Latest / Lucid Interval Podcast / Cognitive Neuroscience of Music, Synesthesia and Neurodivergence - Lyne Bingham, PhD

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Cognitive Neuroscience of Music, Synesthesia and Neurodivergence - Lyne Bingham, PhD · Lucid Interval Podcast

• speaker-0: I do have synesthesia and it's for me it's pitch and color and so I hear different pitches and I see different colors. It's kind of like a the best way to describe it is kind of like seeing the northern lights where it's just this hazy just sort of color that you just you can s still see, you know, what's around it, what's behind it, but it it's just sort of this I guess this mask or this film that goes over what I'm actually looking at. But yeah, it's it's very unusual. And I remember, you know, thinking this as a young child, when I first, you know, had an association and knowing, you know, what I have absolute pitch as well, so you know, having a name for this particular sound that I have, that's an A or that's an F sharp or whatever, then I was able to kind of, you know, correlate those those different colors and pitches together. Well I think this general idea of this, you know, things tending to synchronize is is a universal phenomenon. But I think it is also a really important part of our social cohesion which promotes our survival. And I think the emotion is part of that. speaker-1: Yeah, well, it's clear to me that emotion is like they're like these instincts that are supposed to drive social behavior. I mean that's clearly what we have them for. It makes perfect sense that something that's very pro-social, like you're saying music is and it it's making a lot of sense to me, would be would be emotion would kind of be like a wellspring that would would drive that. so much of music is about processing emotion, but also I mean just experiencing it, elongating it and things like that, and then of course doing it together. speaker-0: And if our social norms teach us that music is a product and that it's something that's only, you know, commercially available and you have to be good enough to make that music to be have it be, you know, socially available, then you're left in this other pool of people who whose only response is just to be an audience member or a listener. When and that's a very Western ideal. Once you get outside of this Western paradigm, we find that music is is a grassroots behavior. There is no power differential, there's no you know, no teacher, no student, everyone just shares knowledge, you know, you know. We don't have this idea of commercialism. You don't it's not something that you buy. It's not something that you talk about it in terms of now I listen to music or I like music, right? We we think about it now in this non Western way of being more just of a natural human behavior. I love that in many African languages The word for music is the same word that also means dance. Right and so that it's seen as as just a part, not a standalone thing so much, but as a part of a natural human expression. speaker-1: So, Lynn, thanks for joining. speaker-0: Glad to be here, Andrew. speaker-1: So I'm always curious to ask my guests when you're at a cocktail party and someone asks you, what do you do? How do you answer that question? speaker-0: I answer the question that I'm a musician and I play the bass and I am a an orchestral conductor and I teach music theory and I also study how our brains process music to some degree and and but more more specifically how movement influences our musical choices and our music making. speaker-1: Yeah. how did you go from I mean, I'm sure s you must have started by learning instruments, but then to get from there to studying the way the mind and the way the body process music through movement. I mean, can you take us the speaker-0: Sure. speaker-1: story of that? speaker-0: So I'm not sure that my brain was really well suited to playing bass in an orchestra because there's an awful lot of downtime. And I'm just not necessarily very patient with a lot of downtime. And so my brain tends to wander. And one of the things I noticed in in sitting back in the orchestra and and observing for a long period of time is often we would have a guest conductor who would conduct a piece of music that we had played many, many, many times before. And I noticed that within a fraction of a second from the very first downbeat of the very first notes that we would play that we sounded like a completely different orchestra. And so I began to wonder about how what what it is that we're seeing and how do we translate what we see into what we anticipate the the kinds of sounds that we want to make and how that affects our motor system to actually produce a sound in a different way. and so that question really began to kinda eat away at my thought processes and my curiosity and I finally got in touch with professor of cognitive psychology at Peabody at Vanderbilt and asked this question and we began a series of studies to actually answer that question. and so it's it's been a a fascinating journey for me and I think I've kinda answered the question at least enough to satisfy me for the minute. but yeah it's fant it's been a fantastic run to do that. speaker-1: Well, that's such a I find that to be such a delightfully non traditional path to s becoming a researcher that you just had this observation and you contacted the scientists and said, What is it? And what did he say? I guess I don't know, let's find out. Exactly. Yeah, it sounds like a dream come true, honestly. speaker-0: It yeah, it was. It was and so and then it it put me on a PhD path and then that's how we you know, how we got to that. speaker-1: So I I I'm curious about just the process of going into doing the PhD and like doing the research. from the very beginning, I mean you you observe a phenomenon, which is kind of where science starts. Right. And then I assume you began formulating a hypothesis at that point. What was that process like of working with them to develop research methods? speaker-0: you know what he did was to turn me on to some studies about synesthesia and cross modal associations and so doing some basic research on what we do already know then it you know began to fill in the corners and and the I I think about research questions as sort of like a pyramid and before you can get to the the apex of the pyramid, which is ultimately your question, there are a lot of little places along the bottom along the base that you have to fill in along the way. And so it was a process of finding, you know, what what places were filled, what spaces were filled and what weren't. And it just led me through a series of studies and and through the formulation of actually how we're going to answer this question. speaker-1: So you used a couple of terms there that I think we should probably go ahead and define now. One is synesthesia and the other one is cross modal association. speaker-0: Yes, absolutely. So when I talk about the a modality, I'm talking about s a sensory modality here. So for instance, you know, vis vision is a sensory modality, we have an an oral sense, we have motor skills, we have other those types of things. And so what synesthesia is, is it's a sort of a modality influencer or a modality switcher to some degree where one stimulus, one modality stimulus Let's say vision, and let's say you if you observe a number, and that number is four, you might get a sensory image of a color. Let's say that you see the number four and the color green pops up in your visual space, in your mind, right? and so we refer to that as synesthesia, where one stimulus promotes or influences or produces another stimulus, right? Actually produces is probably the best word here. And the the difference with synesthesia is that let's say you and I both have number call or synesthesia. You may see the number four as green and I may see it as red. So there are individual differences between what the stimulus is and what it produces for for that individual. the interesting thing is that the general population also has the ability to do this same cross-modal association where we associate one something with something else, where something not necessarily produces an effect, but influences an effect to some degree. and that cross-modal association tends to be universal or pretty much universal within. the population. So the differences are that synesthesia is highly individualized and it actually produces a different stimulus. Cross modal association is more of an associative thing. speaker-1: And so yeah, when you say it's essentially universal in cross-modal association that basically it's 'cause it's kind of like part of our programming that all people will associate. So for example, movement. Correct. So a conductor doing something like that, I mean I've seen I'm just kind of starting to think about learning to sing. When someone moves their hand for anybody watching video like this, it kind of helps you know which direction you're going. Well and also it's interesting, there's a direction to it, which is also a kind of a fascinating way that we conceive of a pitch. Right. speaker-0: So one of the things that we do tend to have cross cross-modal associations is to associate height with pitch, right? So that it like the higher physical space be a higher pitch, right, or higher frequency that we would hear associate with that. So the kind of getting back to the our research question, the the way that we decided to answer this question was basically a very simple study. and that study was to just see how people responded to different types of gesture. so what we did was really fascinating. There was an individual named Rudolph Labon who lived from the mid- Mid-19th to the mid-20th century. And Le Bon, you know, actually I'm not sure about that. I should look that up. Rudolph Leban is probably best known for developing a notation for choreography, up until his notational system, choreography was just handed down by oral tradition. Rudolph Lebon was the son of a French military officer. And because military families moved a lot during those days as they do often today, he didn't have a lot of friends and he spent most of his time just observing. And he observed he loved to observe human s mov movement and so he spent a lot of time watching people walk, watching people do various actions, and he actually came up with sort of a lexicon Of different types of movement that humans do. And he came up with eight different categories of these types of movements. So what we did in our study was to take four of these movement types and to recreate them with a visual stimulus, and then to ask our subjects to respond with a just a nonsense syllable, and the syllable was da. And just to ask them to just watch the gesture and to make just to say the syllable da in a way that they thought best matched the gesture. And we made audio recordings of all of their responses, and we randomized them and blinded them and played them back for an expert panel of reviewers. And we could tell between, I think it was 82 and 96% of the time, which one of the four videos. The subject was watching when they said a particular response. So it was really kind of interesting and was done in a sort of very natural way to see what how those those folks responded. And so we figured that there is a cross-modal association between the visual system and the motor system, but somehow kind of mediated by the auditory system and what those responses were. The other thing that we did in one of these studies was to to go into a lab where we have a motion capture system. So it's like it was we did this a few years ago so the Sony Xbox was a was a big thing, right? So and there were eight cameras around the room and they actually photographed me wearing a velcro suit with little reflective markers on all of the joints that I that I was and what it did it was it produced a stick figure. of each of the movements. And we analyzed the motion data for those stick figures and we found some really interesting things, which is one of them was that the higher in terms of vertical plane, the higher that the gesture was, the higher that the pitches were of the respondents and what they did. We noticed an interest a couple of other phenomena that duration of movement equaled duration of sound. The more force that was denoted in the in the motion data. tended to be louder in terms of respondents. And finally the using the Z plane of the gesture produced a different, slightly different vowel sound. So those were some of the things that we were able to extract and to learn about how we perceived these different gestures and then how we would actually reproduced what our oral sense would have been in in the responses. speaker-1: So for example that the Z plane, the difference producing different vowel sounds, were the different vowel sounds consistent across your subjects? Yes. Yes. So it's it's not like synesthesia where it's individual. It's we just kind of have an intuitive sense of sound with movement. Correct. That's I have so many questions. for one, I think the one that I think is the most salient, why do you think that is? Why would we need that? speaker-0: It's a great question. I'm sure it's probably has some sort of survival benefit. It must yeah, who knows? We don't know. I mean, it's really interesting. Music is it's a phenomenon that we find in every culture across the country across the world. and so I think there's some connection there. It's a we think of it now more or less as a biological behavior and a social cultural behavior and a so and a psychosocial behavior than s than more than it is a product, right? but I think in in finding out or trying to determine what its music's function is has been rather difficult because you know we don't know if it's has to do with sexual selection, if it has to do with survival benefits, if it has to do with natural selection. It could be, you know, there's evidence to support these ideas, but nothing that's concluding and absolutely irrefutable. So it's it's a really interesting question that we will probably never know fully the answer to, but it's something that's interesting to to talk about. So one of the the interesting thing about that Z-axis thing is that when when the Z axis, when the motion was actually toward the defendant The it it defendant, sorry, let me say that again, sorry. When the Z axis gesture was toward the subject, it actually went from an from an sound to an sound, as almost as if they were being punched in the stomach. speaker-1: Yeah, I just kinda felt it as you were making that moment and I was like, ugh like yeah. speaker-0: You so you sort of feel that and the question is then, you know, are we are I think for my my philosophy tends to follow along the lines that music follows what it is that we experience. and i in our own environments and our own daily life and movements and tasks and things that we do, that music sort of parallels those things, right? And so yes, when you see that coming towards you, you have a response that changes, you know, it's a very you know, guttural response because it's it mimics something that might be hurtful or or might be harmful for you. speaker-1: Right. I mean, I was just thinking like we have these mirror neurons and we're still learning more about what they do, but they kind of perceive, I mean, they help us literally to mirror what the person across the phonos is doing, but there's more to the just mirroring. And I could just tell by the movement, my brain's probably picking up, there's this I felt this thing in my gut before from being bunched in the gut, and I need to recreate that. Mm-hmm. Cause just basically 'cause we predict. You know, that's what our brains do. You the thing you're talking about music kind of following our everyday experience. What came to my mind was I've heard many times from people. people that the first instrument were drums and that they were meant to mimic the beating the sound of a beating heart or a mother's beating heart. I don't know how we would know that. Do we know that? I think we can know that, yeah. I mean we could find drums that are way, way older than anything else we found, but maybe we just haven't found another kind of instrument. but percussion I can see how there's a lot of things in nature that you could you could use for percussion. but it is interesting that we kinda know what rhythm is like intuitively 'cause we have a heartbeat. speaker-0: Percussion obviously and it's i the things that we have found, the artifacts that we have found, are the the things that are durable, right, and stand, you know, thousands of years. But I think I think the some of the earliest ones are like forty three thousand years old and they tend to be like bone flutes of various types and so forth. So we found those. I'm not sure that we really found