Know Thyself - E195 - Dr. Mei Rui: The Science of Sound & Music as Medicine

Episode Date: May 19, 2026

Dr. Mei Rui is a Yale-trained molecular biophysicist, concert pianist, and clinical researcher at MD Anderson Cancer Center, where she runs trials on the measurable effects of music on the human body. In this conversation, we explore what actually happens in the brain the moment music enters it, why the auditory system is the first sense to develop in the womb and the last to go when we die, and how something as accessible as a curated playlist can outperform FDA-approved pharmaceuticals in reducing cortisol.What We Dive Into:1. Music is not a supplement to healing. In the right context, it is the intervention.2. The brain responds differently when you actually show up for the music.3. A longitudinal study in twins showed that three to four years of musical training reduced the risk of Alzheimer's and cognitive decline by 64%, an effect size found in no other single activity.THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS:Oneskin — Code KNOWTHYSELF for 15% off - Limited time only!https://oneskin.co/KNOWTHYSELFBASED Body Works — Code KNOWTHYSELF for 20% and a free toiletry bag!https://www.basedbodyworks.com___________00:00 Introduction: Dr. Mei Rui01:44 A Life Between Music and Science05:26 What Happens When Music Enters the Brain07:26 How the Brain Processes Sound and Music11:32 Why Minor Keys Feel Sad: The Science of Tonality14:37 Live Piano Demo: Matching Music to Mood19:06 Music in the Operating Room27:41 Music as Medicine: Clinical Applications29:10 The 32% Cortisol Study31:19 The 16 Compositional Elements of Healing Music35:11 Oxytocin, Familiarity, and the Parasympathetic Response36:18 Timbre and the Cello's Resemblance to a Mother's Voice42:31 Cymatics: Sound Made Visible45:16 The Ancient Roots of Music as Healing47:09 Listening vs. Playing an Instrument55:33 The Musician's Brain: Structural Differences57:46 Music Training and Protection Against Alzheimer's59:44 Music, Empathy, and Neural Synchrony1:01:36 The EEG Experiment: Reading André's Brain Live1:18:21 What the EEG Data Revealed1:22:26 Music, Flow State, and the Disappearance of Self1:26:55 Music as Spiritual Medicine1:30:23 How to Listen More Intentionally___________MORE FROM MEI✨Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/@meiruipianoMORE FROM KNOW THYSELF🎙️Spotify: https://spoti.fi/4bZMq9l🎧Apple: https://apple.co/4iATICX✨Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/knowthyself/🎬TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@andreduqum👥Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/knowthyselfbyandreduqum/🌐https://knowthyselfpodcast.com/MORE FROM ANDRÉ✨Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/@andreduqum💼Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/know-thyself-podcast📚Book recs: https://www.knowthyselfpodcast.com/book-list

We put an EEG helmet on me, and this is just a small window into what you're studying, which is the impact of music on our biology and neurology. Music engages every critical area in your brain, more so than any other human endeavor. Best job ever. Music is a natural narcotic. Did you prescribe music? Absolutely, yes. What about nostalgia?

Music is a medium of communication, just so much more natural. Pharmaceutical interventions all carry. side effects. Blindness, death. Our study showed a 32% reduction in cortisol, more powerful than an FDA approved pharmaceutical drug. It could protect your brain against neurodegeneration, Alzheimer's dementia. Like a percentage? 64%. Even under general anesthesia, they used to think what happens acoustically and has much of an impact. Now we know that is false. This kind of music is way to activate. This may send your body into it. Dr. Dr. May, Ray, you have a degree from Yale in molecular biophysics and biochemistry. You're a classical pianist,

a very good one at that. You're also a yoga teacher and you're doing incredible research and running clinical trials right now. Most people in life are told to pick a lane, you know, choose one path. I would just love to hear from you through your circuitous journey kind of getting to this point in choosing not just one path. I would love for you to share a bit of your story of how you decided to combine so many of your passions into one. So my journey started very early. My musical journey started very early when I was three years old. And I started performing around the world when I was in elementary school. I played my very first recital in Austria for the president of Austria and Hofberg, Paris, when I was 10 years old.

and did a lot of competitions. So that was a very intensive period in my life where the primary focus was deliberate musical training. And then in my early teenage years, I had a few quite big setbacks, and specifically in the competitive arena. And at that time, I was also very strong academically. I always had a very curious mind

and high affinity for science. and for mathematics. But then I started to explore partially from just a state of curiosity, but also that was during my immigration to the U.S. as well, to New York

and attending conservatories here. But I discovered that I was passionate about a lot of these other areas, and I was discovering overlaps between these two fields. That journey then took me to Yale University. But throughout the whole, I would say my teenage years and 20s and even early 30s, there was a lot of internal conflict and uncertainty and wandering and self-doubt, like many of us, that are pulled in different directions.

So it was really in the last seven, eight years or so that I became more centered. and more comfortable with these quite divergent career trajectories. And I found ways to unify them and pursue music and research in both in very meaningful and impactful ways. But I feel my early training as a concert pianist helped balance a lot of the struggles that exist in academia as well. But now they are all part of my ecosystem And all these factors

They're only very integral part of my system Just like being a mother and being a yogi And they all feed me And on different days You know, there's no If you want to call it balance Or work life balance I don't think they all exist

You know we try to achieve We always as humans have a way of striving Going toward a homeostasis and find equilibrium. So on the different day, on any given day, the proportion or the distribution of how I spend my time will be completely different. Do you feel at this day and age,

like these aren't different caps you wear, but they're all just different aspects of you? Yes, and accepting that took really decades. Yeah. Because especially being told, in this society, you're told to be very hyper-specialized. And I discovered that, lot through my collaborations with these amazing experts in different fields. So everyone has

this hyper dedication to their field. But sometimes we lack, you know, the big picture, integration. So I find the open-mindedness and being willing to explore helps my research as well. Undoubtedly, and if everybody is listening to this right now, knows the power of music, right? At some point in their life, more something that, are there? and different types of music have been super impactful for them. I know for me, like, music has been a big love of mine for a long time, both listening and playing. And we all know that music is impactful.

