13 minute read
How my violin saved my life
Sarah Turner When you listen to music, multiple areas of your brain become engaged and active. But when you actually play an instrument, that activity becomes more like a full-body brain workout. What’s going on? Sarah Turner, Pymble Music teacher, explores the long-term positive effects of this mental workout
THE SERIOUS AND REAL SUBJECT OF MUSIC DR ANITA COLLINS – FOUNDER OF BIGGER BETTER BRAINS
“Music and Maths go hand-in-hand” or “Music and Languages have much in common”. No doubt, if you are a musician, you should be good at Maths, or so everyone will have you believe. This has long been a bit of a joke in my family; how can I be so good at Music, but not so good at Maths? I did complete 3-Unit Maths at school (now known as Extension) and my only answer to this conundrum is, “Imagine how bad I’d be if I didn’t have music!?”
I have worked in ten Music departments in schools in New South Wales and in each of those departments, when it comes to subject selection, I have encouraged students and parents to see Music as a “real” subject. Why isn’t Music seen as a serious subject? I know it’s a serious subject – I spent years perfecting my craft and it was still never perfect. How do I encourage others to view Music as a “serious and real subject”? Dr Anita Collins is a researcher in brain development and music learning, as well as a Music educator. Anita spoke to the Pymble musicians during the 2021 Sydney lockdown period to encourage them to continue learning their instrument. Equally importantly, she shared her research about what playing music does to our brain. Anita is a colleague of mine and I have attended many of her workshops. She, too, began a journey into neuroscience and music to dispel the theories that Music is not a serious subject. In inviting Anita to speak to Pymble’s student musicians, I wanted the girls of Pymble to know what their brain is doing when they play music and what makes their brain more powerful, or shall I say, different to people who can’t play an instrument? This is likened to a superpower they may be taking for granted.
WATCH ANITA’S TALK HERE
Dr Anita Collins WHAT’S HAPPENING IN MY BRAIN WHEN I PLAY MY INSTRUMENT?
It has long been espoused that music is used for therapy on patients suffering from dementia, stroke and other brain damage. Most of these patients are elderly, or at the very least, in adulthood. Anita became interested in how a young brain can be affected by playing a musical instrument. The part of your brain that recognises music is the oldest part of your brain, which is formed in utero. How many mums out there put headphones over their expanding bellies to play music to their bubs? When a baby is born, they hear the musical phrases of their parents’ voices. Speaking to your baby is akin to them hearing you sing. This is one of the explanations as to why dementia sufferers are often “reborn” when they hear music. They are using part of their brain that hasn’t been damaged, and thus are able to recall their oldest memories which are frequently ignited by music. Anita’s research allowed her to travel to Canada and the United States where she worked alongside neuroscientists and, in her words, “got to play with big machines”, including: Positron Emission Tomography (PET), Computed Tomography (CT) and Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) scanners map the human brain. When working with humans, neuroscientists discovered when music was played it produced ‘fireworks’, which appeared in the scans. When coupled with playing an instrument, the brain lit up like Guy Fawkes night.
HOW PLAYING AN INSTRUMENT BENEFITS YOUR BRAIN
Scientists concluded the fireworks proved that brains of musicians really do look different. When a musician plays his or her instrument, three parts of a triangle are activated and begin to work together. They concluded that a musician’s brain is more effective and uses less cognitive energy.
AUDITORY (VERY LARGE)
MOTOR VISUAL
Anita provoked the audience to consider the following questions relating to how our brains are being used in the context of music practise:
1. What do you think is happening to your brain when you are practising?
a. When we practise, messages are travelling around each of the corners (see Figure 1) and each time they travel, they are making stronger, firmer pathways.
2. What happens in your brain when you get stuck?
a. Your brain is able to predict there is a blockage coming, so it creates another pathway.
This can be likened to when you have to play fast, scalic passages and reaching the top note is not always achieved. Anita pointed out the brain needs rest to allow the subconscious to ponder, create and manipulate. This way, when you return to your practice, your brain has formed another pathway and you are able to eventually master the difficult section/task.