percussion instruments, but again, you could probably use anything. I mean you could use your body, right? speaker-1: Or your body, yeah, yeah. I mean yeah. Right. Yeah, yeah. Your body. Of course it wouldn't even of course, you know, of course you could just you could make whatever, things like that. and forty three thousand years, I I just have it I guess you could maybe maybe a bias or an instinct that we must have been making music much longer ago than that. Would you agree with that? speaker-0: I I would. Yeah. speaker-1: Yeah, I mean do you have a sense of how ancient music would be? speaker-0: Think it's as old as humans, you know, probably. It's it's one of those questions we will probably never speaker-1: Yeah. I mean Homo erectus had fire and I can imagine that sitting around the fire is where some of these things would have begun, 'cause what do you do at night? Storytelling and music and those two things are also seem to be linked. I mean, even going back to like ancient times in Greece, you know, the theater was the chorus was kind of the storyteller. It was like the narrator. They would sing the story and storytelling and song seem to have always been kind of tied together in a way. And songs do convey meaning, like culturally. so I like to think that you know music is just so deeply human. It sounds like that's also what your what your research shows is that it's I mean it's wired into the the firmware of our brain. speaker-0: Absolutely. Again, it's it's it's foundational to who we are, it's part of w of our culture, it's part of our our social understanding, it's part of our biology biology, it's part of what we do and who we are. You know, the interesting thing will be and the the other thing I s I think is to think about it is in our Western culture we think about it as a product, right? My music, you know, or you know, buying music or purchasing music or music as some kind of, you know, tangible thing. when and we're re f sort of reframing that in the academy is now it's a behavior. We find it in every human, we find it throughout history, we find it in every culture of the world, and it has all of those components to it the cultural piece, the psychosocial piece, the biological piece. all of those things are tied in together and it's it's inextractable. Inextrictable speaker-1: So speaker-0: Yeah. We can't we can't separate it from who we are. It's part of our everyday life. It I think it reflects what it is that we do, all of the movements that we make, the stories that we tell, the conversations that we have, all of those things are tied up in this musical behavior. speaker-1: So you earlier before we were talking, you said that you believe music is a verb. And this is what you're describing. it's a beautiful way of putting it that like you don't you don't have music or make music, you you music. Correct. You know. I love that. And w of the many different things that music is these components the social part, the psychological part, the cultural part. For me, I think my relationship to music now is explicitly affective, emotional. Like I I listen to music when I want to feel something or often to help me feel something. I mean, sometimes it can feel really, really good to cry. You know what I mean? Like it's just like you just need it. And music can almost act like kind of like an emotional diuretic. to just kind of help things flow. And it's amazing how quickly things can shift when the music can shift. do you know anything about I'm sure you do know a lot about how music is used therapeutically in that way. And what is the research on that like? speaker-0: It depends. as it we use it in lots of different therapeutic purposes and for instance one of the things that we we know about music that the music that is most salient to us is generally the music that we listen to mostly from the ages of about sixteen to about twenty four. And so when you know they're always the ev they become everyone's oldies at some point, right? That that is your your window. speaker-1: I'm in that mode now where people are younger people are talking about music that, you know, from the late nineties and early two thousands is oldies. Right. Yeah. That's weird to me. speaker-0: And if you walk into like a nursing home facility and you listen carefully to the music that's playing softly in the background and if you can figure out, you know, when that music was recorded and when it was popular, you can pretty much, you know, guess what the average age of the resident is in that nursing yeah. speaker-1: In my mind I'm hearing the Beach Boys. But maybe that that would have been the the last time I went to a nursing home, that might have been what they were listening to today that'd probably be something different. Exactly. Yeah. I have a a friend, mentor who's a psychologist named Frank Lawless, and he was a psychometrician. He mostly he worked for Minsa for many, many years and kind of a medical psycholog psychologist and he worked for the VA at one point as their chief psychologist and kind of the problem that they told him, you know, that the people that were residents, especially the geriatric residents, were unhappy. Yeah, their mental health was not good. They were and you know, th I think the task was let's make them easier for the doctors and staff to deal with. and he had them drum, just drumming at a at a certain frequency. and they were much, much happier. There's like a calming effect, but it drove all the staff crazy because there was all this drumming all the time. But there's just something primal about hearing drum music that is kind of soothing. and there are certain frequencies that he has observed or I guess a frequency is literally the frequency of the the beat, right? and Yeah, I always found that interesting that it just has a very soothing effect. But it really matters like I guess in this case like it would be the frequency, right? speaker-0: So the frequency generally refers to pitch. speaker-1: Pitch. Right, right. Right. The frequency of oscillation of sound. Correct. Right. Okay. So that's measured in Hertz. Yes it is. Yes. And the lower the number, the lower the pitch? Correct. Right. Okay. So the fewer oscillations, but it'll travel farther, right? Correct. So that's why we hear bass notes. Yes. Sometimes in here we have something called a high pass filter and a low pass filter. I know the low pass filter lets the lows pass through, but there are sounds that are like ps ps like that that are really annoying. and those are like you you filter that out. do you have any sense of like why there's some sounds for me where I'm like those high pitched sounds are like whispering are really grating? You know what I mean? Yeah. Do you can you relate to that? Is that meaning that's a universal I speaker-0: No, that's I think it's probably individualized, but I I'm saying that just as an opinion, not not any other way, but yeah, I think everyone has sounds that are irritating to them on some level and no telling exactly speaker-1: the the the prototype is nails on a chalkboard. Right. Right. That's that's because it's so annoying it's become an expression that we can all kind of relate to. Right. Yeah. Yeah. speaker-0: kind of interesting. But there are many you know, many other applications of music in a therapeutic sense and a lot of it has to do with socialization, particularly people who are feeling isolated or people who want to where they're trying to to facilitate group activities and the sense of social belonging and those types of things. A lot of the lot of therapeutic work speaker-1: Yeah, we make music together. Yeah, we do. Yeah, it's it's something to be done in community and it's cool to see, I've seen many times now, someone will start playing a guitar and then they'll start singing with it, and then eventually someone else will kind of come along and there's a percussion instrument that they'll start using or a rattle and sound kind of layers on onto itself one component at a time and there's this kind of like the research pyramid you were describing until eventually you get to something that's Almost synergistic. I mean it's more than the sum of the component parts of the music. and it's a it's a really fascinating phenomenon. speaker-0: And and I think, you know, in our western Terminology in our Western thought, we think about music, and ultimately the word talent comes up. I don't have talent, you know, I don't I mean I don't know how to sing or I don't know how to play an instrument, those types of things, and we equate that to for some reason it seems as though people feel like it's something that they're born with or that they're born without. And when I believe inherently that we all are musicians on some level, yes, some of us play instruments better than others and have more. practice and are more skilled in those things or singing. But inherently we are all musicians. This this scenario that you just described probably would then bring in bystanders who would be start to dance or start to move or start to hum and all of that is musical behavior, right? And so I'd love if you like go down a rabbit hole in in YouTube and w you know, watch babies right there. There's all these videos of infants or babies that are moving and dancing to music. And that to me is one of the earliest signs of musical behavior is that what they're hearing, they're responding to in a way that is uninhibited, in a way that it feels natural to them, and they just start moving and synchronizing sometimes with the beat. It's pretty phenomenal actually. speaker-1: It sounds amazing. I mean it's yeah, because there's when I mean with little babies. There's no I d you know, they probably don't even know how to be self conscious yet. I mean literally they haven't developed that capacity. I have been I've started doing something called ecstatic dance. Have I ever told you what this is? Mm-hmm. Ecstatic dance is it happens every other week here in Nashville, but it's a it's a worldwide thing and it's meant to be like medicine through dance. and I think the main components is ten thirty to twelve thirty every other Sunday here in Nashville at Millennium Dance Complex and kind of the basic points of it it's substance free, so drugs or alcohol. And And there's also no talking. It's just it's kind of meant to be a spiritual experience through through dance and through music. And for me it's kind of like exposure therapy because I've just had a I would I would have told you six months ago that I can't dance. That's what I would have said. And and I had been told many times that I couldn't dance, and I used to have to get like really blackout drunk to do it. And one of the I've made a joke, it's not really a joke, one of the better parts of quitting drinking was just I always had an excuse to never have to dance. And so I was like, okay, I need to do it because I'll feel I'll feel better, I'll feel more liberated. And so I go now and it's kind of a continuing process of trying to forget to be self conscious. And I've also, you know, I mentioned like I'm just bought a guitar and I want to take some singing lessons. And I would definitely I'm one of the kinds of people that would say I can't sing and I I can't play music and I don't have an aptitude for it. And I think that one of the reasons that that may seem true is that I have a very hard time with self-consciousness. And I'm very much aware of myself and in my head and one of the reasons I want to play music is not because I think I'll ever be any good at it, which is kind of a in and of itself for me to do something without trying to be good at it, but also is that I just want to get into my body. I want to feel, you know, and and make music. do you have any sense for how like what I'm s describing is like it seems like self consciousness is the lever that seems to be or one of the major levers that allows us to just have this freedom to play. speaker-0: Yes, and I think that, you know, social norms can be a double-edged sword, right? And I think about we as humans really don't have a lot of natural what's the word I'm looking for? We as humans don't have a lot of natural defenses. The most the our biggest asset is just our brains. And the social knowledge of having each other and communicating with each other, right? So if you're alone in the middle of a giant field and here comes you know a puma, right, and you know you can't outrun the puma, you call to a buddy and say, hey, you know, distract the puma so I can get away, right? We we don't have those natural defenses other than just our minds. And so that means that we have r really intricate social structures in many cases. And social norms are a product of those social structures and there are double Because a social norm can tell you you know one thing about how to get along in this community and how to contribute and how to benefit from this community, but it can also kind of put up a barrier in what in self-consciousness is one of those things, I think. speaker-1: Then we need it. I mean, yeah, but 'cause if you're not self conscious at all, if don't have the capacity for self consciousness, then you're shameless, literally. Like and I've I've if you've never been around someone who's shameless, it's it's not good. It's very antisocial actually, to have no sense of shame. is usually what you would see with people that are like severely narcissistic. speaker-0: I and I think that, you know, this th this barrier is what this social self-conscious barrier, maybe not really being aware of what music and if our social norms teach us that music is a product and that it's something that's only, you know, commercially available and you have to be good enough to make that music to be have it be, you know, socially available, then you're left in this other pool of people who whose only response is just to be an audience member or a listener. when and that's a very Western ideal. Once you get outside of this Western paradigm, we find that music is is a grassroots behavior. there is no power differential, there's no you know no teacher, no student, everyone just shares knowledge in a in a in a communal way. we don't have this idea of commercialism. You don't it's not something that you buy. it's not something that you you l you know talk about it in terms of now I listen to music or I like music, right? We we think about it now in this non Western way of being more just of a natural human behavior. I love and in many African languages the word for music is the same word that also means dance. I and so that it's seen as as just a part, not a standalone thing so much, but as a part of a natural human expression. speaker-1: Yeah. And those words I assume are often they're verbs. Correct. Right. Right. In many languages. It's and dance is definitely a verb. and It if you try to separate dance from music, I I really don't know that you could do that. I mean you could dance without any music playing, but it's in your head. Correct. You know, you're moving to something. Correct. So that's really fascinating that they would that they would be the same word. I mean of course it's kind of the same activity that they would go together. as we're I mean we're having this conversation now about music and it being a human behavior, I just I'd have to ask about what do you think about all of the AI music that's coming out now. speaker-0: That's the big question now, isn't it? Because if music is part of a human behavior and then y if you're turning that over to an you know an artificial means, is it still music? Right. And I guess one could argue that the humans invented the mechanisms that created AI, you know, and that AI is producing the music. But I I see it Th that's gonna be an interesting question. But I I don't see it really as really what music is. Music is a human behavior. speaker-1: Right. It it's an interesting question to me too. I think a lot about computers and AI because I keep finding myself subconsciously when I'm trying to explain how the mind works to people, I will use metaphors like RAM to explain working memory or, you know, hard drive. I mean it's just but the fascinating thing is we invented the computers to work like our minds work. It's an interesting question to me. Is that because that's the only way for like are these neural networks the only way to process, or is that just the only way we can fathom because we don't have the architecture to think another way? And So we've specifically designed these machines to produce music in the same way that we would produce music and through, you know, all the learnings and the generative behavior that they do. And so in a some sense it's kind of like really effective mimicry. But s there's a lot of AI music now. I mean it's kind of I'm feeling a little bit jaded because the more I like something, the less likely I am to believe that it's a real