You're studying it in a very rigorous way to, and it has really big implications on when we listen to music, why we listen to music, the type of music we listen to, the different effects it has on us. And through this conversation, I'm hoping people can really gain context to what the power of music is. so they can properly commune with it and leverage it in their life to be able to be more effective at whatever they're doing and understand actually what's happening.

What happens to the brain, the moment that music enters it? What's happening? So it's a very beautiful process and when we receive an external acoustic stimulus. So even if we track back to when we were in the womb, so the last three months, The third trimester. The third trimester, essentially. So your auditory system is almost fully developed in unilateral. And you've heard of the Mozart effect,

the expecting mothers putting headphones on the belly. And there is a scientific basis for that. So the auditory sense is really the first one to fully mature and develop. And it's the last one to perish when we die of the five senses. It's the first one to wake up in the morning, and it's the last one to go to sleep. So even if you compare it to smell, which is also, so smell comes next. Yeah, I'm just thinking like going to bed, waking up, yeah, taste, sight, smell, hearing is usually the last thing that you're a consciously, I guess, aware of before you enter the void. And so if you look at research in palliative care or someone that may be in even a fully,

sedate state or under general anesthesia in the operating room, even the providers used to think what happens acoustically inside of an operating room, they wouldn't have much of an impact on the well-being of the patient. Now we know that it is false. So the side effects of the music that you mentioned, if the surgeon has a strong preference for death metal, for example, a very activating hip-hop, right, where you have 160 beats per minute, way above the rate of the human resting heart rate. So in some situations, it's been shown that this type of very activating external stimulus, it can cause arrismias and cardiovascular and hemodynamic instabilities

in the patients that are under GA, under anesthesia. So that translates to increased need for sedatives. So the anesthesiologists would have to work harder to sedate the patient. they have to put extra prophyl. So these pharmaceutical interventions all carry side effects. So now going back to your question,

when we hear not just music, but any sound, right? And so there's usually, it depends on, you know, again, the time of the day, so circadian rhythm plays also a critical role in how we receive

external stimulus. So first preference plays so your brain does decide in the critical judgment center do I like this do I not like this and also depends on your mood

if you're in open-minded configuration and you know the music whether it's novel versus familiar and if it has a temper that you may be familiar with versus something that's

a piece by John Cage that has a lot of discord and harmonies. So all these different elements in the music itself can play a critical role in where or which of the networks are activated. So you may be familiar with the default, the salience and the executive networks, right? Let's say we are, you know, you may be over-stimulated at the end of a workday. So in those situations, exposure to nature, nature sound, ocean waves, they have been shown to let your body and let your neural systems go into the default network,

which is if you imagine if you're on long hikes or even if you're driving and you may be in a more open state when there's no traffic, and some of us may have had the best epiphanies when your brain is in that default state. And then your salience network decides it kind of modulates. It's like a traffic cop. So do I go into this default state or do I go into this more vigilant executive state where you have to assign different tasks? I'm really curious. I mean, there's a whole philosophical side of things we can open up, which I'm sure we'll touch on.

But when you look at, okay, the auditory system is developed in the third trimester and mothers report back the finding that they play calming music and it's calming for the baby. also dogs, right, play some classical piano music. I know when I've had dogs in the past freak out, like it really helps calm them down. We're human beings, we're also animals, and we have this limbic system. And I'm curious, is there a reason specifically, maybe mathematically speaking, physics speaking, why like a minor third interval feels universally more sad to folks? Why these different, yeah, it seems to be pervasive. and just a part of the way the universe structured and vibration works.

That's a really great question. And even as a professional musician, I have to think about it for a second. So I know from the scientific side, maybe I'll start from the musical side. So the minor third, which is a half a step, a semi-tone lower than a major third. So it mimics almost a human sigh. So a minor third interval, you're saying it mimics the kind of like, sighing, releasing, which feels a bit more sad or releasing. Right.

Versus a major third. It's this type of more eyebrow raising elation. It depends, of course, on the articulation and the taper of the music. Yeah, I guess it's still a bit of an unanswerable question why certain things feel the way they do, right? Yeah, so we did set out to, at least we try to capture, preference on the preference side or on the perceived relaxation side, do participants feel whether minor or major may be more relaxing? Because a decade ago, in the music therapy literature, it was believed that it's better to play music more positive in majors for people

that are in pain or for a teenager suffering from some mental illness and depression. But now we know that is not true. And so, the data from our study actually showed it was almost a 50-50 split between, so in self-reported relaxation, whether we played exactly the same piece of music modulated to major or modulated to minor. So it was a very, very even split. So there's no clear distinction between, you know, which of the two tonalities may be superior, inducing a positive emotional state. But now we know for a minor tone music that may feel sadder. They're actually more effective. if we're targeting someone that may be severely depressed or in a very traumatized state.

Because that's actually closer to their natural state, so to speak. If we have a patient that's already very agitated or already very, very upset, you try to play cheerful music for them. It's a feeling of being completely misunderstood. And then they sever that connection. They don't want any of it. But... Why don't we just...