3. What is happening to your brain when you learn in an ensemble?
a. All three corners of your triangle are engaged and your brain lights up with the fireworks. Five things are occurring when you play in an ensemble:
i. Language network is activated ii. Oxytocin increases (the ‘feel good’ hormone) iii. Empathy network is activated.
Your heartbeats and body temperatures begin to synchronise (oooh, how lovely) iv. The reward network (dopamine) is activated and it, in turn, motivates us to continue with our daily tasks; and v. Cortisol levels (controlling stress levels) are contained, and we feel less stressed.
HOW DOES THE RESEARCH SHARED BY DR ANITA COLLINS RELATE TO MY VIOLIN SAVING MY LIFE?
Here is my story and, although I wasn’t the subject of any official studies to do with musicians, I was the subject of a neuroscientists’ symposium at St Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney, to find out why I survived a medical emergency that changed the direction of my life.
December 29, 1989 – My Higher School Certificate was complete. I was on holidays in Byron Bay with my family, and 1990 was the start of a new decade and a new life. But, my turn of the decade was spent in ICU in a hospital in Southport, Queensland, having suffered a massive cerebral haemorrhage, aged 17.
That afternoon, I was happily running around in the surf with our family friends, eating and drinking, and ‘chillaxing’ after completing 13 years of school. I had no idea what I was going to do with my life, but whatever it was, it could wait. Music was my Plan B.
Growing up in Orange, I started playing the violin at the age of seven, learning through the Suzuki Method, although my mother insisted I learn to read music and not be taught by ear alone.
I was one of a handful of students in the Central West region of New South Wales, where music was not something many students had access to. By the age of nine, I was selected to participate in a tour to Japan to receive lessons with Dr Shinichi Suzuki, the founder of the Suzuki method. In two short years, my brain was hardwired to play the violin and I was always learning more.
When I hear those pieces now (some 40-odd years later), my fingers still move up and down the fingerboard, although my violin is not actually with me. This is quite possibly due to my sensorimotor memory (the integration of motor and sensory information) which is a powerful and permanent memory. I wonder how this can be explained from a brain perspective? Is it just muscle memory and is this the motor point of the triangle? Anita helps me by explaining it is to do with many things, but it is more about a sensorimotor memory which is the integration of the motor and sensory information in a powerful and permanent way.
My brain still sends the messages to my fingers and the muscle memory is intact. My memory (mostly) serves me well, but I still stop at the same tricky parts that perplexed me all those years ago. At the time, I managed to beat those passages into submission to get them right. It wasn’t always plain sailing, as I wasn’t a child who was self-motivated. My mother was the driving force behind my violin playing and always in attendance with Dad at all my eisteddfods and concerts. By the age of ten, the piano had become part of my musical journey, aiding in my aural training, whilst hearing the bass and no longer just the treble.
Fast forward to 29 December 1989 and my whole life shattered! I was paralysed down my left side. My brain was bleeding and there didn’t seem to be a way to stop the most horrendous pain in my head. Jackhammers would have been delicate in comparison to
what I was experiencing! My left side was totally limp, yet I still managed to speak and smile. The rules of identifying if someone has had a stroke are: FAST (Face, Arms, Speech, Time). I had the speech, I could smile, and the only thing not really working were my arms and legs. Thankfully, Mum realised I was having a stroke, but she didn’t tell me that in case she was wrong.
Byron Bay Hospital was a communitysized hospital and did not have the facilities to deal with neurological patients. I was sent by ambulance to a hospital in Southport, now closed. Thankfully, the neurosurgeon on duty was a lovely man, who was cautious in his approach. He arrived after seeing my CT scans and told my parents that he didn’t have a crystal ball and was not sure I’d survive the night. He didn’t want to operate as I was young and there was no way of not damaging my brain further. He decided that if there was no improvement by morning, they would operate to ease the bleed.
I wasn’t meant to hear any of this – I was knocked out on all sorts of pain killers and relaxants. But…I did hear it. I had long hair (down to my bottom) at the time and all I could think was that I didn’t want to end up with an Annie Lennox hairdo. It suited her, but I was a conservative, private school girl who played the violin – not a rock star!