person. And I'm an artist, I'm a photographer mostly and For me, the point of view of the artist is an important part. Like I I'm a f I love film. I love to watch films by the director. I'm studying the director, and I want to see his or her work from the beginning, and then I want to watch it evolve and see how they've developed as an artist and where are they going. It's a great way to listen to music. I did that for the first time with John Mayer. I listened to his albums from the very beginning, all the way through in the order in which he intended me to hear them, and then as the albums would progress, and you can It's incredibly it's an incredibly rich experience to see where this artist goes. And that's definitely something that AI does not have the capacity for now, to be the same person, to be a unique individual. speaker-0: Yeah. And I think one of the basic things behind my whole ideals and what what we've learned about the link between music and gesture is this imitation where one imitates the other. And that's why I think there's some music that speaks more to some people because it activates we don't know if it's mirror neurons or whatever, it's something that re relates to our experiences that we find it relatable. and I think the term art imitates life is a great metaphor that sort of helps describe that. The question I think is that I wonder about is you know, can AI imitate the human experience? speaker-1: Yeah, well there's a bunch of ethical questions around that too, because if can AI suffer or is it just can it appear to suffer? That that is interesting that is important implications of can you unplug it? Right. You know, is it is it wrong to unplug it or to can it experience pain? I can say one thing that d a lot of the the AI music I hear, it's like it's good. It's too good in a way. If if that makes any sense, it feels almost soulless, but so I'm not sure if it's because I I know that there's no human being that's made it that I feel that way, but there is one song I heard. It was the first one where it was the first AI song I heard that wasn't like a joke, like a mashup. There's a YouTube channel called There I Ruined It. And they'll take a famous song that you love and they'll mash it up with some other song in a way that's kind of perverse and funny. The first one I heard that was this song made me cry. The first several times I listened to it. It's called I Will Find You in the Next Life. And it sounds like it's the music's musicians Sia and Damian Marley. and it's one of these things that are called impossible matchups. Like you would never get those two together to make this sublime, beautiful song. And that to me raised an interesting question which was if I know the music is fake or I know the music is not made by humans And arguably two people's voices were kind of ripped off for it and it still makes me cry, like I'm still moved by it. Doesn't really matter to me. And I'm not sure how I feel about it, to be honest with you. It's I'm a little I'm a little concerned that a machine could move me in this way, without any kind of empathy of its own. But also It was kind of a beautiful experience to hear it and I remember thinking like people are amazing that we we built a machine that can do this. So that's cool, but it it seems different and I'm not sure how I feel about it. speaker-0: Can you determine that the source of w your feelings were more text related or more music related? So speaker-1: Can you differentiate the two cards? speaker-0: the text would be the l the lyrics, was it be the lyrics that move you? speaker-1: It was both. so the the lyrics, just the idea of I will find you in the next life, about love transcending time and and even natural life was a beautiful idea. But the real thing that hit me was there there was a choir and there were harmonies and they were just making harm sounds, like not even words. It was just there's something about choir music, the harmony of it. It it And that's really what got me. It it's the word I would use for that feeling is sublime. Do you know what I mean by that? Yeah, and it it it's specifically associated with choir music. I think about really tall cathedrals. You might find that interesting when you're talking about height and pitch. It's like you we speak of soaring vocals. That's kinda how they they sounded. speaker-0: Right. And those spaces are they're literally awesome, right? They're so so big and there's so much room for sound to, you know, do its thing in those spaces. And so there there is that piece of it, right, for sure. it's a really great question. It's a really, really interesting question. And then the other thing is that you know, it might speak to you in that way, but from someone else with a different experience coming from a different culture, it might not speak to them at all. Right. And so How does you know how does AI play into that? Does a can AI know your culture and you know what your experiences are and what works to you, or is it just a coincidental thing that it just happened to be this song that resonated with you and what they did with it? speaker-1: I've listened to many, many more. I mean that's mostly what I think Spotify wants to feed is because they don't have to pay royalties on it. Mm-hmm. And it n none of the other ones have made me cry yet. You know, but it it might. It's an interesting question though. I've one of the things I was talking with you about before that I'm very fascinated by is just the science of religious experience. and kind of what explains what we're perceiving there. And I associate Harmonies in particular, quor choir music, but harmony in particular with religion. Now that might be because I was raised in a Christian in a Catholic specifically household and there's a lot of choir music that comes from the Catholic Church. Do you know is is choir music or or harmonies in particular or are those seen as divine and is that a cross cultural thing or is do you think that's cultural? speaker-0: cul I think it's cultural. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, the the particularly the early composers of that music had their own beliefs, you know, the the different modes they they thought brought different effects to them and so that they used some particular modes and and to describe a mode it let's just say it's a different type of scale that is used a little bit differently and it and they believed that these different scales or modes again elicited different emotions for people. And so they would only use some of the modes in like the penitential seasons of the church year and then they would use others in the more celebratory seasons of the church year. And so I mean we've gone through centuries and centuries of this sort of cultural meaning, right, that's developed through this time. And so the question is, you know, how does that transfer from generation to generation and what is the process by which that takes place. and then I mean I think that's you know, an important part of our cultural understanding. speaker-1: I think so from what you're describing, I I just have a memory of I think someone telling me like a major chord is bright and happy and a minor chord is I know that I'm sure that's incredibly reductive, but if you're explaining it to a ten year old you know, like a minor chord would be kind of gloomy and things like that. It's amazing how music has it's almost like it has its own mood and the way we talk about it sometimes is as if it's its own entity. Do you find that interesting that we we just talk about well this music wants this? Correct. speaker-0: And again, that's sort of that objectification that we find through our sort of commercial. speaker-1: Yeah, it's almost yeah, yeah, personification almost. But there it's we we talk about music as property, literally. And it's in our in our country we we treat music as property. Right. speaker-0: And if for instance if you you know play that same music for someone who is in a relatively secluded, you know, tribe in Africa, are they gonna respond the way chances are probably not. I've heard some some music where it's a very thought provoking and it in and this particular like I can think of one song in particular that is we would it's in a sort of a major key and we would think of it as being a very happy upbeat type piece of music, rel relatively quick tempo, in a major key. And yet this particular piece of music was a lamentation about the the the results of AIDS in this particular culture. And so it it was a it was a a a piece of what they would dealing with a sad topic, right? So you would you listen to that and you go, wait, how could this possibly be so about something that's sad, right? So it's just it's very, very much oriented towards the culture and what those people do. speaker-1: Well, I also find I've been wrestling with this a little bit lately with my own relationship to music, is we don't just feel one thing at a time. You know, like sometimes I've had an experience a lot of something is very sad, but it mostly I'm overwhelmed by how beautifully sad it is. You know what I mean? I get this a lot with it's experienced a lot with cinema where it's just like you're seeing something a sad story, a whatever, a you know, tragedy, a drama, but it can be portrayed in such a way that is so aesthetically beautiful and meaningful and impactful that I'm almost more it's more I'm moved, basically, is a way of it's actually a really profound way of saying it given what we're talking about that music moves us. And that's we talk about emotions as being moving. I mentioned a a researcher earlier who I'm hoping to get on soon. He's a he's an evolutionary psychologist, psychiatrist, studies religion. And one of his explanations for what he thinks religion is is he will refer to music. And he essentially says religion, I think, religious experience is about a merger of the ego with a superego, of becoming part of a larger whole. And his examples of this are when you're at concert and everybody in the concert sings the words together and there's a feeling. Or also when you're a football game or an event and everybody does the wave. that there's there's this synchronized movement where it's like we're all in this together. And I find that fascinating and I've always I that when I was asking about harmonic sounds of people making voices together in in concert. do you think that there's something to that? Like of just the feeling we have? speaker-0: Absolutely. And I think that's part of the social cohesion part, right? If we have a reason like we find this enjoyable or we find social you know, we find like we feel like we're more part of something and that gives us some kind of feeling, whether it's joy or or relief or, you know, sad you know, sadness even in a in in a corporate way, that we feel like we're a part of something. And you know, it it's interesting that, you know, then in our y in our in our in our universe, things we know that if if things have the ability to synchronize, they probably will. So for instance, if you put pendulum clocks on a wall, as long as the there is some sort of a flexible medium and that they will absolutely synchronize even if they are started at different times, right? That they'll they'll figure out a way to do that. Fireflies will synchronize together, they will fly you know, their flashing will will synchronize. There are lots of different examples of in the universe where things will, if given the opportunity, given a flexible enough medium that they will actually just synchronize. And so there's a a natural proclivity, I think, of humans to want to synchronize as with everything else that, you know, that's it's just a property of our universe. there's some great YouTube videos. I love to use YouTube videos in my teaching. they're just, you know, they they tend to be quite effective and but you can take a plank And you can put it on some, let's just say like maybe soda cans, like maybe three soda cans, and put a plank on top and put three physical metronomes on top of them and start them at this they'll have the same tempo marking. Let's say you put it at 60, right, which is 60 beads a minute or one beat per second. And you start them at different times, they'll move this plank across these flexible you know, rolling soda cans and to eventually they will sync up. Right, which is really fascinating work. and so I think this general idea of this, you know, things tending to synchronize is is a universal phenomenon, but I think it is also a really important part of our social cohesion which promotes our survival. And I think the emotion is part of that hook to form that social cohesion. speaker-1: Yeah, well, it's clear to me that emotion is like they're like these instincts that are supposed to drive social behavior. I mean that's clearly what we have them for. And it makes perfect sense that something that's very pro-social, like you're saying music is and it it's making a lot of sense to me, would be would be emotion would kind of be like a wellspring that would would drive that. so much of music is about processing emotion, but also I mean just experiencing it, elongating it and things like that and then Of course, doing it together. And there's also, you know, you mentioned we don't know about mate selection. it's kind of amusing to me when you think about just the number of people who exist because their parents danced, you know, were at a dance party probably with alcohol, maybe, you know, lately. I mean, that those things tend to, you know, there's movement together and synchronization that that's kind of what sex is like, presumably. Right. You know, for some people. And there's there seem to be applications there as well that, you know, it may make us Mm-hmm. Yeah. speaker-0: Absolutely. And that's that's an important part of musical behavior. And it it you know, musical behavior is not just singing or playing an instrument, right? It's all of these things. It's it's movement, it's this sort of general sync sense of synchronization. there's obviously other factors, other musical properties that are included in these things, but it's it's part of the package and I y the the thing I the thing I think The thing that I think is really unfortunate so much is this we have our social norm has been that music is something that you either have a talent for or that you don't. And that everyone else says, well I don't know how to do you know, I'm not a musician, I wasn't born with that, you know, ability. And it's not about that. It's about having the freedom to exercise that whatever you are musically, whatever your musical behaviors are. th that is as much of a musician as anyone else, right? Because it's not just limited to producing something that is good, right? speaker-1: Yeah, or commercial. Commercial. That's I I know so many f people here that are musicians and they're immensely talented, it's sometimes shockingly talented people. And I think a lot of them have and I I can relate to this of wanting to just create and really wanting to not have to do anything else. Just to be able to make a living from it. I think a lot of people are not looking to get rich. They just want to be able to create and not have to worry about paying their bills. But there is this drive to make something that's commercial. Mm-hmm. And I I also find a lot of ambivalence that I feel when people ask me what kind of music do I like, I think they're referring to genre. But I don't really know how to define I I tend to like music that defies genre or merges it or fuses it or plays with that. I like it the same in cinema. And I also notice a lot of ambivalence with artists of having to put themselves in a box just to explain it or it's like it's like trying to explain a photograph to someone. You really can't. You just have to show it to them. Like I can I can tell you about a good photograph all day. Mostly I think the only thing you're gonna feel is confused or frustrated that you can't see it. So music it's like, well, this, whatever you call this, this is what I like. And we do have this I don't know, is we're in a music city town, you know, a music business town. And there is that drive and I think it it is unfortunate because there's so much beautiful music and musicians out there that because people don't know how to market it, it's like it's it may as well not exist. Right. speaker-0: It's all about the marketing as we know. But you know, you use an interesting word which is of course talent and you know, we that that particular word has a different meaning for a lot of different folks. What does it mean? Does it mean skilled? Does it mean a propensity for doing something? you know, potential, what does that mean, right? And so it becomes so socially laden that I just won't use it anymore myself. You know, if somebody they're a you know they're a skilled guitar player, right? Or they're y you know separating the skill from the inner musical self, which is much more than just playing an instrument. It's about your oral perception. It's about your how you incorporate vision into what you do in your and your movements and how that reflects and what you hear and how you relate to it based upon your life experiences. speaker-1: Instead of talented, what would your how would you feel about the word gifted? speaker-0: I yeah I avoid that too. Because speaker-1: Tim. speaker-0: what does that mean? And and who's to say who's gifted? Here's the other piece. Who's to say who's gifted? Who's to say who's talented? Right? Because you're putting that power on a single individual. Right. As opposed to, you know, we don't know necessarily what anyone's potential is for anything until we give them the the the opportunity to create their own tools to do whatever it is they want to do, right? speaker-1: Right. Yeah, there's you have to necessarily adopt certain norms. 