You want to show it? I can show a little bit between that. Yeah, the major minor. Yeah, yeah. More effective than... Sure. We just keep talking around it, so let's just do it. Okay, so we were just talking about the difference between a minor third and a major third interval

and why they universally feel the way they do. So you can show us that example, so we can hear it and feel it rather than... Of course, yes. So this was one of the excerpt that was used in the study where we isolated tonality as a variable to see if there is an innate preference for major versus a minor. Now, so while the minor keys may make you feel a little bit more introspective, perhaps, it's not necessarily a bad thing because I mentioned earlier in patients that may be already prone to ruminition or they may be feeling anxious and depressed, something that's a little bit

on the more pensive side, have been found to feel more closer alignment. to their existing emotional state. When you're sad, you want to listen to sad music. It feels good. And then gradually, so through the progression of our music intervention, over 30-minute period, we can gradually take them up through the emotional arc to something a little more uplifting.

Meet them where they are. That's right. But then coax them in a way and lift them up into... So the progression may look like this, right? So we start with... This is actually one of the pieces that use. in the clinical trial. And then we may modulate to something with a little bit more movement, but still in minor.

And the piece by itself, already compositionally, it goes into slightly sunnier harmony. So it's a very subtle way to coax someone that may be in a depressive state. And it's in a very gentle way. we help lift them up and then gradually the music will become more positive

so we may modulate to something and then adding a little more movement so we introduce a little bit of a new variable each time so not to overwhelm the system

that's still a long way from other type of very activating music that I avoid using completely in these studies. I'll give you an example. This kind of music is way to activating and it may cause me to lose my job. If I played it in the intraoperative setting

in the operating room, for example. So this may send your body into a fighter flight system. Have you never heard of this piece before? It could be great for a workout. It could be, yes. Or anything with a strong rhythmic drive. this type of music, whether it's hip-hop or whether it's... You can increase your oxygen level by up to 7%, which is...

You feel a little bit of a journaling rush as well? Yeah, this is... Yeah. And it's different. Your response will be very different if this is a very first time. Yeah. Getting exposed to this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then in this case, we found through the EEG study, your occipital region gets very activated.

So if you think back to the hunter-gatherer days, right, your occipital region, your vision is, it needs to be very active if you're hunting the forest, right? If you spot a tiger, you know, if you spot or spot the earth that you can hunt. So we notice that this type of novel stimulus, especially if it's very activating. It triggers the oxyvillo area and also the frontal, where you're trying to make a critical judgment, do I like this or do I hate it? The classical music genre is particularly challenging if we're trying to harness different pieces to be integrated for clinical study. The major reason is the sheer complexity and really the infinite choices that's in this repertoire, everything from Baroque to modern, right? So unless if you really have that knowledge, when we are selecting the music, it's very important to know compositionally what happens.

Because if you have a very calming piece that starts very slow, a minute and a half into the piece, we can have a very explosive climax. So if we were using that in a critical care setting, that will translate to elevated blood pressure, and so not what we want to achieve. So we have everything from love and rapture. and to triumph and feeling very victorious

and uplifting. Now the same composer also writes something that could be used as a sedative and this is one of the pieces that's used in one of the trials. So a piece will like Like this would work for a pain,

work for... Lullaby, kind of a... Lullaby, yes. I can work... Could I name a couple emotions and see you can try to play it? That's great, yeah. Because I find it so fascinating

that, again, various different pieces universally evoke certain feeling states within us human beings. Like, what about frustration? Oh, oh, that's a great question. Let me think. In a more suppressed way,

or like stuck. Stuck frustrated. Yeah, that's a hard one. That's a really hard one. I'm trying to give you a couple of hard ones. Okay. Then there's a little bit release, okay? So we have a moment of stuck frustration.

Then they release. Do you feel that? So this is like a 30 million long piece. Yeah, I'm pissed off. Okay. What about nostalgia? Oh, I love me. Yes.

What do you think? Yeah, I feel that. You feel that? What about something pure and interesting? Yeah. So we go to Mozart a lot and some Chopin. Yeah. It's very uplifting.

It's like a little glass of champagne. That's a good note to go back into the podcast. As you can tell, I'm so much more natural at the piano than I'm talking. I mean, you're great at both, but I prefer music over English any day. Oh, my God. Well, you can express yourself that way. Yeah, yeah. It's not as direct, you know.

Yeah. Especially because of my childhood I didn't talk about earlier. Yeah. And I practiced seven, eight hours a day. That was my medium of communication, you know. So it's just so much more natural. Yeah, I'm just curious your thoughts on that. So I think for me this is because of my personal journey,

in my developmental years, I spent a lot longer at the piano during my week hours than away from it. And now we know music engages every critical area in your brain more so than any other human endeavor. So they have compared elite sportsmanship or playing chess. Surgeons operating, but playing music really triggers activation, especially performing live music, triggers activation every part of the brain. So in my childhood, instead of having play dates with my neighbors, which my kids get to do every day, I was at the piano practicing five to seven hours every day. And even now as an adult as well, I find that's the most direct and visceral connection and whether it's through you know when I rehearsed with other musicians I also find it

you know if we play first yeah there's a natural connection and that when that's built and it's much easier to converse yeah um in in a robot way I mean I feel like communicating the most effectively when I had like a few musician friends over and we're jamming and it's just but it's just like a universal language hey fam healthy skin is largely lifestyle Things like diet, stress, exercise, sleep. But I also use a couple of products I know I can trust while keeping my routine minimal. One brand I love is One Skin.

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stuff. I use it because I care about what's happening under the surface, not just on top of it. For a limited time, try one skin with 15% off using code know thyself at oneskin.co slash no thyself. That's oneskin.com slash know-thyself. After your purchase, they'll ask where you heard about them, and you can let them know we sent you. Link down in the description. I hope you enjoy. So, yeah, so when music enters the brain,

you have this chart here. I'll just pass it over to you. Yeah, it's okay. I know. Yeah, so this chart basically means what are these, the uses, applications of music medicine in a clinical context. What music has been used for as a narcotic

to modulate pain? So different types of music could be obviously a sleep aid, a painkiller, a brain stimulator, boost your exercise, anti-inflammatory, antidepressant, mood enhancer, stress modulator, baby whisper, aphrodisiac. That's right. So it's very context-dependent and very goal-oriented, right, whether the goal is if you were to use it for seduction in a romantic context. Yeah. Because now we know them, especially for a phoenix. for women, we're more acoustically triggered than male. Male is more visually.

