Change Your Brain Every Day - The Science of How Our Bodies Respond to Music

Episode Date: December 3, 2018

In this episode, Dr. Daniel Amen is joined by music producer Barry Goldstein for a discussion on the role music can play in brain health. Barry describes how his journey in the music industry led a surprising revelation, and how this discovery radically transformed his approach to musical compositions, such as those featured in the new Feel Better Fast Audio Program.

Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. Here we teach you how to win the fight for your brain to defeat anxiety, depression, memory loss, ADHD, and addictions. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we've transformed lives for three decades using brain spec imaging to better target treatment and natural ways to heal the brain. For more information, visit amenclinics.com.

The Brain Warriors Way podcast is also brought to you by BrainMD, where we produce the highest quality nutraceutical products to support the health of your brain and body. For more information, visit brainmdhealth.com. Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. Hi, welcome. We actually have a very special guest and a special week of podcasts because we're going to talk about your brain on music and how important. And I'm here with my friend, Barry Goldstein, who has won many awards, who's also a bestselling author of The Secret Language of the Heart. He's worked with rock icons, New York Times bestselling authors. He's also worked with medical experts over the

last 25 years. So Barry, tell our audience about why as a musician and then later as a producer, you really got involved in the healing power of music? Well, it's been a long and fun path and one that I never really expected. I'm sure you probably have some similarities. When we have a passion for something, sometimes it just opens up and takes its own path. And I was working as a music producer in New York and really under a lot of stresses, you know, with deadlines and commitments and was kind of losing my love of music because it was becoming a job for me. And I started to take these longer journeys where the music wasn't as formatted. And I decided to do some research online and I found that our heart is at a relaxed

state at about 60 beats per minute. And knowing that our heart is our rhythm center of our body and then music also has a tempo and a metronome to it. So what would happen if I combine those two theories and targeted my own heart at a relaxed state during these musical pieces. And that's really all I did was take the metronome at 60 beats per minute. And I started taking these hour-long journeys thinking no one is going to listen to these. It's just my own healing process of becoming less stressed out in the music business. And what I found was that I was moving to these meditative states while I was composing. And that instead of composing with music, I was more like decomposing with it.

And my own anxieties and my own stresses were starting to lessen through that process. And I ended up playing those for friends who said, wow, you have to put these out there to other people because they're really great. And we started getting testimonials from people when I started putting them out that they were using them in dentist offices to relax more, that they were using them with their parents who were going through hospice, you know, all these amazing ways. So that really piqued my interest in researching more what was happening to those people when they were listening to the music.

And that really led to me writing the book, The Secret Language of the Heart. Which is a gorgeous book, and it's loaded with research on how you can use music to enhance your mind. Now, a long time ago, more than 30 years ago, I learned about this concept of entrainment, which means your brain picks up the rhythm in the environment. And I've actually used audio and visual stimulation as a treatment for some of my patients who have anxiety issues or they have depression issues or they have focus issues. And so a couple of years ago, we got together and we created our first album,

The Brain Warrior's Way Music, which debuted at number two on Billboard's New Age chart. And then last year, we released Music for Bright Minds. And 35 weeks on Billboard's New Age chart. I mean, people just loved it and have said just amazing things about it. Yeah. And I think it shows us to where we are now, you know, in our culture where people are really wanting these tools, you know, for a CD that is about brain health, right? And improving your brain to appear and cross over into, you know, into the music business side of it, you know, shows that there's a need for it. And that's really what I'm

excited about is filling that need for people because music is so powerful. And there's actually science behind that. So let's talk about that. That there's science that shows that music can help memory, that music can help your mood, That music can help with focus. And it's based on this concept of entrainment. That your brain picks up the rhythm and the environment. There's a new study I talk about in my new book, Feel Better Fast and make it last. And that is if people listen to certain types of music, like the Beach Boys Good Vibrations for just 12 minutes a day, and they had the intention of being happier, that after 12 weeks, they were significantly happier. But just having the intention alone without the music didn't work well

how exciting is that yeah and we can target mood we can a lot of it is entrainment but there's also different types of entrainment you know there's heart entrainment as well where we know that our heart can also adapt to the tempo of music and synchronize with it. And we're learning more and more that the relationship between the heart and the brain are also very important. So as we're moving to those relaxed states, there was a study that just came out that showed that when you're moving to a relaxed state and slowing your breathing down, and you also have a positive emotion behind that, that while that's happening, your brain waves are also moving in a slower pattern and moving into more alpha brain states. So they interact with each other in the heart and the brain

to create more balance. And we can target that through different types of entrainment. In our case, in this new CD, we're using both and it's really a multitude of what I call a musical recipe to attain those states that we're targeting. You know, with entrainment, heart entrainment, brain entrainment, also the use of tempo, the use of different modes as well. And the more that we are studying music, the more we're getting science behind all of these things. So from Feel Better Fast and Make It Last, I write, music can soothe, inspire, improve your mood and help you focus. It is important in every known culture on earth with ancient roots extending back 250,000 years or more. And in one study, after evaluating more than 800 people, researchers found that people listen to music to regulate energy and mood, to achieve self-awareness, and improve social bonds.

It provides social cement. Think of work and war songs, lullabies, national anthems. In your book, you actually reviewed the science of music. Music stimulates emotional circuits in the brain, releases oxytocin, the cuddle hormone, which can enhance bonding, trust, and relationship. Listening to music can create peak emotions, which increases the amount of dopamine, a specific neurotransmitter that is produced in the brain and helps control the brain's reward and pleasure centers. You also write music was used to assist patients with severe brain injuries and recalling personal memories.

Music helped patients to reconnect to memories they previously could not access. Beware, however, that music you strongly like or dislike can actually impair your focus. Right, because you're so focused on that music that the tasks that you're trying to complete, it can also distract you from it. So there's an art really to doing music for focus because you want it to be appealing and you want people to like it, but not so much that they're humming the melodies with it, not so much that they're tapping their feet to it, but they're keeping their attention there with it. You want it to be able to mask what's going on, like if you're using it in an office. You want it to be able to mask some of that office noise that's going on that could be distracting to you. So that's why a lot of... But if you like it or hate it too much, it'll actually distract you. So stay with us. We're actually going to talk about you developing your own emotional rescue playlist. Stay with us. Use the code podcast10 to get a 10% discount

on a full evaluation at amenclinics.com or on our supplements at brainmdhealth.com. Thank you for listening to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. Go to iTunes and leave a review and you'll automatically be entered into a drawing to get a free signed copy of the Brain Warriors Way and the Brain Warriors Way cookbook we give away every month. Thank you.