During the night, I was in and out of consciousness but there was always someone with me. At one point, I recall a nurse coming in to check my drip and I woke up. She looked at me with a real sadness in her eyes and I smiled to her and said, “my pinky just moved”. It must have been early in the morning, as suddenly the whole neuro team were back in checking my charts. I remember my neurosurgeon asking me if I could move anything and I told him my pinky finger was moving after I had been going through some of my HSC repertoire in my head all night. The physio was quite perplexed as recovery in stroke patients back in the late 1980s involved working from the shoulder joint down to the fingers. I can’t find evidence of this, but that is what I was told at the time.
After another CT scan and MRI, the neurosurgeon concluded that I did not need an operation to relieve the bleed. The movement of my pinky, and later, my whole left hand was the reason for not having surgery. Perhaps my brain’s motor circuitry might have reconnected to allow this to happen – I don’t know why or how it happened, but it proves how impressive this organ can be.
I wonder how my brain knew to move my fingers? Was this again the motor tip of the triangle that had, for ten years, been doing super workouts when I was practising? Anita has advised it would not be that simple. She said we know the motor circuitry in the brain is like a connector across sensory and cognitive functions, so the brain might have gone to that to try and reconnect again.
I had a team of three physiotherapists who worked on me for many hours each
day whilst I was in hospital in Southport. They were determined that a 17-year-old would have her life back. And after four weeks, I was wheeled out of there and sent home to Orange where I would continue with my rehabilitation.
Given the placement of my bleed, which was just to the right of my motor strip, it was a miracle I survived. Both my neurosurgeon and physiotherapists at the time attributed this to the fact that I had muscle strength in my fingers and the neurons in my brain were able to pass on messages to my fingers to move. Although this was anecdotal at the time, there is some evidence now about the neural pathways and how the brain can find those pathways again.
Having just completed my HSC, I had prepared eight pieces for my final performance exam. It was still so recent and those pieces continued buzzing around in my brain, enabling the messages to be passed down to my fingers to start working again. My brain was retracing and reawakening sensorimotor pathways, allowing me to provide my own rehabilitation in movement. I recall going through one of my slower pieces (the second movement of the Mendelssohn violin concerto) to get my fingers moving.
I ended up taking a year off and my Headmaster, Dr Bill McKeith, at my old school, PLC Sydney, employed me to help with my rehabilitation. I continued with my violin lessons and my Plan B came to fruition. Midway through 1990, I auditioned for the Conservatorium of Music and was accepted to study in 1991. My legs never recovered to what they once were, and you may notice I walk with a slight limp. I have a residual scar on my brain, but it has healed well enough to not require medication. I firmly believe music is what allowed me to recover and the strength and hold it has on my brain was what made me survive.
This is my story and I am still regarded as somewhat of a medical miracle. I don’t let my stroke define who I am, but rather I let the music aspect of my life define my ability to overcome adversities I face.
LEARNING FROM RESEARCH
Welcoming Dr Anita Collins into our ensemble program to teach us about music and its effects on our brains helped me to understand how I was able to survive my stroke. She also awakened me to the fact that I share an ability to synchronise parts of my brain to create and restore neural pathways that non-musicians don’t have.
Music is a serious subject. It is a subject that allows creativity, empathy, numeracy and literacy to all work simultaneously – no other subject can do this!
Further reading
Consider becoming part of the “Bigger Better Brains” group with Dr Anita Collins. See https:// biggerbetterbrains.com/about/
Bower, J., Sham, F., & Gentle, E. (2019). Musical expertise as a consideration for post-stroke rehabilitation: A retrospective clinical case example. Australian Journal of Music Therapy. Vol 30. pp. 2-11.
Collins, A. (2014). How playing an instrument benefits your brain. Available online https://www.ted. com/talks/anita_collins_how_ playing_an_instrument_benefits_ your_brain.
Grau-Sánchez, J., Münte, T.F., Altenmüller, E., Duarte, E., & Rodríguez-Fornells, A. (2020). Potential benefits of music playing in stroke upper limb motor rehabilitation. Neuroscience and Behavioral Reviews. Vol. 112, pp. 585-599.
Page, S.J., Gater, D.R., & Bach-yRita, P. (2004). Reconsidering the motor recovery plateau in stroke rehabilitation. Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Vol. 85, pp. 1377-81.