We're more visual animals. But going back on more on the clinical side, music has been harnessed. And that's what a lot of my research does as well as a powerful way to modulate the human stress response, to decrease pain, both on the physiological level and also in pain perception as well. And of course, in modulating the release of stress hormones, like cytokines, interleukin-6, for example, and even our inflammation response. So the data from our newest clinical trial, that's in 132 neurosurgical cancer patients, we've seen a very pronounced decrease in the plasma level, so detected in the blood before and after.

So we took two blood draws. in these surgical patients the morning of their brain surgery. And we found actually a very beautiful 32% reduction in serum level cortisol. So that is very powerful if you compare it to the effect size of an FDA-approved pharmaceutical drug. Do you happen to know what's a range of it? For a pharmaceutical drug. Like an SSRI?

Yeah. Or for pain or... for blood pressure. I think when including the placebo, it's higher than 32%. Yeah? Or no? Sometimes we get 20%,

even 15 to 20%. Okay. So then could you prescribe music? That's absolutely, yes. Amazing. And without the best part, it's easy to implement without known side effects. Yeah.

So some of these drugs could have very, very severe. Like the one for Alzheimer's, that came out about 18 months ago. So it doesn't cause brainbleeds. Some of them are gnarly. It's like we've all seen those ads on television, which is a whole can of worms in itself

that it's legal to do that. But the side effects of taking this medicine are blindness, death, puking. So music is a natural narcotic. And my research is trying to see because music is so heterogeneous, and you heard the single piece I performed for you, right? Just a quick note on the,

Now we're going to splice it in later in this conversation. You guys are going to hear a piece that made and almost brought me to tears. It was so beautiful. I'm excited for you guys to see it. And she also put a EEG cap to see what's actually happening in my brain while she's playing. But to go back to 32% reduction, this is a different study than the 16 compositional elements? That was a study designed to validate. So we isolated these individual parameters in music.

You may be familiar with tempo. some of the more basic elements that were in prior literature. But my team went above and beyond. So we really tried to quantify all of these additional variables, timbre interpretation or flexibility, Rubato in the music. So Rubato is a very unique feature for music. It's related to rhythm. So if we think of heart rate variability, right,

which is a critical indicator of your wellness, you know, before, and during the pandemic, before someone was about to get sick in the 48-hour window prior to that, you would notice a significant drop up to 40% sometimes in HRV. So if you think of... Which heart rate variability is like the variance

in between the space between your heartbeats. That's right. So the more flexible... More resilient. The more resilient, exactly. So if... I can demo later. Yeah. But in musical performance, you know,

if we have a MIDI file, something that's computer generated or AI generated, you lose that flexibility or you lose the variance completely. That's really interesting. I would be curious if you ran the same trial with AI generated music and see what the percentage in reduction of the cortisol that you're picking up in the plasma would be because I definitely can feel it.

Like AI is fundamentally predictable, like trained off large models in the internet of what's essentially the average. And so it doesn't leave space for that humanity and that imperfection that really connects with people. What music were you playing in the study with a 32% reduction in stress? So it's a combination of, it's a playlist I had sent you. But just going back to what you were saying about the, you want a little bit of a surprise to keep the brain trained. So what's effective or what's magical about some of these classical compositions we use is it's a perfect mix of familiar. You know, you do hear the theme return, so it brings that sense of comfort, even if you don't know the piece, right?

Usually within that frame, the structure, whether you have a simple binary or turnary structure, you have the re-encounter of the theme, which brings the familiarity. But then, every time it comes back, especially if it's a variation form, a little bit of novelty, variations are introduced. You may add a little trail or a little cadenza. here and there. So our brain likes these little teases, and that translates to elevated dopamine surges. If you play something that's very monotonous and completely predictable, it becomes, it can almost cause anxiety, especially if it's in a repetitive loop. We all have those sound

machines, right? You can hear the same bird again, two minutes and 30 seconds in. So the difference between, let's say, in these environments, if we put something from a country music track. First of all, lyrics could be very emotionally triggering and potentially in a negative way, especially if there's a memory trigger that may be traumatic. So we usually avoid using vocal music in these more critical care settings. But also the length of a typical song, right, that's in. In other genres, they're usually two to three minutes on average. But we could carve out these slightly longer narratives with the classical music that we use.

So again, to avoid repetition, but also to have that familiarity. And on the familiarity and comfort front, another element of the data we found to be very exciting is there was a 28% increase in the levels of oxytocin, also detected in the blood use. using proteomics, metabolomics. So if you're familiar with oxytocin with the other neuron transmitter, it's a bonding hormone. And it's usually secreted when you feel really a sense of a comfort. So it's a very hard environment, if you think of the preoperative setting. They're about to have the patients about to have their brains operated.

