Brain connectivity reflects human aesthetic responses to music (2016)

Our world looks and sounds nothing like that. We put an incredible amount of effort into aesthetics. Virtually nothing is 100% utilitarian. Shape, colour, texture, and sound are all considered essential.

None of that has direct survival value, but it clearly has such deep emotional benefits that most people would find it very hard to be happy or functional in a purely utilitarian world.

There is a gray, rectangular building made of cinder blocks not far from here. The lighting is sufficient for all tasks needed, and its heating, cooling and drainage functionality is optimal.

A more recently built structure used for a similar purpose sits a few blocks away. Several pointless curves, colors and contrasting materials were used in its design. Light is allowed in from overly large windows near the roof line, leading to wildly varying amounts of illumination in much of the interior. It does not heat and cool evenly. The landscaping is excessive and requires additional maintenance.

Strangely, construction projects seem to be trending away from the former type of structure and toward the latter.

Which building would you rather work in?

Here's an album that has been very good to me lately: Masayoshi Takanaka - An Insatiable High LP

Hope you enjoy it

Just for background story before I come to the music:

I had chronic heavy metal poisoning diagnosed almost a decade ago (fortunately I had all relevant values - hair, blood, urine significantly elevated, usually chronic exposure is much harder to prove). Using chelators for years I got amazing recoveries, for example, for a few months each time after getting a chelator IV (DMPS, DMSA) the area around the side of my thyroid was "working". It was the side that was double-sied with a cold nodule, tested and seen decades ago and again just before the chelation treatments started (going to the endocrinologist again was part of my desperate search for answers that ended when I finally had the crazy idea it might be heavy metals, something only "crazy people" think, but which the lab results fortunately supported). The nodule had disappeared and the thyroid was normal size when I had the endocrinologist do another UV check because I had that crazy idea that what happened through chelation was just that miracle.

Anyway, to the music (slowly).

My brain for long periods of time was not very usable. Lots of "brain fog", stuff that I had firmly in my hands falling out, periods where I crashed into every obstacle in my flat for no apparent reason, hands shaking when I was holding my kindle (had to hold it with two hands), lots of word finding issues, extreme focus on details combined with an ability to let go - very disturbing, for example, when (without wanting to) you concentrate on a tiny insignificant detail and cannot think of anything else, this one thing races through your head for hours, and believe me, I'm not talking about anything reasonable or sane here, it is quite extreme. After a few years my brain was doing very very strange things, but with experience of years I knew it now was on the path to recovery. I needed LOTS of time, lying down, and the brain would do very strange things that I cannot describe but which are definitely not part of normal life.

During that time the one thing that helped me was music. My brain needed music! The beat ("time"), the melody. Especially the timing aspect. Music was medicine. And I'm not talking about some "nice to have" psychological needs, I'm talking about a hard requirement. The right music held my brain together and helped it get or remain organized. Of course, I making that statement "by feel", I wasn't hooked up to an EEG, I have no proof, just my own experience. I did take several neuroscience courses (the best one the big one from Duke on Coursera by an excellent teacher[0]) and lots of anatomy, physiology, statistics), during the last few years, but obviously no scientific rigor was applied to the stories of my own experience.

I didn't have music running all the time. in fact I loathe "background music". I needed it during certain times, especially during the first half of the day, and I would go for a walk and with good inner-ear headsets concentrate on the music. Having it play in the background when I'm doing something else would not have helped at all, quite the opposite, my ability to endure distractions was very limited during those years. I did (involuntarily, broken equipment) perform tests of how I would fare with and without the music. I felt much worse without.

I'm not talking about the usual "helps you in a bad mood" kind of benefit. It's impossible to convey unfortunately, I never did and by now I don't have any more the need for that kind of help from music, so I suspect the vast majority of people won't ever experience something similar in their lives.

These days I can easily not listen to music for days, but during the height of my "strange brain activities" I could not, as I said, music was medicine (for my brain).

So the article does not surprise me because I had already concluded such a relationship, including why different people will react very differently.

PS: By the way, I think we can all agree that the Russian Dance from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake is the best piece of music ever written, right? :-) [1]

[0] https://www.coursera.org/learn/medical-neuroscience

[1] https://youtu.be/5wOBNjgCg6M (not actually my favorite peformance, but I could not find the one that I like most so easily)