'Cause what you're really saying is like it I think when people are talking about giftedness, like in an intellectual domain, they're talking about exceptional, like a degree to which someone is exceptional, which requires you to adopt a norm. Otherwise there's otherwise there's nothing that you could be an exception to. Right. And I think there are some people who just have voices. There's one person I can think of. He's a singer in the the band Pentatonics. Mm-hmm. This man has his voice is literally remarkable. It's it's very unusual that I would hear a man produce a sound like this. So that's cool, but it's not like it's not necessarily I get what you're saying, it's not necessarily to say that he's talented, although I'm sure that his genetics have to do with this, but yeah, I mean I've always looked at people that are really, really really skilled at music, I let's say. There's a talent there, then you spend twenty years doing it every day. And like that's arguably more important. And I think that there's a lot of people that have become great athletes, for example. When they were five years old, someone told them they were a great athlete and then they just gave them all these opportunities and pushed them and pushed them and pushed them. And do you think that's how people that emerge as musicians and professional musicians that they just were socialized very early to that they were good at music? speaker-0: think a lot of the that certainly the sort of the idea of self-confidence is is huge with the idea that yes I can do anything I want or I can apply myself in any number of ways and get those things. And the I think the bigger piece of that is opportunity and what you know you know what someone's perception of someone's natural ability is and how they can facilitate opportunities for that person, you know, particularly children, right? And so and even though some people have a lot of opportunities and they have this this this sort of push behind them, you know, they may or may not really want to be able to to do those things, right? They may not want to be a professional baseball player or professional pianist. and it's about it it has to do with what people how they incorporate what it is they that they do and want to do and produce it. speaker-1: do you think that When I was in middle school, I told you I played piano. It took three years. And I think at at that at the school I was at I had to do some kind of elective and music was one of a very small number of choices. and I didn't particularly enjoy playing piano. I mean there's some I could play some so I played the Charlie Brown theme at the end and that was a fun song to play after three years of learning. but I know a lot of people or there's a lot of like I think there's kind of a almost a cultural meme of a very overbearing parent who wants their child to be very, very successful making them learn the violin. And I don't know how many children really want to learn the violin, but I imagine there are a lot more that are learning the violin. or the cello or or whatever it might be. what do you think of that of of kind of forcing a child to learn an instrument because it's good for them? speaker-0: Boy, that's tough, you know, and it's parents want to give their children opportunities and so and without some dedicated you know, work towards whatever it is they're trying to learn, you know, they're probably not going to get very far. And the idea is trying to figure out, you know, where is that balance between what the child wants to do with whatever the skill is and and where they don't. One of the things I hear commonly from people when they when I tell them what I do, they go, you know, I used to play the whatever, right? And they say, my parents let me quit and I wish they hadn't. So it's a really fine line, you know, and and you know, I see it all the time. I also I play hockey, that's my s my my recreational sport and exercise and fabulous mental health and wellness outlet. But I see this all the time, you know, with parents towing these, you know tiny children to the rink and tying their skates and shoving them out on the ice and you know, sometimes the kids want to do it and sometimes they don't. I think y you know, it really just sort of depends on finding that balance between encouragement and domination. speaker-1: Yeah, it's tough. 'Cause I I can tell you the people that say, I wish my parents had let me quit. I mean I feel this way about s certain languages where I've kinda got some exposure to, especially Spanish, but also some other ones that I wish I had done the work by now of learning them. You know what I mean? Like 'cause by now I would have a lot of benefits of it. And it's the same thing with the musical instrument. I mean, if I'm gonna start learning a a new instrument, it might be a decade of work consistently before I'm like really, really glad I did it. You know. But although hopefully I I get some joy out of it along the way. so I can relate to that feeling of and when you're a kid, you know, sometimes you want to face tattoo and that's not a good idea. Right. You know, someone's gotta tell you what's right. So it is it is an interesting dilemma. It must be hard to be a parent. speaker-0: Th I wouldn't think so. speaker-1: Yeah, me neither. do you there's a lot there were a lot of claims. I was told when I was in middle school in the nineties, that playing the piano would make me smarter. there are a lot of claims like this about that the relationship of musical ability and general cognitive ability. Do we know if there's any validity to any of those claims? speaker-0: All of most of those studies are all correlational. Yeah, speaker-1: Can you explain what that means? speaker-0: so a correlation means that let's say well studies in particular, where they looked at the grades and the achievement in terms of grades from students who were in band. Right. And so what they did was they correlated their activity in band to their scores, their test scores or their grades, I forget which I think there's several studies out there and that they do all of those things. and so what they these correlational studies show that that yes there is a an interesting correlation between higher test scores and musical ability. Or it could be actually. Let me start this whole section over. So a correlational study is where you you notice that there is a correlation between two different things. So in many st there are many studies that were done between participation in school music programs, usually banned for most of them, and also their test scores and or their grades. And they noticed that there was a correlation between being involved in these school programs and their test scores, right? But what that doesn't tell us is what the causes were, right? So there's an old saying in research that says correlation does not equal causation. Just because they were in the band does not mean that they were automatically, you know, talented, gifted for music or th or or the reverse. You know, I would I would guess that a parent who would take the trouble to get their child to music lessons and do all the other extra things that one has to do to be able to be a good music student. If they have that kind of parental involvement there, they're probably gonna help their children with their math homework and also get them tutoring if need be. So it could be that really the the factor here that's determining this is parental involvement. Or it could be something else that's environmental that we don't know about. speaker-1: One that's popping to my mind is socioeconomic status, which is also gonna modulate parental involvement. If you have two parents in the home, you're gonna have to have higher socioeconomic status for one, and you can afford to buy an oboe or something like that, or a piano, or whatever it would be, and then yeah, getting them to and from school. And so there are these independent causes. But it's also, I mean, it is interesting to think that it could also be that, you know, sometimes with correlation, there could be a causation, but it's can be the opposite of the one that you would expect. Like it might not be that music makes you better at math. It might be that having a higher general cognitive ability may make you give you more free time that you can say, yeah, I I've I've got enough time to practice at the end of the day. Or you know, I'm interested in doing that. There's a lot of personality factors too that I imagine you know it's interesting, I wonder do we have any knowledge of how people who just choose to study music or play music or make music, how that relates to like traits, personality traits? Openness and conscientiousness seem to be relevant. speaker-0: There is some some research that is we're beginning to see in that area. I'm not familiar with it, so I can't really speak to it. there getting back to the sort of the cognitive piece of it, there were some studies that were done a couple decades ago, and it was that they had some students while they were studying listen to Mozart music, Mozart's music, and opposed to students who did not and they found a a higher effect of of learning, I guess, through the students who listened to Mozart. But there were so many problems and and what happened was that study became publicized widely and promoted widely. but it was full of problems and so that has debunked it's been debunked many, many, many times. but people still because it was so widely promoted at the beginning, still people still believe that that classical music makes you smarter, right? Right. And so that you know we're still fighting that. speaker-1: It's so interesting 'cause of course it's classical and a lot of people what they're listening to is not even actually classical. It's broke or whatever, you know. but it's funny it's funny to me that people would think that because that's the smart person's music, right? Like that's what a smart person would listen to. I think is probably where that idea is really coming from. Probably as opposed to listening to gangster rap or whatever. Exactly where there are some people that are profoundly verbally gifted in that That particular genre of music. I it's incredible what some of them can do with words. and it could be for a certain person highly stimulating. you asked earlier about if I was responding to the text or the music of something. Someone was telling me a few days ago that they had heard that there's some people experience music differently. They notice things, some people really notice the lyrics, and other people really notice the music. is that is that true? I mean, is that something that's innate in us? And do we have studies of that? Do we have ways of studying that? speaker-0: I'm not sure. so the question is w whether people listen to one thing more than another. speaker-1: Yeah, or they just can perceive it more. I I don't really pick up on the lyrics, I can't remember the lyrics. Some people just get them and that seems to be what it mostly is about. speaker-0: Yeah, I think it's it's gonna be depend highly, you know, on the individual. I don't listen to lyrics either. And so, you know, people will like mention you know, I'll go to trivia with friends and they'll give a song lyric and I have no clue, right? You know, but if I hear the music then I can Right. And sometimes I can associate the music with the l you know, part of the lyric, but not always, you know. And so I think it just depends a lot on the individual. speaker-1: The way that you perceive music is very interesting too. We haven't really talked about that. could you tell us about what that's like for you? speaker-0: So yeah, I do have synesthesia and it's for me it's pitch and color. And so, I hear different pitches and I see different colors. It's kind of like a the best way to describe it is kind of like seeing the northern lights where it's just this hazy, just sort of color that you just you can s still see, you know, what's around it, what's behind it, but it it's just sort of this I guess this mask or this film. that goes over what I'm actually looking at. but yeah, it's it's very unusual and I remember, you know, thinking this as a young child, when I first you know, had an association and knowing, you know, what I have absolute pitch as well. So, you know, having a name for this particular sound that I have, that's an A or that's an F sharp or whatever, then I was able to kind of, you know, correlate those you know, those different colors and pitches together. But it's quite a sensory experience and yes it it is distracting for me. I've had to learn how to like like try to ignore it. I can never ignore it completely but enough that I can hopefully, you know, get what I need to do done. speaker-1: Yeah, right. Well now s because pitch is any sound. Correct. Right is producing a pitch. Are you aware of any right now? speaker-0: well I'm the overall black background behind you is it's kind of like it's kinda hard to see colors against that. So when we think about pitch, and w in enough it has to have enough of a sustained quality that I can actually s identify it. So even though like the pitch is varying, it's you know, when we speak it's varying in in such small increments of time that it's really hard to nail down. But it is not dependent on timbre. Tambor is some people refer to it as the color of sound, which makes no sense to someone with synesthesia. But it is a w speaker-1: All of sense to me. speaker-0: it is so I've always wondered why people use that term. But a timbre of something is let's just say you can hear an oboe and a trumpet and a violin all play the same exact pitch, the same exact frequency, but the the sound quality of each instrument is different enough that you can identify it. And it's that quality of sound. And it comes from resultant frequencies that also sound above the pitch that you're hearing as the fundamental the pitch, right? so some frequencies that you're hearing change from you know the spectrum of those frequencies change from instrument to intrus instrument to give you a different sense of quality of sound. speaker-1: Correct a bassoon or a xylophone. You just they're so that's that time timbre is the quality of what you're hearing. Correct. speaker-0: And and you can do it, I it's with voices too, right? You can tell the difference if you have two sisters and you know, you can probably tell them apart when they're speaking, right? speaker-1: Unless they're identical twins, in which case that's probably an interesting question. Yeah, correct. And you could probably so you so you know sometimes you can just kinda tell them apart. Yeah. But would they have to be standing next to each other and or talking? And when you s when you refer to pitch, is it the same as a note speaker-0: Yes. speaker-1: It's the same? They're they're functionally indistinguishable. speaker-0: Yeah, I mean one it's more of a an an issue of the context, right? So a note is something that it's a pitch that's sustained, right? and we think about it as something that is done, you know, purposefully on an instrument or singing that you're singing a particular pitch in the context of something. speaker-1: Yeah, it's there's a relationship there. Like there's a note. You don't usually just have a note. Right. It's a note that exists in relationship to other notes and the time, you know, that you're gonna do it, there's a duration and okay, and there's a purpose for it. And pitch is just the the raw sound that we're perceiving at a cognitive level. do you experience the colors, the synesthesia, when your eyes are closed? huh. So it's all the time. It's just yeah, so it's kind of like I I I'm sure there's actually a term for this you could tell me, but it's it's existing earlier on in the chain of causation than the photons. your your eyes. Like it's something that's earlier