So it's a very high agitation state. So to be able to see that increased signals that the music was really able to help calm the system and bring them into, you know, activate the parasympathetic nervous system and deactivate the sympathetic nervous system. What's the difference if you take the same melodic structure, play it through a cello, through a violin, someone sings it, you play out on piano, what's the difference in terms of the impact on biology? That's a great question. And it is a question we have addressed in the composition.

and study. So we had the exact same piece. And we chose the Rahmanu Vocalist. It's a very beautiful melodic work. So we had maybe seven or eight different versions, exactly as you described. Also, we have vocal, soprano and alto, have different singers, and on French horn, so on a multitude of instruments. And then the participants were asked, so it's still the same, exactly the same piece of music played at the same tempo. So we preserve all these other variables and isolating the single variable, which is essentially timbre, right,

or instrumentation. So that's when we found the cello and the middle range of the piano, middle lower range of the piano, which, you know, if you look at the vibrational frequencies, they align to the natural range of a mother's soothing voice. So those were perceived and selected in the responses to,

be most relaxing in the over 300 participants. That makes sense, especially for, I mean, in the yogic traditions too, any chanting or mantras and the using of your own voice to create that sort of. Vibration. Yeah, that vibration, that's soothing. And then so the higher ones, the higher ones, while, you know, if the purpose is not, so I'm talking about relaxation right now where the clinical, aim is to downregulate the stress response, right?

So we're trying to avoid music that may be overly stimulating and very intense. You know, if you think of the vibrato, the very intense vibrato in the upper register of a violin or the sound of a piccolo, it could be overly, emotionally invasive. And also the human voice as well, especially if you may not, you know, when words are introduced, the brain mechanisms, they're completely different. And it's also more exerting and taxing, which means less relaxing for the brain to accept and process all that stimuli.

So instrumental music is a little bit more non-invasive. Yeah. Is that why you choose it? Because you've done studies during open brain surgery playing. It's a new trial during awake craniomy. We're trying to measure the effects simultaneously. Both with the surgeons and patients. Fascinating.

So to my knowledge, it's the very first study of its kind when trying to capture, again, quantitatively, what the acoustic environment, how important it could be. Because we don't know, maybe people have looked at the effects separately, but not in the same setting. If someone is sedated or even asleep, let's say they're in an environment that is completely silent versus something that's playing some of those lower resonant,

tones. I know, I mean, right now on YouTube, there's so many sleep tracks and sulfadio tones and different frequencies that people feel like they sleep better or stays deeper in their sleep. I know it's early in the findings of the studies, but for those that are actually under surgery, I'm curious, like, are you, what, can you share anything about what you're finding? So the control group is now receiving standard of care. So that could be, you know, they could be, even in the unconscious state, it could be receiving communications, which sometimes could be stressful.

You know, if you hear a nurse talking about your case, blood pressure spiking and push more of this. Because you're subconsciously picking it up. You're still picking up. And now if we dilute that, that potentially stressful stimulus with something that's been shown, it's been demonstrated to be relaxing on a physiological level,

and at least help mask it. And the music we choose, usually there's a little bit of a narrative, so it can help transport the system, the brain into, you know, if you want to call it a meditative state. So it provides a healthy escape. And so you don't have to be a classical musician. You don't need to know what the dominant chord is.

That was one of the really illuminating part of the research. The largest impact, actually, in the dataset, right, we look at associations, correlations between demographic variables, like level of education, gender, cultural background, prior exposure to different types of music preference. So we found that in those participants, they may have never, ever attended a classical concert before. So they're not familiar with this genre of chamber music. They don't know who beat duphin or Brahms are, but they actually report the highest level of anxiety, stress reduction, which is very interesting.

And females benefit a bit more. So there is a little bit of a gender difference. You know, females in waiting areas, they're more prone to elevated levels of anxiety. So, and going back to, remember when I said, females a little bit more primed acoustically versus visually for male. There is, I'm going to try to remember.

There is, I mean, it's a completely side tangent, but I saw someone share something. Instagram that kind of resonates with that because men fall in love what they see and women fall in love what they hear, which is why men lie and women wear makeup or something. I have that, yeah, that's right. So I tell my friends, right, especially those that are not in this area, instead of spending, you know, $250 on the bottom of cologne, although the sense of smell is olfactory senses are very important, you really should cultivate a very mindful, acoustic environment or

soundscape, you know, if you have your love interest over. Getting the tips. You get all these powerful cocktail of neuron transmitter releases. You don't have to buy, even buy a cup of coffee or an alcoholic drink to do that. We can be subconsciously lowering their CRP and boosting their endorphins. So fascinating. One aspect I might have referred to earlier before we were recording is cymatics. So this whole feel.

of sound made visible. To me is super intriguing because it talks about, and it explains and shows visibly how sound has a mathematical, geometric, physical component that you can actually see

when you put sound and vibrated on a plate and it takes certain shapes. I just think this whole field of sound and music as medicine were just at the infancy of really discovering the power that it can have.

So I wanted to just show you this quick, and we'll throw it on screen like a 25 second little clip showing the cymatics. So just hold that and then click play. That's beautiful. It's very fascinating that like we just don't know a whole lot. And the geometric, it's all very symmetric, right? Right. So look at the patterns.

That reminds me on the, that's, if you look at the cello string, violin string, right? All the intonations, all the notes, or on a guitar. string. So in all the frequencies, they will have a mathematical ratio. So this is not my field, by the way. So I don't know how much you want to go into it. It's just, it's a fun. It's your passion that I can tell. I mean, this is one little interesting aspect, I think, to just bring in here. I just think it's interesting because your brain obviously is enveloped in cerebral spinal fluid and your body is mostly water. And in vibrational. And in, vibration forms these lattices, you know, what you see in these geometric structures.

So when we listen to music, like what's happening internally into every cell in our body and how is that corresponding to the neurochemical cascade that's affecting our mood regulation and on all of it, you know, it's so fascinating. So that taps into the more visceral impact. Yeah. Yeah. That's why instruments like the cello, right, if you talk to a cellist, they'll tell you the direct vibration of the cello or of your instruments.

here. They can send that physical contact and we pianists don't have that luxury. It's still very tactile, you know, we make contact with the keys, but we don't really feel the core of the vibrations of the whole instrument. This kind

of goes into a whole field where like ancestrally, like all these various indigenous communities across the world use various different instruments for healing, for medicinal purposes, for communal purposes, from drumming, to various different stringed instruments.

