[Narrator] These days we hear music all the time.

It wakes us up, motivates our workouts,

keeps us company on our commutes.

Doesn't matter what kind of music it is,

music itself has the ability to effect our moods

and our bodies in all sorts of ways.

We nod our heads, we sway, dance.

Music can give us chills, even make us cry.

Music activates every area of the brain that

we have so far mapped.

In fact there is no area of the brain

that we know about that music

doesn't touch in some way.

But what's behind all that?

What exactly does music do to us?

To find out I went through a whole

series of tests designed to measure my

responses to music.

We met some kids whose brains may

actually be changing thanks to those

hours of learning, practice and performing.

I spoke with a therapist who used

music to help former congress women

Gabrielle Giffords learn to speak again

and got a glimpse inside the brain of a two time

Grammy winning artist while he played.

All to find out how music effects us.

So what's going on when we listen to music?

We visited the USC Brain and Creativity Institute

where I had my head examined, literally

to try to figure it out.

I'm going to go into this fMRI machine,

a tiny tube will surround me, we'll get a baseline reading

of my brain and then I'm gonna listen to some music

and we're gonna see how my brain responds.

Just close your eyes, relax

and try to get into the music as best as you can, okay?

[piano music]

Here's what we saw.

These are scans of my brain, the areas in red

are where my activity is above average,

in blue, below average.

As you can see there's red activity all over

my brain, not just in on specific area.

25 years ago the idea was that language

is in the left side of the brain and

music is in the right side of the brain.

But now that we've got better quality tools,

higher resolution neuro imaging

and better experimental methods

we've discovered that's not at all right.

How does that play out in different regions of the brain?

When music enters and then gets shuttled off

to different regions of the brain

it stops at specialized processing units in

auditory cortex, they track loudness and pitch

and rhythm and tambour and things like that.

There's visual cortex activation when

you're reading music as a musician

or watching music.

Motor cortex when you're tapping your feet,

snapping your fingers, clapping your hands.

The cerebellum which mediates the emotional responses,

the memory system in the hippocampus.

Hearing a familiar passage, finding it somewhere

in your memory banks.

Music is going on in both halves of the brain,

the left and the right, the front and the back,

the inside and the outside.

[Narrator] So what about a musician's brain?

To play a piece of music engages so many things,

motor systems, timing systems, memory systems,

hearing systems, all sorts of, kinds of,

brain activity happening.

It's a very robust thing to play music.

[piano playing]

I'm Alex Jacob Robertson.

I'm Nathan Glen Robertson.

[Narrator] We asked these 11 year old musicians

to tell us what's going through their minds

when they play.

Some of the most important things are

I think good posture, getting the note right,

legato, staccato.

[violin playing]

For the violin you need to hold your hand

at the right place and you need to be in tune

and then you also have to have not only

the right intonation but the right sound

and then you also need to have great vibrato.

There's lot of things to think about.

[violin playing]

[Narrator] Back at USC researchers have been studying

kids who play music over the past five years

to see how it effects their development.

The multi-tasking areas of their brains

understandable lit up but they've seen other results too.

Music training over the course of five years

has had benefits in cognitive skills and decision

making, also had some benefits in social behavior

and we've also seen changes in the associated

brain structures.

Did you hear that?

Changes in brain structures.

They found that the brains of children

who have studied music cast stronger connections

between the left and right hemispheres

and that can make them better,

more creative problem solvers.

And then there's emotion.

[emotional music]

When you hear a piece like this

it's easy to understand why emotions

play such a big part in music.

This song by Camille Saint-Saëns is known

as the music for the dying swan in ballet.

Well it might move ballerinas to dance

it inspires different reactions in others.

Some people get goosebumps, chills,

that weird tingly sensation that you get when

a great piece of music just hits you in the right way.

It's called frisson and not everyone gets it

but it turns out I do.

Now we're gonna have you listen

to some pieces of music.

Okay

When you experience a chill,

if you do, I want you to just press

this space bar so we have an indication of

when those sort of peak moments of

enjoyment are happening.

Okay.

Max Sachs, a PhD candidate at USC wired me up

to measure my physiological response.

So when I'm feeling that kind of emotional connection

that has a physical manifestation

we'll see what my body is actually doing?

Exactly.

[dramatic music]

Alright, how was that?

That was, that had a lot of them.

We got them all.

Now full disclosure back in the day

I played the cello which might have something

to do with why that particular song effected me.

Nice hair.

But it turns out the brain is at work here too.

We processed the difference between

this pathway that connects the auditory regions

on the side of the brain here, to the emotional regions

and we showed that the tract actually that connects those

two regions is stronger, there's more fibers,

in that region in the people who get chills.

