll be plans to go on and do other studies. There's a lot to be studied, right? We're just scratching the surface here with this.

Angharad Yeo: Do you have a dream of, of the next thing that you –

Lee-Fay Low: – I have my dream. I would be interested in, like, I feel like the people who have taken part in this study are a certain higher socio demographic status, who are happy and comfortable to come to the Conservatorium. And I'd really like to go and perhaps work in communities who might not be comfortable to come to the Con.

Maybe their natural music is, a different type of music to classical music or English music or Western music and run like a similar trial with those communities.

Angharad Yeo: I love that though. Manifesting. Put out there what it is you'd love to do.

Thank you once again to our panel. Lee-Fay, Neal, and Helen. For more links to resources and upcoming talks, go and visit the Sydney Ideas website at sydney.edu.au/sydney-ideas.