And I think it's very much so a lost art. Which you're speaking to in the modern day, like the shamans would have been the highest set of people on top of different cultures and societies. Today it's scientists, right? We speak the language of science in the state and age. But the healing was from the very beginning of time. The root of music therapy or music medicine

could be traced back to 4,000 BC. And then later on, I mean, Aristotle, Plato, they all wrote about, music in a healing context. So it's nothing new. And then, you know, if you look at the before World War I, World War II, there was kind of a disconnect with the Westernization. So now we have these expert musicians, right? And then you have the non-musicians. If you think of everything from Renaissance to the romantic period in your 19th century, 18th century, a lot of the performances, they happen in social settings. So amateurs played all the time.

So it's not like you have a disconnect within that spectrum, right, where you have the elite professionals. And then you have these people that don't know what they're doing at all. So it was more similar to sports and like basketball. You know, everyone is willing to get into a game, right? You don't have to be an expert athlete. I think, I mean, I'm curious to get your perspective on the difference from somebody who listens to music versus plays it.

I strongly encourage everyone who's listening that doesn't play an instrument to pick up something and to start, even if it doesn't come naturally to you, there's a lot of interesting instruments that are way easier to play that are just one scale from different hand pans to, you know, I showed you this.

And again, on the vibration side, and it's very healing, and then a lot of people familiar with sound healing, some therapy. Even like, you want to pass me this guy? So I remember one of my favorite childhood memories. So my mom is Buddhist,

and I went to lots of different temples growing up, we would go at least twice a month. So one of the temples that were near my house in Shanghai, it had a huge gong, you know, there was, it also had the bell that drips down with this giant rope. So I remember just wanting to, so you get to only strike it once. Everybody is setting in line, and then I wanted to be near it because you feel that just impact of the waves in the air.

Yeah, I know. This is a perfect example of that. I reminded me of that. This is like a wave chime. It's just C and G, but I will see how good the mics pick it up. But it's a perfect example, too, of you can feel what's happening in your body, especially in person when you listen to this. But it's a super interesting sound.

Wow. Similarly with those tuning forks. I love that. You can artificially induce these crescendos and diminuendos just by the direction. And you feel it here actually you want to try it you want to see how it feels in your hand When you move it because it's actually really like and you know in in The the chakras right if you have I won't go into that in a minute

Okay, so which one is this is yeah probably this is and then when you move it you can feel like the oh Yeah, she could get a little closer We're becoming sound healers No, these tools are super fun to play with. Even if you could toss me these tuning forks, I mean, you see these things and give shop. Hey, as you give so you shall receive. I wonder if the mics will pick these up to you, but I just find it so interesting. You can obviously place these on different parts of your body and...

Do each one of these correspond to different chakra? I think so I mean, let's see, they're seven So they must You know I think they They correspond to different parts of the body Like you know

Different sound healers and shamans would use different I feel in my finger the vibration But you don't Yeah if you smack it hard And then put it really close I have a perfect I have perfect pitch So I should be able to tell me

G flat Yeah Wow so you have perfect pitch It's a curse because I can't listen to Acapella groups either go out of team together Okay, all right

Put down the witchy tools for a moment I'm curious to ask actually about that Because I've heard from A few different folks That you can play complex high information Music in utero up to the first six years after birth And actually trained perfect pitch For people that don't know perfect pitch

Obviously like you see red You know what that looks like You can hear a middle C and know what that is by... You hear a car horn, you can identify a frequency or a note on the piano. Right, after learning what the notes are,

then you can correspond. So, because you, I'm assuming, because you played since you were very young, that's probably why you have... Also, tonal language speakers, like Mandarin, speakers have a higher probability of developing, naturally developing perfect pitch.

Interesting. So when I was at Yale, I actually was one of, I was involved in one of, of the perfect pitch studies in the Coxie lab. And there are different levels of perfect pitch. There are people that can tell between 440 and 442. So depending on how close you can get to,

I think it's a very small fraction of the population that are really these absolute perfect pitch folks. So if I went and played a couple of polychords or different things, would you be able to pick out the different notes? Really? Yes, go ahead. Okay, I have to go do this now. Yeah.

Wow, all right. No, I feel silly because this is a little party trick, you know. No, but it's great. Hey, y'all, a quick share. I've put a lot of care thinking about what I put into my body, as we all should, but it's just as important to be mindful with what we put on our body because that also goes inside us. It turns out most of the traditional shampoo and body washes that people have been using

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I'm just curious. So obviously. Oh, see. F sharp C sharp E? Oh, F sharp A.E. Yeah. That's like a pentatonic scale almost. What about?

The bass isn't F sharp. The top is an A. And then A, C sharp, E, A, that's just an A major chord. G sharp. Then my past. Oh. That's a bit of fun. B, the top, the top is still the same.

We have a D and E. So B, D, E. How's that? Yeah, it was good. Okay. Low O, we have some augmented number. That's a low E. D.

F. G sharp or C sharp? E. Wow. Yeah. So fascinating. Oh, E flat. We have validated.

She's proved herself. I have proven myself. So fun. It's like a little test at school. I haven't done it in like a decade. You passed the test. Haven't been tested. I'm jelly.

It's like a party trick. It's very hard to be able to train that later in life, right? Relative pitch would be more useful for most musicians, but perfect pitch. But I mentioned it's earlier. It's very hard for me to listen to. fellow groups that they all go out between together. It's very torturous. Getting back to the whole brain situation, now we've explored a couple different tangents. When we hear a lot about like left brain and right brain stuff these days and you share how

music is one of the most powerful ways to be able to have a whole brain activity and actually strengthen the connective tissue and the corpus callosum between the two. Why is that, why does that matter. Why is that important? And how does it differ listening versus playing? So first I'll just describe a little bit of the functional and structural differences in a musician versus non-musician's brain. Of course, there are different levels of musicianship, right? Whether you have an amateur or concert. But the benefits are immense as well, even if you're not a professional. So pianist brains are, for example, differently. they're different from violinist brain and you could probably guess

which brain is more symmetric. Pianist spring or violinist spring? Pianist. And why is that? I mean, you're using both hands not that you don't on violin as well but there is a you're playing notes with both hands.