Which means that some people's brains

might have better communication

between what they hear and how they feel.

The music itself also plays a role in frisson.

Sachs uses different songs in his lectures

to see if students get it.

I'll say raise your hand when you get a chill

and I'll play a piece of music, a classical piece,

and maybe half the people will get it.

[Narrator] Then he plays this..

Rolling Stone's Give me Shelter.

Have you ever seen the movie 20 Feet from Stardom,

the documentary?

Oh about back up singers?

Yeah, there's a part Where They Isolate

the vocals from Give me Shelter.

♪from murder yeah ♪

♪It's just a shot away ♪

♪It's just a shot away ♪

and I play that and 90% of the people

experience chills sort of independent of where I go.

I have to tell you, bringing that up

made me think about it and I got that little

kind of thing at the back of neck.

But why would that happen?

The high pitched notes that she hits

almost sounds like a scream and

it's very important ancestrally for us

to be able to pay attention

to a scream, figure out what's going on

and either run or fight, whatever we need to do.

[Narrator] So how come that manifests as pleasure?

Well it's because our pre-frontal cortex

the more rational, thinking part of the brain kicks in.

So you realize very quickly after you have

this really quick startle reflex

that there's nothing actually threatening

about the piece of music

that you're sitting in a safe space

with your headphoness on and it's in that

reappraisal that we tend to think

of the pleasure responses emerging.

And whether you find listening to music

so pleasurable that you get chills

or you absolutely despise a song

it can produce absolutely fascinating

effects in the brain.

According to Levitan music we enjoy triggers

the brain's internal opiod system, yes, opiod system.

And just like the opioids that come in pill form

these chemicals make you feel good and help relive pain.

And music you don't like well that releases cortisol,

the notorious stress hormone.

But that's not even the half of what music

can do in the brain.

Can you turn on the lights?

[Narrator] When former Congresswomen Gabrielle Giffords

was shot in 2011 the left side of her brain

was severely damaged leaving her struggling

to speak, a condition called aphasia.

Gabby are you frustrated?

[Narrator] But to get an idea of just how

powerful music's effect on the brain can be

watch this video.

You ready?

[Together] This little light of mine

I'm gonna let it shine.

That words that she'd been

struggling to say, light, can easily be in song.

Why would she be able to sing a word

when she's unable to say it?

What we know about the brain is that

the left hemisphere controls language

and there are many other parts of the brain

that have music access.

Music therapist Maegan Morrow's job

is to help patients use those other

pathways to regain language.

Sometimes I compare it to

being in traffic and you can't move

any further but you might need to exit

and take the feeder road to get you to your destination.

So music is basically like that feeder road

to the new destination.

Like a detour, so we know that music

can help us relearn things like speech

by accessing alternative pathways in the brain

and that learning to play music can help

strengthen brain connections.

But what about making music?

To make music is like, it's the language

of humanity, no matter where I go in the world,

if I'm playing something, it doesn't matter if

someone can't speak the language, if they're

into it they're into it.

[Narrator] This is Xavier Dphrepaulezz better known as

Fantastic Negrito.

We brought him to UCSF to meet Charles Limb

a neuroscientist who studies musical creativity.

The Duffler's up next.

[Narrator] To understand how Fantastic Negrito's brain

works when making music Dr. Limb had him

play on of his songs while going

through the fMRI.

[Fantastic Negrito singing]

so how did his brain respond?

The areas that process sensory and motor skills

along with sounds lit up, you can see them here.

Red and yellow, makes sense right?

But here's the really interesting part,

Limb asked him to improvise

to see what happens when he's creating

something totally original.

[Fantastic Negrito singing]

now watch what happens to his brain.

The areas that were active before

the ones that deal with motor skills

and sounds are even more active.

And see how there's way more blue

in the front of his brain?

That's the pre-frontal cortex

and it's associated with effortful planning

and conscience self-monitoring

and it's blue because it's less active.

We see that the pre-frontal cortex appears to be

really shutting down in these moments

of high creativity kind of like letting of

of these conscious self-censoring or self-monitoring

areas that normally are there to help control our output.

[Narrator] And Limb says it's about

more than just letting go.

You view it from perspective of survival

if human beings only could do memorized route responses

we'd be long gone.

It is not just the thing that happens in clubs

and in jazz bars, it's actually maybe

the most fundamental form of what it means to be human

to come up with new ideas.

[singing]

[Narrator] So music is so much more than notes

on a page, it can change the way we

think and speak and feel but is there

a limit to what science can tell us about music?

Just when I discover the answer to one thing

five new questions pop up that are more

interesting than the first and I've gained

an appreciation for how complex the music making

and music listening system is.

It's not demystified to me at all.

It's more mysterious than ever.

[signing]

[clapping]