there. Yeah. Yeah. And when did you first notice that everybody else didn't really experience this? speaker-0: I think I was like in middle school or high school, and I I noticed first of all that you know, they I thought everyone had absolute pitch. So when I hear a note and I say, that note is an E flat, I assumed everybody knew that, right? And so I was sitting in in band one day and talking to the guy next to me, and I said, Wow, you know, they're really, you know, sharp on that E flat. And he said, What are you talking about? you know. And I said, Well, you know, the E flat they just played there. And he goes, How did you know what note? that is and I'm like, how do you not? Right. You know, and so I had no idea. And then I just, you know, through conversations with people, I'm like, wait a minute, you don't see a color when you hear a pitch? And so it was just sort of this, you know, through those early teen years of having conversations with people. Right. speaker-1: What was that like for you to psp gradually gain this this awareness? speaker-0: Well I I mean I think many teenagers kind of feel like y like they're kind of maybe think many teenagers feel sometimes that they are isolated and there's no one else in the world like them and that they're g you know pretty weird and you know and quirky and that just of course added to that you know sense to me. I was like, my gosh, I really am strange, right? I'm really different from everybody. but yeah that was that was just kind of part of that. speaker-1: Yeah, yeah. How is it I mean, you and you mentioned earlier it kinda takes a lot of concentration to just minimize the distraction. I mean, what has it been like for you to live with this I'm an I'm would it be okay if I called it a gift? speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: To me it's a it's just a remarkably beautiful fact about our species that this phenomenon exists. but I imagine that other people not even knowing that it exists, let alone what it's like, that must be difficult. speaker-0: It's a I mean it it's a little bit isolating, I think, in that res but at the same time and I have no reference to know what it's like to live without it. Right. So it's hard for me to say what it's like to live with it. It's just part of my life experience, which makes, you know, me different from you know, other people and I mean we're all different. We're all completely different, right? And so but yeah. speaker-1: Yeah, yeah. But do you think that it I would imagine it must inform a lot of the research that you've been able to do? I mean does it give you the ability to understand music in a way that is different and so can help the rest of us understand it better. speaker-0: I I would hope so. just knowing that it's so music is so personalized for everyone and that the definition of what music is for someone is different for for everyone and that we are all equally you know, able to to experience music in one way or another and that no way is, you know, better than another one, right? The way that concert you know, solo violinist experiences music is no better than the way that, you know, an eight month old baby is moving to music does, right? It's all part of the human experience. speaker-1: Yeah, that's beautiful. It makes me feel it's makes it easier for me to imagine learning how to play guitar, sing in front of people. So that's also you know, you talked about this we have this defense mechanism basically, which is self consciousness, is one of part of that. And I was thinking earlier that like the number they people say the number one fear in America is public speaking. I think that's from a reader's digest article. I don't I don't know if that's actually a scientific claim, but a lot of people are mortally afraid of talking in front of people. And it's funny, it's the one thing that I've never been afraid of. Like it's the one social phobia I've never really had. But singing in front of people, that, like I've done that once now. And it was hard to it was hard to expel air from my lungs, like 'cause I just was so frozen. And this conversation s seems helpful to that, to just be like, Yeah, I don't speaker-0: Well, I think in our you know, in our Western social norm that there is always there's the person who's the performer, right? And then everyone else who is the audience and who on some level is a judge, right? And you know, it again in every other culture that's just part of it. Everyone sings. There's not there there's no assessment going on of what someone's ability is. It's it's this person expressing themselves and there's no quality of experience. It's just the experience. Right. And there's no no need to to to change it or to grade it or to to judge it in any way. speaker-1: Yeah, yeah. I I do want to take voice lessons. 'Cause I have a sense of like I'm im immensely impressed by the technique that people have that they learn. one of my favorite things to do on YouTube when I'm not learning, and I'm just kind of wasting time, I'm still learning, is to watch voice coach reacts too, and they'll see some apparently people like if you've ever seen the God, what's the name? The the band Disturbed played the song Sound of Silence on Conan O'Brien. There's a live performance and the the the sounds that this lead singer can produce from his body are are really remarkable. and it's just cool to hear someone kind of break that. Down and I'm like, man, it just the years, decades of practice and study and skill that really does come from this is very impressive, but it also has helped me create a little bit more of a growth mindset rather than a fixed mindset. I think is a lot of what we're talking about that people tend to have a fixed mindset about music. You're you're born with it or you're not, right? And so much of it is skill and practice and and learned that yeah it I I and it I don't know, I can say like I haven't yet learned how to sing really, but I can sing, but there's more things that I can learn to do with my voice that could help me expand my voice, if you know what I mean. So I'm looking forward to learning how to do that, even though i I'm not looking for any kind of result, which helps a lot. I'm just looking for it to do it for the doing it. speaker-0: Exactly. And I think the other thing too is, you know, we are the way we often teach music, I mean often, you know, most folks first experience with learning music is in school. And the way that we have done it with this, you know, symbol first method. Here's this is a quarter note. It gets one beat. This is a staff. This is where the notes go, you know, and this is how the note, you know, relates to your instrument and how you play this note on your instrument. You know, most people don't learn that way. speaker-1: I couldn't. That's just not how I get it at all. speaker-0: So then if if they don't learn that way, then that sort of reinforces the self consciousness problem and the say, well I'm just not cut out for that, I'm stupid, or I you know, I don't have this gift or whatever it is. And it's that's you know, we it comes from the inside out. I mean, that's just a way of being able to look at y music that has been, you know, written down over time and so could be, you know, repeated and reperformed and that's just kinda not how most people do it. speaker-1: Right. Well and then now I mean if with today's technology if you just eliminated the knowledge of written sheet music, but you have the ability to just l record it, do you think we would need to reinvent this technology of d of writing it out? That's a speaker-0: Great question. It's a really great question. And the question that I I think is, you know, it is a medium for some people to be able to, you know, to communicate what it is that they want. And the part of the beauty of that is, you know, you can have a written piece of music, and much like the the conductor experience where you're having a different conductor having a different sound, right? You take the same piece of written music. And it can be interpreted, you know, widely differently between performers. So there is that sort of beauty of the notational system, rather than you're just absolutely repeating exactly what you hear. Yeah. The way speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: that it it the way that the sound is produced, right? So you know, one of the things like, you know, one thing that's common with music students w particularly when they're learning a new piece, is to listen to, you know, recordings of it. And so the danger in that is if you only listen to one recording, you're actually just repeating what that person did and what that person's interpretation of it is rather than just sort of running it through your mind and your body and you know, and seeing what does this mean for you, right? And how do you do it differently? So if students you know, want to listen to recordings and and it can be advantageous to say, okay, well this person did this here and did, you know, something else differently there. And then you listen to another recording and it's a little different. And so to hear a number of ways that it's been interpreted for them to sort of help do their you know, come up with their own own interpretation. The question is, does it just become sort of a a a mashup of all of those recordings that they listen to or is there anything that's absolutely that's new? speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: Right. And so there's a school of teaching musicianship, which is this idea of being able to be expressive and creative in your performance or in your musicing, I should say. that by teaching the movement part of it first. And this is an an old tradition and it goes back to the Le Bon studies that we talked about, through a parti particular tradition. and so And there are several old conservatories that that do it this way. Juilliard is one. I'm not sure, Cleveland Institute used to, I know if they still do. But there the idea of like you finding it out of your life experience, what your body does, how you move through space and what that if you translate that into sound, what is it gonna sound like and using that as a way of sort of coming up with an idea of musical expression from the inside out as opposed to just mashing up different recordings and so forth that you hear. speaker-1: Yeah, yeah. It's that instantly makes sense to me. Because well I've I've had some education in film and filmmaking. And one of the most important exercises that was ever given to me was sometimes what you can do is recreate the shot or here's a here's a Rembrandt painting, light it. Like let's crit set the scene and we'll light it. I mean there's things that you recreate from visual. But narrative filmmaking, movies has this have a screenplay and there's ordinarily no visual component to that. Sometimes there will be a storyboard that a director will make, but one of the exercises we were given. was take two scenes, any two scenes from any two movies that you'd like, get the get the pages, and then you need to do what's called cover the scene, which is decide where the camera's gonna go, where the actors are gonna move, that's called blocking. The camera movement is staging. Are they are they gonna move? How do you tell the story in visual terms, knowing that the only constraint really is is what's on the page. And art I find is way easier when you have constraints, even if they're arbitrary. Sure. You know, just like saying You have to do you have to do high frame rate in this, and that's your only rule. And it's like, well, how in the hell do I tell a story with slow motion in it? And what I found was the the movies where I had seen, I had watched the scene were incredibly hard for me to do any other way, because that's how you do it. But there's an infinite number of ways to block and cover a scene. David Venture says there's an unlimited number of ways to do it, and one of them is probably right. see it it kinda but when there's just a blank page and I'm like I don't know where they are, what the context is. It's much more free to create and you can do something that's interesting and having seen it already done kind of crushes that almost. It's an interesting cognitive phenomenon that it I really almost it's like I can't it's like I guess our brain is trying to resolve uncertainty all the time and so we're collapsing possibilities down into one and it's almost like seeing someone else's interpretation or hearing it does the collapsing for you and so it kind of almost robs us of our creative process. speaker-0: Yeah, it's like it's the most efficient way to do it, right? we've already seen this done, so okay. speaker-1: The novelty's gone. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We don't have to noodle over it a little bit, but the noodling is where the the magic happens. Absolutely. Yeah, that's I'm getting kind of excited and inspired hearing about it. Okay, so now I now I feel a little bit more motivated to learn cheat music. Yeah, or or chords or whatever it is. speaker-0: It can be a very daunting thing and I think the the The thing I would the advice if you were gonna ask me for advice, which you didn't. But if you were going to ask me for advice about that is just to not let that get in the way of your development. And so that for every amount of time that you spend sort of learning the notational system, take the same amount of time and just improvise. Just listen to the different sounds your instrument can make. What does it sound how does it sound different if you strum it in a different place, you know, according to, you know, between the the hole and the bridge or whatever. And just, you know, just playing around with different rhythms and different sounds and different fingerings and just, you know, in get a real sort of visceral relationship with the instrument itself. To where it becomes your you know, your voice. And, you know, play around with it. You know, p do a f you know, pr make a sound that sounds like something that you would normally do, right? Let's say you know, unloading the dishwasher or whatever. You know, can you can you recreate that? What would it sound like? You know, and just to try to, you know, develop your imagination so you don't get locked into this box of trying to learn to notate the notation and thinking of that as your musical experience. speaker-1: Yeah, I mean I'm thinking back in my musical education, so we we had an elementary school. And that was the last time it was fun, I think, for me, because there were no there was nothing to read. and I remember all the different instruments, so it was just like this is what I remember the term there's just the word Glockenspiel was just a really fun word for me. And I love language, you know. And so and I remember being like, It's different from the xylophone, but they look a lot alike, right? Correct. And but it makes a different sound, but they're functionally the same instrument. It was weird. I always w wanted one but not the other. I did not want to play the xylophone. I wanted the glockenspiel. Glockenspiel's wood, right? speaker-0: the xylophone is wood and the locking spiel is metal. speaker-1: brass. Yeah. Brass, something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Those that was the the key difference and there was a little size difference. But we learned what a canon was from singing row, row, row your boat. And and just singing and stomping and whatever. And I'm wondering and then I got to middle school and it was basically how to how to read sheet music with the piano. I'm wondering if if that if we just push that part even further back to where it's like if you really want to understand it at a deeper level, now it's time to learn sheet music. But to start with you should just learn the music. Right. Like just just learn that it feels good to move and be free. speaker-0: Exactly. Yeah. It's a just a way of expressing yourself, you know, and using time and using pitch and your body and the environment and you know, what does it sound like if you take a a xylophone mallet and tap it on a desk and or take the Glockenspiel mallet and tap it on the desk. They're made of two different materials, right? So how do these how does your environment you know, all what all the things that exploring and Exploring the environment and relating that to sound, relating that to you to how you move through life, you know. You know, what does it sound like when you reach down and and and open a door and you grab the doorknob you know, what would that sound like on your guitar, right? Those those different types of movement. speaker-1: Fascinating. Yeah, yeah. Like what would the sound of a dishwasher being unloaded sound like on a guitar? Exactly. I have no idea, but I I mean I the I think that for me if I if I were to do that exercise, I'm sure I will, is