The tasks are more similar. The demands are more similar on a muscular level and for violinists, would you venture to guess which hemisphere is larger? I would say for most, because most violinists are, what, right-handed with the bow? And then... So I would say their right hemisphere is probably more active because they're playing with their left hand. That's right, exactly.

So that's sometimes up to 30, you know, the great matter volume, up to 30% larger in the motor regions. So that's just a tremendous difference. But pianist's brains are structurally very, very, very. symmetric. So if I were somewhere were to perform an autopsy on my brain, they will be able to tell without having any background information that I was a musician before I died. That's the only type of brain where they could differentiate. And if you

look at any type of profession, that's the only type of profession. And how does that correlate to the rest of your life? Right. So if we're looking at on the neuroplasticity side, and also on the neuroprotective side, if you had, there was a longitudinal study in twins. So pairs of twins, they looked at the effect size of,

you know, over, I think, three to four years of instrumental music training and how decades later, it could help your brain and protected against neurodegeneration and cognitive decline. So Alzheimer's dementia. So the effect size was,

actually before I reviewed, Do you want to take a guess? Maybe 60%? 64%. Is that right? Let's go. Okay, I got lucky. Doesn't that blow your mind?

That's insane, though. That's huge, yeah. And if you look at, there's really no other, no activity that could have that type of tremendous enhancement and protection against aging, right? If you look at, so because it protects the brain in a multitude of different ways. So, music could be anti-influenact. inflammatory. We already know through stress regulation. And even music listening, over after just three to five minutes, it can enhance a variable called global brain efficiency. So basically,

it brings oxygenated blood flow to all these critical regions in your brain that may be associated with memory, retrieval, communication, emotional regulation, executive decisions. So it's like a whole symphony, right? So the music or a musical stimuli, they help coordinate. the communication among all the different disparate regions in your brain that may not otherwise work together. So we're finding our EEG data

that the GBE, the global brain efficiency can increase for 175%, meaning the communication gets faster and more efficient after just listening to music and during our live in hospital concerts. So how does that correspond with cultivating empathy as well?

Yes. So empathy is one of the regions that's, and also mentioned earlier in the surgeons So going back on a humanistic level, music making and music listening help unify us under one roof. You know, people from very different cultural, religious, socioeconomic backgrounds. We don't have to have any other common interests or even common language. We've all felt this.

Whoever has gone to live music or performance, the whole audience can melt into one thing, right? That's empathy. And literally our, you know, our career. vascular, our neural rhythms mechanisms, they start to align after a few seconds, two minutes of exposure. So, and that we can now, we can be able to visualize that in real time in some of my studies because we actually project the data on the screen when we have a diet or triad of a volunteer, mostly non-musician participants.

It could be surgeons, oral cancer patients. And then we see that their brains actually start to synchronize. And while exposed to music, they don't have to be familiar. earlier or have to have a prior preference for the music. But there's something very inherently impactful and human about the music. So earlier, you did a performance. I did also a performance. I basically just put on a helmet.

But you put it on its EEG cap on me, and you played a really beautiful piece, which I want to cut to now to show. And then we can come back and talk about what actually happened in my brain as you played that piece. It was very beautiful. And I really appreciate it so special to be able to get to do. this as a job. It's really meaningful. Brant stage seat. Yeah. So yeah, let's cut to that now and we'll show

what the unitive brain experience looks like in real time and we'll talk about it. Sounds good. All right. So, May I'm now going to be your guinea pig. That's right. I'm now your research patient. What are you going to put on me? What is this thing? So I bought a portable piece of equipment from my lab at MD Anderson. This is a dry electrode wireless EEG tap. So, electroencephalography, which measures your brain activity using these electrodes that make contact with your scope. And additionally, this state-of-the-art technology is really amazing because it allows us to measure your cardiovascular activity as well. All right, Doc, hook me up. The things I do for this podcast. So all these electrodes that you're tightening to make contact with my scalp is essentially

you're going to be picking up the different signals. Yeah, like electrical signals for my brain to determine what brainwave states I'm at or where they're changing, contrasting to as you play the piece on piano. Right. So we can capture both regions specific changes. If you're a musician and you're improvising, usually the patterns emerge from the right side of the right hemisphere. they may migrate to the left when it becomes more memorized. Good. We're about to find out if I'm brain dead, yeah? Okay, so yeah.

We are seeing now your live data. And this is, I'm going to pull the screen up where you see the raw data. So I mentioned there 20 electrodes are placed on your scope. So we'll be able to see the live changes as you're playing what's happening in the contrasting neurologically. That's correct. And then I'll ask that you minimize, you don't have to freeze or tense your body. Yeah. But you minimize movement because otherwise we will, some of the changes will be due to emotion effects.

Okay. All righty. Take us away. So good. Wow. That's powerful. So I'm curious for those that listen, that set some time apart from their day to sit down and actually listen and feel the changes that we're going to talk about right now. But what happened?