the key is to not think about it. For me. Like speaker-0: Reach down, imagine, you know, picking up a plate, reaching down, you know, putting it up on on the top shelf after you open the cabinet, put it on the top shelf. What does that sound like? You know? And sometimes even when you describe it in in that way, you can you can sort of get the music going. So I reach down to pick it up, you know, and I open the cabinet and I lift it high, you know. I mean even in your voice now you're starting to be more musical, right? Yeah, yeah. speaker-1: There's sense of there's also percussion with the plates because they clang together. That's what I'm hearing in my head right now. It's just the clanging of the plates and the ding the the the forks and knives make a like a a tingling, tinkling sound, like you know, like almost like bells. do you how how much of your work involves musical pedagogy? Like do you study that or are you talking with people about better ways to teach music or to inspire a love of music in children? speaker-0: Most of the courses I teach do not involve that. I do teach one course, so I teach the strings methods course, so for the students who are going to be teachers. And so if and it has these courses that music teachers take depend and vary largely depending on the licensure requirements that are issued by each state. So each state's gonna have a separate list of requirements. Here in Tennessee, the inst the music teachers are in one of two tracks. There's either a choral track or there's an instrumental track. And so and it's a K through twelve licensure. So if you are let's say a trombone player, you still have to learn to not only play and teach the brass instruments, you also have to do the same for percussion instruments and for the woodwind instruments and for the string instruments. So I teach the string instrument part of that licensure requirement. and so it's really interesting to watch them, you know, struggle, you know, starting with a brand new medium, something that they're you know, compl that's completely different from their what they've experienced before, and to learn to play those instruments to some degree and also t to teach them. And so occasionally w you know, as part of that process we do talk about, you know, different ways to to help students and you know, use different modalities for understanding and so forth. So there's a little bit of that, but I don't really teach that. Right. speaker-1: So That's I I guess its own field of study. It is studying. Yeah. I assume do you have colleagues that just study that? Yes. Yes. And that's they're just thinking about I mean I I I assume a lot of that also involves childhood development, developmental psychology, because we're most people are being taught as children. Correct. Right, right. Yeah. As opposed to just kind of learning it on their own. Correct. How much of it do you think we we've been also been talking about this this issue of the belief of innate talent. How much of that do you think is being mistaken for people who come grow up in family where there's lots of music around. speaker-0: I mean I think it a lot of it has to do probably my guess my guess, is that it has to do with sort of a familial attitude towards music. And if it's something that we all just do and you know, you might as well just join in because this is what we do in our family as opposed to families where kids grow up and they don't it it's not part of a family fabric, right? And so that it it may be foreign, it may be something that they, you know that they adhere to or sometimes or s or that they at least are drawn to, but sometimes not. So it's hard to say, right? Well speaker-1: What was what was your family's relationship to music growing? speaker-0: So my mother was an amateur pianist and practiced a lot and I was an only child. My dad was a traveling salesman, so it was my mom was a single mom for a lot of the time, right? and she played She practiced a lot and as a young child and I had absolute pitch and didn't realize it at the time. But I remember my my days in of early childhood were just like when she practiced, I just moved and danced around the room and sang and you know did all those other musical behaviors that we see particularly in young children. but as I got a little bit older and I was like three, I think, I would watch her, right? And so Somehow I learned what piano keys made what pitches. And so I remember one particular time where she got up and to go make dinner and I sat down in the piano and she'd been practicing a Beethoven sonata and I could kinda pick it out, even though my hands were really, really small, I could pick out the melody and a little bit of the harmony, you know, with just my small hands, in the same key that the sonata was written in, right? So I remember my mom coming out yet the kitchen, you know, looking at me like, What are you doing? You know, and so So, you know, I think this was in the 60s, and I think our parenting attitudes were quite different. You know, there was a a desire then to kind of like not stick out, to kind of like blend in with the social fabric of, you know, whatever environment you were in. And so it was nothing that was, it was not anything that was ever developed. And I remember talking to them about Mike's sense of color and pitch and all that kind of thing, and it was just like, that's nice, dear, you know. and so I really didn't start studying music until I I I wanted to play the bass. I'd heard when I was when I was nine years old I discovered a set of recordings of the Beethoven Nine Symphonies that were done with the NBC Symphony Orchestra in the early fifties with Arturo Toscanini. And it's really interesting. Toscanini was one of the first musicologically minded Conductors, meaning that he actually wanted to do wanted to pay respect to the composer by actually doing what the composer indicated on the music and not just taking the the position of I'm the boss, I get to do whatever I want. Okay. so some of Beethoven's tempo markings seem really kind of outlandish. You know, they seem way too fast or in some cases maybe too slow. And there was there have been all kinds of theories about you know, why and some people th think that was his his deafness that was causing this problem and some people thought that maybe there was something wrong with Beethoven's metronome and it wasn't functioning right. But Toscanini believed that that Beethoven knew what he was doing and these tempo markings were were right. And so in order to achieve some of these tempe that he had written, he needed a very, very dead space to do the recordings. And so he did it at studio eight H in New York, which is interestingly enough, the same studio that Saturday Night Live is produced from. And he recorded these nine symphonies. And so in entirety in that space at Beethoven's original temple markings. So they're interesting historical recordings. But I found them at the age of nine and by, you know, six months I had them all memorized and I could tell you you could play drop the needle, because that's what we used in those days, right? Was were LPs. And so I could tell you, you know, which movement of which symphony, you know, that they were in that particular case. So I also was just really fascinated with the Scherzo Trio of the Fifth Symphony, which has this great, energetic, wonderful bass lick, we'll say using Nashville terms, right? This wonderful line, and it was just so energetic and and wonderful that I just loved it and I and I really wanted to play that instrument, whatever that was. And so one of the things I found was if if I had held the rabbit ears just right on the TV, I could get the public TV station. And they used to have Arthur Fielders, you know, evening at Symphony with the Boston Orchestra. And I found when they would pan over to the basses, I figured out by watching them how the instrument was tuned and how the fingering systems worked on that instrument. And so I just had that knowledge as a kid and never really had that opportunity to put that to use because where I grew up did not have an orchestra program in the school. So I played tuba in high school and was, you know, that was a great social activity for me. It was great. It was there was a lot of social bonding because marching band is, you all the synchrony and you compete and it's a big deal and it's a lot of fun. but I went to engineering school. And one day as I was coming back from my from my class, I walked past the music building and the window was open and I heard an orchestra in there, which is the first time I'd ever heard an orchestra live, and it was this little chamber orchestra, and so I walked over there and to listen and I just sat there, just kind of put my elbows in the windowsill and just listened to everything and I was fascinated because I had never seen anything like that before. They didn't have a bass player, and so I was like, that's too bad, you know. anyhow, so I when the work rehearsal was over, I left and I was walking down the sidewalk and all of a sudden I heard these giant footsteps pounding behind me and I turned around and it was this conductor. And he said, Who are you and why were you listening to my rehearsal? And I said, well, you know, I'm an engineering student and you know I I kind of play the bass, which is a complete lie, because I'd never touched one, you know, but in that way. And so It's like he said, Well great. He said, Come back with me. There's a there's a base upstairs in this room, go get it and bring it down and I will I will you know well, I wanna hear you play and so I I think, well, I can't do this, you know. I'm got really kinda put myself in a pickle now. So I went and I did it and I brought it down and you know I didn't really know the proper way to hold the bow and some other things and he said, you know what? He said I'll tell you what, I'm gonna give you a little half scholarship and you can play in this orchestra. And I'm thinking, well that's really great because I just failed a physics test and you know life was not looking great for me at that moment and so I started taking some lessons and you know I I loved it and I practiced a lot and I put a lot of energy into it and the five months later I had had a job in a a small orchestra down the road in Knoxville. So that the Knoxville Symphony. So actually it wasn't really a small orchestra. We So yeah, five months later I had a job in the Knoxville Symphony. So it was really a i interesting thing. And then so I eventually switched studies from from that to music ed and then did my other work and performance and in playing the bass and so forth. So it was a really unusual and kind of hurried way. I don't really you know I don't have the memory of learning something as a child. I just have the the r memories of the musical experiences and the freedom and the and the of of expression and being able to express myself musically in lots of ways to actually like refining those things into a skill to play an instrument. speaker-1: Which by that point you could do fairly quickly. Fairly quickly. I imagine with a with a great deal of I I'm just imagining the degree of focus, the fixation that you had at that time of investing in it, which lots of things like that, which I would I would consider what you just told me. I learning the bass in five month from having never touched a bass to being a professional bassist in five months is quite extraordinary. the focus is kind of exciting to me that you must have been able to produce. speaker-0: Absolutely. And it was it was years I mean of even though I hadn't touched it, it was years of like a psychological knowledge, right? Of just in cognitive knowledge that and the ability the pitch absolute pitch obviously played a huge part in that for me being able to learn quickly. So there were you know, there were some exp some experiences that sort of predisposed, I think, my ability to to achieve speaker-1: Yeah, I'd like to ask you about you know the synesthesia and the absolute pitch because they're associated with a I guess what would become a diagnosis that you've had and that's an important part of your life. I'd like to know if you would like to share something about that and and what your what you do with that today. speaker-0: So yeah, I was diagnosed with autism as an adult and you know it's how old? I was forty Is that yeah, speaker-1: Late in life. speaker-0: late in life or early forties, yeah. and It's you know, now there's a lot of sil self diagnosing going on and there's a lot of like what I call cultural diagnosis of autism where people say, yeah, well, you know, and they I'm obsessed with, you know, one thing and I I have I'm socially awkward, therefore I think I have autism. And so there's sort of that cultural thing where people look at sort of the byproducts of it as to actually what the diagnostic criteria are for me. And there really aren't effective criteria to diagnose adults and I was fortunate enough at that time to as right after my mom passed away and being an only child and I you know having older parents, like you being an only child as an older person really kinda sucks because you end up having to take care of all you know, your parents making all those end of life decisions and stuff by yourself and it was just a really hard time. So part of the other thing of course is handling the affairs and so forth. But when I was cleaning out her attic, I found this box over in the corner of it it was unmarked and I'd like what's this? And I pull it out and it's full of just papers and notes and it was notes she had taken with conversations from teachers and conversations with, you know, doctors and all these different things and, you know, these a whole bunch of different things and they had no idea what to do with me. I mean I had gone apparently from kindergarten directly as a five year old into a an accelerated third grade class, you know, and and remembering how you know it was a terrible thing. And it I was there cognitively but I wasn't there socially and so I just bounced around and some of my students I mean some of my teachers thought I was gifted and some of them thought no, I was you know, I needed special ed. I was you know, retarded is what the course they said in those days. But so it was a really interesting thing just kind of being batted around and not, you know, having a place. but being finding these all this, you know, documentation, we were able to take that and sort of use that to make the diagnosis under the rubric that we use to diagnose children. So it's it's been an interesting journey and I I've been fortunate enough to I was asked by the governor, actually two governors now to chair the Tennessee Council for autism spectrum disorder and we look at health care and education and employment for for Tennesseans with autism. There's over a hundred thousand I think now and trying to make life better and more accessible for those folks. So but that that's I I think one of the things that one of the the possible criteria which It can't be used as a standalone criteria, but is intense interest and repetitive behaviors. And that I think helped me you know, certainly learn to play an instrument quickly and has helped me in in many ways and also making the transition between that and in conducting because I I was able to r you know, to focus on that work and to be able to Just I tend to th think of things instead of think of things linearly. I I think of things sort of in a in a like in a constellation. And so I'm not in a sort of in a it's hard to describe, but in a in a three dimensional realm rather than a two-dimensional realm. speaker-1: So you experience things, the constellations are three dimensional. So it I mean it it literally adds another dimension depth to how you can perceive things. Can you give an example of s of a particular concept that you see that way? Music. speaker-0: Everything. Everything. Everything. speaker-1: Think three dimensionally instead of two dimensionally, linearly. speaker-0: Absolutely. And it's there's always and I I find myself always kind of like, you know, tweaking and looking at other perspectives and, you know, turning my constellation in such a way. But it helps me problem solve. And I think I'm fortunate enough to be able to have made a a living and a career that I absolutely adore, mostly the teaching part of it and working with students. But I think it's been helpful to make me an effective teacher to be able to change perspective and look at how a student is thinking and sort of take my constellation and turn it a little bit and rotate it. speaker-1: Yeah, yeah. For people that are listening, I mean you're you're using your hands right now. I caught you, I think you caught yourself doing that and be like, yeah, that's what I'm doing is it's so fascinating. One of the ways that we can test cognitive ability is to see how well people rotate three dimensional shapes in their mind. And I imagine that you're you're really good at that. Yeah, that's it. I imagine that it would be hard to make one hard enough to stump you. Probably. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, speaker-0: Probably. I'm pretty good with that. Yeah. Rotation. speaker-1: yeah, yeah. and that's interesting, I would not I wouldn't think of music in those terms at all. You know, as as an object that you could rotate, but it it does seem like that there's a space that you're that you're engaging with them manipulating a little bit. I tend to think of the mind that way, believe it or not, as a as a three-dimensional space where you can kind of move things around and play with them or untangle this thing. And well what these two things usually go together, but what if you unwrap this is kind of how I feel sometimes like you know a caduceus like a snake around a rod. And it's like let's unwrap that and put them over here and do they both still work? And what would that be like? it's an interesting way to think about and it's kind of hard to explain to someone who doesn't really think about thinking very much. speaker-0: Right. So I guess and and this may sound more linear, but I don't I don't think of it that way. But there is a commercial, a recent commercial for a grocery store. and it shows a mother and a I don't know, maybe a six year old boy and it starts with him as a six year old and it goes back through time, you know, f different developmental stages and different things that he would do, all the way to the the very f end the last frame was her holding him as an infant, like a newborn, right? And so I said to a friend, I said, Yeah, isn't that really that's an interesting commercial 'cause they play Twinkle Twinkle Little Star backwards through the whole thing. And th you know, my friends are like, How do you know that? And I'm like, you know, I could just speaker-1: You can just reverse it. speaker-0: Yeah, I can reverse it and turn it and and they said there's no way we would have ever caught that, you know. So it's it's I mean, there are certainly advantages to doing those kind of things and you know, the disadvantages, I guess, that, you know, my mind is r you know, interested in those kind of types of things rather than the more pressing you know, whatever. speaker-1: Taxes taxes. Right, yeah, right, exactly. Right. More mundane things I can relate to that. Yeah. Yeah, one of the you know I told you I emailed a couple people this morning about being future guests. One of them is kind of a a a prominent figure in the field of positive neuropsychology. And it's an interesting thing that's been on my mind a lot lately is for a lot of my life the ways in which I'm different from people, which may not be quite as pronounced as yours, but I've tended to view those things as as defects, you know, as differentness as being defective. And it's been a helpful thing for me in my development as a person to start to see the ways that I'm different as gifts. Even when sometimes it's quite it presents they present unique difficulties. Namely, how do you explain to someone how you think? I mean like it yeah I I I imagine that's what makes teaching so satisfying to you that you have this different way of thinking, seeing things that must make people feel really relieved when you explain it. They're like, well why didn't someone explain it this way to me before? This makes so much more sense, right? But it's the ability to deconstruct these things away that do that. But then again, worldly things do have to matter. Yeah, speaker-0: They do, unfortunately. speaker-1: they do. Yeah, I know. But I mean you you seem to be navigating it pretty well if you can manage the the council on autism. Yeah. Yeah. speaker-0: Yeah, I had a lot of help but yeah. It's it's been really interesting and and I've rotated off of that that position now but it's fun to watch and see what you know speaker-1: W and what are can you give us an example of some of the the projects or or things that the council is working on just to give people an idea of like what you know I think there's a lot of lack of awareness about autism, but there is a lot of cultural diagnosis. I mean, what do we really need to help with autism? speaker-0: Right. Part of the problem is that that I think there are people a lot of folks who are making diagnoses that really shouldn't be making diagnoses and they're making speaker-1: You mean clinicians? speaker-0: clinicians and protect sometimes in like a general practitioner right y you know would say, this kind of fits that so we'll give you the you the diagnosis. And lot of times, you know, people are struggling if their child is not doing well in school, so they're they're desperately looking for resources and a lot of times that you know, I you know, I I hear people say, if I can just get my kid a diagnosis, then I can get the resources I think they need, whatever it is. And so a lot of times I find people going diagnosing shopping, right? Particularly for the children. And I find it Also, a lot of diagnosis shopping just casually in my just my own little sphere, but adults who maybe felt like they never fit in and then they they need a label. Right. And so they can get a PCP or someone to diagnose them without really going through the steps of conducting some of those some of those text tests like the you know, the a the ADOS two and some of those other tests that we use. speaker-1: The the really the salient question is the degree of life impairment that these things cause. And I think a lot of people miss that, it sounds like what you're saying is they'll notice like, I can be, you know, my skin gets really sensitive or something of that nature. You know, tags in my shirt bother me. and there's a really interesting there's a lot of interesting parallels between that and just people that are just intellectually gifted. You know, is it's just again it's a weird term that we have, but some people are just super sensitive but it doesn't necessarily make them it's not a disorder. Correct. Right? They're not their their life is not disordered Then speaker-0: Yeah, and speaker-1: there are other people that need two hours to decide which shirt to wear. A real like and that's a real life challenge for that person. And yeah, it's that there's a lot of nuance there that I've had a lot, I've had very complicated relationship with psychiatric diagnosis. It's probably something I would love the opportunity to study more to help people understand how lacking and nuanced a lot of them are. that one of my I got early on was ADHD. It was one of the only things they really knew about at the time. At my age, it was in the 90s. you couldn't be high functioning and be autistic. I think I think that was a as a categorical matter. There was no such thing at that time. I don't think we really knew about Asperger's at that time. Do you know? speaker-0: so that's like anything else, I mean the diagnoses go through stages and and through through phases and so one of the things that's happened is we you know we don't ru we never really paid a lot of attention to autism until because of unless it someone is terribly impaired. And often well what we know now, I should say, is that it can't autism occurs with or without an ill intellectual disability and is not the intellectual disability is not necessarily part of it. And so sometimes they have to kind of tease that out. What is really intellectual disability and what is it is the part that's preventing the the other part that is preventing somebody from being able to speaker-1: Right. speaker-0: And teasing those things apart. And you it's funny you mentioned the sensory thing because th the many folks with autism do have have sensory differences, but that is not really part of the of the criteria. And people go, well I'm you know, super sensitive. I can't you I have hyperacusis, therefore I'm autistic and super sensitive to sound speaker-1: Yeah, yeah. I'm like that too. Just I get nauseous or whatever, but and it can it can be distressing sometimes, but mainly 'cause it's like I think I'm Weird, but it it's really just like, yeah, I I don't like the sound of electricity running through a room. I prefer to be outside. That's really as much as far as it goes. Exactly. Yeah, I don't think it I don't think I need a diagnosis about it. But as some people I imagine would. It's interesting that there's an association that lay people make with those things though. Do you find that I mean there did is there some there there that there might be a a common cause to some of those things? speaker-0: Think I mean it it gained a lot of attention, autism gained a lot of attention in in the past probably ten, fifteen years with things, you know, t television shows in the media like The Good Doctor, you know, and somebody might see a relationship something that, you know, this the actor portrays. Yeah, speaker-1: Shine. Yeah. speaker-0: and like they they go, that's me. Right. And it could be that's just the way the actor portrayed it, which may or may not have anything to do with autism, right? And so there's a lot of attention and then I think again, I think a lot of times folks are looking for a label for s whatever reason. and that this because it's such a a difficult diagnosis to make anyway, that people sort of try to find back doors into ways of doing that work. And it certainly doesn't help when we have people doing research studies where they allow self diagnosed people. So let me yes, let me let me let me back up. speaker-1: How? speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah. In some research studies, you know, the criteria if they if they were studying something with autism, instead of actually making sure that all of their subjects who they're calling autistic, without s actually testing them in, you know, to find out, they just say, self diagnoses are welcome. And of course, you know, they may or may not be correct in their self diagnosis, which of course is going to invalidate the results of the study and give us information about autistic people I'm saying this in jest, right? About autistic people and that may not be helpful for the people that the study is intended to help. speaker-1: Now it it would be interesting if you were doing social science research on people who think they're autistic. Right. That would be interesting. Right. And to look at other factors regarding their mental health and their personality. Exactly. Because I I I I completely agree with your what you're saying is that a lot of people are unhappy and they reach for a diagnosis. And I talked with a person earlier on this podcast named Victoria Satanovic and she's an attorney. she's works really in psychedelics, cannabis and AI. She's a fascinating fascinating woman and she has autism and she experienced it Or she she became aware of it when she needed to get ketamine therapy. And the clinician that was working with her assessed that like just kind of had a sense like I think she might have autism and that was relevant because for some reason people with autism and in particular women with autism need much, much higher doses of some ketamine and other psychedelics. We don't really know why. It's a fascinating question. I would love to know more about, but women also mask. She explained to me what masking was. So women with autism are a particular, you know, group. that th she had a specialist that told her about. And hearing her tell me that just receiving the diagnosis had given had been such a relief to her because for so much of her life she had been so uncomfortable or or in distress, but had felt selfish for bringing it up, so she had masked that. And and I have great confidence that she if she thinks she's autistic, she is. I think there are a lot of people that want that relief. They want the psychological relief. They n they are dysphoric essentially and they don't really and I've been there where it's like just a generalized sense of there's something wrong. and you want to reach for something. Of course the problem is that By doing that and just grabbing at a label, it kind of can water down our society's compassion for people that that have these and experience intense distress as a result of it. And it seems like that's that's where some of your concern comes from with this. speaker-0: I think there are a number of things and I I I will say first of all, yes, that autism does present itself differently in you know, in females and so you know, they've always said, the ratio with children is four four to one, males to to females and we we wonder too if the diagnostic criteria were somehow sort of geared towards males because They present differently. I think f pretem perhaps females have a different sort of sense of social understanding that might make them just mask or be or kind of pull back in the background and then where males maybe not have so much that innate social understanding or desire to be to fit in or whatever. speaker-1: I gotta interrupt. Do you think that those might be like inherent or do you think that there's socialization at play? speaker-0: I'm sure there's socialization that would play would have to be, I would think. I mean okay socialization isn't in play at everything. Right on some level. But speaker-1: So maybe girls are socialized to go along to get along a little bit more than boys are. Yeah. Okay. speaker-0: And I think a lot of times that the behaviors that boys display are really annoying and disturbing and and to where particularly with teachers, like, you know, y y you've got to sit down. Why speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: those things and that ma they may seek diagnoses more frequently, the families may more than the subgirls. speaker-1: It's huge issue with ADHD as well. yeah. I you have similar proportions. Yeah. You know, I'm not a hyperactive type, never was. I was mostly daydreaming all the time. And I did get an ADHD diagnosis at at several stages. At this stage, if you ask me today, there's some issues there. I have some issues with executive dysfunction for sure. Disordered attention, it's not really about an inability to pay attention. It's more like ADHD has much more to do with an inability to tune out what's not important than it is to tune into what is important. And it's more like a defect of salience if you think about this the salience network that I understand this very well because sometimes sensory stimuli seem like cut in line. Like there's an air conditioning that I'm listening to right now, and I specified last time we need the AC running because it gets hot in here. But it kinda keeps cutting to the front of the line in a way that it's is annoying. and so I experience things like that. I'm wondering if you If some people say that to be ADHD is to be on the spectrum, what do you think about that idea? speaker-0: I don't think it's part of the spectrum for sure. I think the other thing that happens is people confuse and conflate the spectrum. I'm using quotation air quotation marks what I say. The spectrum with just neurodivergence. speaker-1: For the listeners. Right. speaker-0: And I think just because it's something that's different, it's a different pr you know, way of processing and there are some symptoms that that overlap between ADHD and autism for sure and that part of this inability to, you know, tune out what's not important is part of that. but They are different and but that's but they are still neurodivergent. They are different in terms of what the the typical population experiences. So and I think people unknowingly, I'm gonna say on the positive side of things, unknowingly conflate those things, just not understanding. I think there's a huge lack of understanding about what these things are. I think for the difficulty, one of the things that's made it very, very difficult for me is a tendency to be hyper literal about some things and then also to be sort of stuck in process w with things and logical things as opposed to sort of the the human the s a lot of decisions people make are based not upon logic but on their gut feelings and or n and whatever emotions they might be experiencing at the time and so you know, looking in the way someone reacts to a problem would maybe make no sense to me, right? Because th th what they their actions aren't logical, right, to me. Right. But I realize you know, it was a hard lesson for me to learn that some people just react out of emotion and don't use logic, right? And that often the feelings override logic, even if they can use logic. So those types of things and so, you know, through a lot of work and it's I've had to kind of learn the way that the way that folks different folks think and feel and operate and look having to look at each interaction that I see. or that I'm part of as part of my constellation and turn that constellation to C. speaker-1: It's beautiful. Yeah. That's so beautiful what you just said, that you've kind of turned that and it's like, okay, well let's let's add that to the model. Right. Right. It's like new information, you can add it and then now things get more complex. speaker-0: really that's the I think the kind of therapeutic work that works with people with autism is being able to to look at some of these things that ha that naturally happen in a social fabric that may or may not be logical to someone and have a label for it and being able to systematize it and to have a put it in some type of rubric or speaker-1: fit fits their model. Yeah. Yeah. You and so I guess that part of the role of the clinician is you gotta understand their model to the degree that that's possible. Exact. And then support that. Right. You know, say, well let's use this as an asset 'cause it's an incredible asset for you to be able to do this. speaker-0: Right. It's a once it once I can take this a new system or a new whatever it is and incorporate it into this model, then I'm good. But it's it's the process of doing that. And I've had to do that with most things in my life to be able to say, this is how this is what's really going on here and there are factors that I can see and factors that I can't. Right. And and most the the ones I can't tend to be ones that are you know, human derived out of the combination of cognitive and and psychological and all those kind of things. Emotional, yeah, things. And so once I know what to look for and I can add that to my model, but I'm constantly doing that. speaker-1: Yeah, at all times. At all times. Is it just seeking to understand? And understand better. Absolutely. and there in the times when you've identified something that you don't understand and you haven't yet incorporated it, has that ever been distressing? speaker-0: sure, 'cause things backfire and there are misunderstandings and you know, and I yeah, say something to someone that's hurtful or you know, or you know or you know, it makes them angry or you know, something and I have to go away what just happened here. speaker-1: Intentionally you've you've said something, yeah, all the time. Do people misinterpret things that you've said often? Is that a common experience for people with autism? Very common. Yes. I I imagine that must produce an immense amount of distress. speaker-0: it does. And you know, and especially in when you're working in a hierarchical system where you have a boss right right. And then their boss and then their boss, right? And so for things to get misinterpreted and misunderstood and so I'm constantly well I should say, I have learned that I have to constantly seek clarification y with folks and say, you know, you just said this. Did you mean this or did you mean that? speaker-1: Right. Because you also the misinterpretation goes both ways. Correct. Right. And so people so much of communication is nonverbal. Yeah. And I imagine is does that present challenges for you? speaker-0: It absolutely. So the the nonverbal communication is really, really difficult for me. It's it's so ironic that I see the the gestural I can I can you know, I can see the gesture in a musical way so well. But I can't see it in any other kind of sense of communication, right? speaker-1: Social context. The social context. You earlier I mentioned kinda like the central governor theory. Do you think it's because you have so many neural resources dedicated to s to feeling movement through music that it's like it didn't really leave any extra space for for those things? speaker-0: I have no way of knowing that. I I could I could see an argument for that for sure. Yeah. But it really and the the other thing is like, you know, I'm constant I have music running through my head constantly. Twenty four seven while I'm asleep. It's always been this way since I was I can ever remember, right? And so there are a certain amount of resources that are you know that that are dedicated to that and I can't turn it off. I don't know how to turn it off. so speaker-1: You could, would you? speaker-0: I think just yeah, I w speaker-1: If you could turn it back on again. Yeah, exactly. Right. If you could never turn it back on again. speaker-0: It's kind of more like switching channels, like I I'm tired of hearing that I need to hear something else here. So I really don't listen to music very much. I don't need to. It's hard. And even if I do, sometimes I still have both things going on at the same time. speaker-1: So you've got another set of music that you're doing. How do they com like how do they relate to each other? I mean, does one of if you're hearing something on YouTube right now, is that gonna affect in any way the other music that's playing or is that independent? No, it's independent. Does it change with your thoughts or your moods or speaker-0: Not that I've noticed. I've never really thought about it. speaker-1: Interesting. It's now now you will. And I bet now you might incorporate you might update your model. I'd love to know. Yeah, it's interesting because there's there's there's this term soundtrack to my life. There's actually a song called Th This is the Soundtrack to My Life. And one of my favorite I love movies, we've talked about this already. My favorite composer is Hans Zimmer, who's a film composer. I don't know. Have you ever seen his process, how he works? And I'll send you some YouTube videos where he's explained to sixty minutes how he's incorporated computers with his I mean he basically recorded every instrument, every note that it could produce and upload it into his computer. So when he plays a piano, it will reproduce it and his orchestra, they build instruments, they'll go to Home Depot and build new things. It's extraordinary. And he did my favorite score for any movies are the Pirates of the Caribbean score. Have you seen these films? Pirates of the Caribbean films? Okay. As a cinophile, I I tend to like really artsy type movies and people when I tell them that these are my favorite trilogy, that it's shocking and it sounds like it's a joke, but it's not. I love this character Jack Sparrow. And this this anybody who hasn't heard the score, you should. You should go watch The Pirates Medley on YouTube, the cellice's Tina Guo, she's amazing. it's bombast. It's pure bombast. I mean just the there's the horns and it's just it's big and adventure, it's pure adventure is how it feels to me. And I like to imagine this character, Jack Sparrow, who's basically insane and drunk all the time, is like in a nineteenth-century British insane asylum, and this is just what's in his head. And the music, it's like the soundtrack to his life, and he really believes that he's this magical swashbuckbuckling pirate who always finds himself in these things, in these in these incredibly bizarre situations that he somehow makes his way out of, like, you know, like the Pink Panther or whatever. and Yeah, that it's just like it's the soundtrack to his life. And I think there are some people that kind of have something called the spotlight effect or like they're on their they're they're the star of their own reality TV show. They probably have a soundtrack going on and they don't know it. Maybe yeah. It sounds like but that's not like what it is for you. No. Yeah. speaker-0: It's just and and it it's it's it's usually things that I've heard and and they just they're on repeat. They just it's like a cycle, it's like a loop and they just keep going and then all of a sudden it'll change to something else and then it'll loop for a while. speaker-1: So I've had some songs stuck in my head recently and that's a phenomenon that I think everybody can probably relate to. Do you have any sense of how that would be different for me is for for you? Like I mean is it like being have a song that's stuck in your head and you kinda need to wear it out until it doesn't bother you anymore? speaker-0: I don't know because again, my experience, I only know my own experience. and it's really interesting. I'm so glad you brought that up. We refer to those as an earworm. Right. Right? So this earworm that's just a you can't get it out of your head, right? And it's just will not, will not, will not, will not leave. And you know, the question is what is it that makes you latch on to that. Is it something does it what does it trigger for you? Does it trigger I would I would be willing to guess that it it triggers some sort of multi sensory thing for you on some level. Could be the way that it you know, you feel it in your chest Or you it reminds you of or makes you want to move in a way that you like to move, or that it you know, you get some sort of visual stimulus somewhere it reminds you of something, you know, another experience in your life or maybe a clip in a movie that you really like. I don't know. It we don't know. But it's really it's a fascinating thing, you know. speaker-1: It is. You know, I so my inclination, I think I've I've got some bias that I'm discovering in myself through this conversation. I would assume it would be something emotional. that there's an emotion that I found enjoyable. Enjoyable is an interesting word. Sometimes it feels really good to be sad. But the context matters a lot, like if you're processing something. but the more likely I am to have an emotional attachment to music, the more likely I am to move to it. Like those two things maybe seem not inseparable possibly. And that's a f such a fascinating thing. It is a fascinating thing. Yeah. speaker-0: thing. And there's some some you know, pieces that if I feel like sometimes th I always ask my students this question about and I well I asked them to to have a to start a music listening diary or journal basically, you know, what do you listen to? Under you know, what did you listen to? When did you listen to it? Why did you listen to it? And looking at all the things that they that they they listen to. And part of the question that I ask them is, do you listen to whatever it is you listen to and and usually, typically particularly with undergraduate students, the in that age or that that we talked about that window, you know, of music that's really salient, right? to them to because they're feeling a certain way and they want to listen to something to sort of identify with that mood or facilitate that mood, or do they use it for a mood modulation? Do they say, I want to feel sad what music will make me feel sad and so they put that music on. So it it generates a lot of really interesting discussion with them and with each other about, you know, how they use music and why they use it. speaker-1: I'm speaker-0: Sure there is. I'm not familiar with it. That's not speaker-1: Fascinating to think about. Well, also the thing that for me immediately was does it is it being used to suppress, you know, in the same way that like social media or would be used when you need to numb out. I was in a place, you know, 10 years ago and more, maybe a little less, where I was not really in a good place mentally, emotionally, and I could not be in silence. Didn't want to be alone with my thoughts, which are you know probably the way that you're experiencing music all the time. I'm thinking all the time, when I'm asleep, when I'm awake, in words. And it's exhausting sometimes, and then sometimes it's just like the implications of you know, it's like, yeah, you're really throwing your life away here and you don't really want to think about that in the moment. So constant noise, constant music can help you suppress the things you don't really want to think about. It's a different way of now I tend to go the other way. It's like no I I really need to feel into this thing or I really need to think about this or this experience I've had. I need to bring that back so that I can work with something. And I tend to use music for that. But it's It's interesting it there is some sort of modulation of emotion that it just naturally does and and of course that's so individual. Yeah. speaker-0: Right. Yeah. I have a one of my dear friends is a electrician and he works on construction sites and so I borrowed his truck one time and got the keys and I put them in the ignition and it was like boom I mean this like you know, with the volume turned all the way up. It was this heavy metal like just pounding music. I'm like, whoa you know and and so I asked him, I said w Why do you you know, why this music and why so loud? You know, and he said, I use it when I go to work so I can get myself amped up for the day. And so he uses and I asked him more about his music, but he uses almost entirely for mood modulation. I want to feel this, therefore I will use something that will help me feel this way. And it was a really fascinating speaker-1: Yeah, like one about music. I I used to I went to law school many years ago and there's only one grade in law school, your final, and you just go in and write for four or five hours. Most classes work that way, not all. in like my first year I would listen listen to the song by DJ Collin, All I Do Is Win. Because it would just I was tired, chronically sleep deprived at that point, I was on Red Bull or whatever, and it just would it would literally kinda just give me some adrenaline, but also put me in the mind space of okay, I'm gonna go in and be confident and I'm sure lots of people, athletes, have a ritual that they'll do before and it might involve music. Right. Yeah. And kind of being it also helps tune out whatever else is happening, which is can be really important if you're about to go play a World Cup match and there's everything around, it's like I just need to go inside and just be with my music for a while. speaker-0: There they're you'll see a lot of people like, you know, warming up like I find this with swimmers a lot. You see them they're there have their headphones on, you know, until the until they get up on the block. speaker-1: Right. Listen to an eight mile. Yeah. Yeah. Really speaker-0: It's really speaker-1: interesting. Yeah, yeah. I used to swim. We didn't have headphones that you could do that with at the time and I wasn't a world class competitor, but yeah, it it's it's just there is a sense of also tuning things out that it helps to be able to do that because again it's like there's only so much bandwidth you have to pay attention to something and especially for me when it can be very hard sometimes to really select what I want to be paying attention to. Like keeping stuff out is is a great deal of problems. Usually the stuff I have a hard time keeping out is coming from what's within. but sometimes a lot of it is auditory. And sometimes loud music just kind of overwhelms the system. And it can be good to just be like, yeah, I'm drowning that out. I think there's a lot of people that can relate to that feeling of I just don't want to feel anything except for this one thing and like metal music I don't listen to. But I people that do, it's just you can tell they have a visceral relationship to it, right? Absolutely. Yeah, it's just it's like a primal angry, it seems to me. Mm-hmm. But some people might they have a different association with it. That's right, yeah. Yeah. Highly in nice speaker-0: Sorry? Individualized. speaker-1: things, I think. I've had the most wonderful time having this conversation with you. speaker-0: This has been such a treat. Thank you so much for having me. speaker-1: Thank you for I mean, this has been my treat as well. It's just been a joy to be able to talk about the mind and the way your mind works is so it's such a gift. Like I really do mean that that we have a species that can produce these amazing people and things and that we're not all the same as the best thing about people to me. Right. Really. And it's so fascinating to hear you talk about the way you the constellation. Man, I'm gonna think about that for a while. That's great. Yeah. speaker-0: Someone. speaker-1: I think you know, I I think that it it inevitably will, you know, to know that there are people like you that have these incredible abilities and these challenges that you have, but they really are gifts that you can use to help other people understand better. I mean, that must be very, very rewarding and fulfilling. It's been rewarding for me to just kind of get a window into what your life is like and what it's like to be you. speaker-0: Well, it's been so much fun. Your questions are wonderfully thought provoking and interesting and it's just been it's been so much fun. speaker-1: Yeah it is it is thank you so much. Well I might have to have you come back. some point we'll have to talk about some more music and and maybe maybe play some, listen to some and incorporate that. That'd be fun. Okay, thank you Lynn. speaker-0: That would be great. I would love it. Thank you, Andrew.