And if we pull up the brain map right now, what's happening to the different parts of my brain that are lighting up or downregulating when you play a piece like that as it has different movements? Absolutely. So I want to preface that, your question by saying there are very different modes of listening, right? We have the type of background listening. You know, if you're dining in a fancy restaurant, you have background music. But then we also have intentional and mindful listening. So to receive the full benefits of a piece like that where it really has a very clear narrative arc

and has a lot of emotional modulations, lots of different mood states. So you have to imagine the demand is similar to watching a movie. So you need to give it at least comparable amount of attention as you would to watching a movie that you set the time to do rather than just doing other tasks. So that piece is called Ballad in B minor by a romantic composer called Franz Liszt. I chose that because it really demonstrate the full range of mood states

and very polarized emotions that the music will invite you to experience through this journey. And it's different from tuning to, I love in my freedom. into a lot of jazz, and we talked about this before. Also, I love, I have a very eclectic taste in music, whether it's Bill Evans, Billy Elish, Bob Marley, David Bowie. I love them all. But this piece that you heard, it has a really distinct narrative arc. So you may hear, I'm curious, did you hear the theme coming back several times?

There's this angelic element. Yeah, and returning The call from heavens And then returning back to like the kind of stormy Very stormy, very tumultuous So through that You know your body goes between the sympathetic

and parasympathetic nerve system And also on a neural side You may shift between the default network Going through Syrians Into the executive network Maybe some moments you really don't like You find it too invasive Which is all very normal

And these reactions will shift as you get familiar. That was your first exposure to the piece, right? And the amount of dopamine, endorphine, or the serotonin, surgery, they may differ

depending on if this is your first time, listening, or your 10th and 20th time. So, if going on the neurot transmitter side, if you are familiar with the piece, and if you recall, towards the end,

there's that very triumphant climactic section. So if your brain anticipate at the arrival of that section, it could produce a very massive hit of dopamine that may be even comparable, not quite like, you know, that's induced by drugs, but higher than eating a favorite piece of chocolate. So you've heard of the chills, right? The goosebumps, you could. Yeah, I got chills.

I definitely think it was stronger than chocolate. Somewhere between chocolate and MDMA. Oh, okay. Wow, that's, oh, I'm so happy to hear that. But the really cool aspect, I think most people may be surprised to hear that your sensitivity to this type of stimulation actually increases over time. So that's,

when you become more familiar with the music, unless if there is a traumatic memory tattoo, right? If you're, your favorite song by,

you know, the Beatles, that's your breakup, like, that's a song you used to listen to with an ex. You don't, you don't want to listen

to that again. That's different. But let's say you have a healthy relationship with a piece of music or some. And as you cultivate the relationship, throughout your lifetime, you become more attached to it.

So you can fall more and more enough with the same piece of music. So you become more sensitized to it. And then your tolerance actually decreases. That's the opposite mechanism for almost every, any other type of experiential stimulation you can get, which is really unique. I'm curious how you can build that association to help you enter flow state more. Because whether it's playing or listening to it,

we all seek that state where we have a lack of self-consciousness where we kind of disappear into our work, into what we're doing. And we've heard and we've experienced in our lives, but great athletes and musicians. I love that scene in the movie's soul where everything disappears and it's just him floating at the piano. And music for me is one of the strongest access points into that outside of just a more formal meditation practice. Absolutely. What's actually happening in that flow state? Our EEG data shows we have providers, surgeons, they come and become our experimental subjects. So we see an increase in theta brainwaves, which is associated with creativity.

So to enter flow state for a musician will be very different. The demands will be very different. The conditions will be very different versus for a listener, right? If you're writing an essay, you're writing a grant or you're performing a service. and you're putting music on as a background to entrain your brain to go into flow state. So going back to the surgeon's side, let's say they have very heavy mental loading going on, right? They may be coming in the middle of a very busy day of having to do two, three surgeries. So the music helps them deactivate from that state and tap more into what we also saw,

have seen is they tap more into areas like the prior region of the brain, which is with multi-sensory integration and the insular, right, which is, and although EEG cannot monitor deeper brain regions like the amygdala, we have done also ephromy studies like the one insurgents, the one I mentioned earlier to you. But for musicians to enter this experiential fusion state, which is very elusive, but it's really incredible when you really lose track of time. So several conditions have to be met.

So one is you have to have full command of what you're doing on the technical level. So it becomes mostly muscle, modern memory driven. And you almost have to reduce that level of meta-awareness, which actually a lot of, I know through meditation, we try to achieve that, where you become hyper-aware of everything. Metacognition, aware that you're aware. Right. So that's actually not a good thing for musicians

when we're trying to go into flow state because then a lot of these minute, hyper-technical details become very evident. You notice the way your fingers are moving. Almost like I remember when I was little, learning to write Chinese characters which could have many, many strokes. If you stop to see the whole character,

as an image as a whole, as a totality, and you've started to focus on the individual details, you lose track of how to write that character. So that happens during performance. On the other hand, so you want to have complete command of the technical aspect, but then you also want to be in tune with the environment as well. So the difference between practicing in the practice room, which you know you could get into flow state,

but it's not as wholesome of a slow flow state as you would get where you have an audience. So that live energy actually helps me a lot. Some of the best, most memorable moments where I experienced this experiential fusion, which is a form of flow state, was during live concerts, in large crowds. Does that feel like a spiritual experience for you?

It does, it does. And you really become, as cliche sounds, you become one with music. and you don't feel the physicality of the music. Yeah. You're not playing the music as much. The music is sort of playing you. And you become an embodiment of the music.

Yeah, exactly. As the music self. And some of our audience members also, listeners of these concerts have told us that, you know, they really forget they just came from a chemotherapy appointment. So it's very beautiful. We get to connect and hear their experience. I wanted to actually raise you.

this quote from Bach. Oh, okay. I hope I know this. Yeah. Because he was quite a spiritual human being and wrote glory to God solely on all of his transcripts or manuscripts. The aim and final end of all music should be none other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul. Have you heard that?

I have heard of that. Okay. Yes. I mean, he's one of the most mathematical composers ever to exist and he's saying the whole point is spiritual and whatever people have in terms of spiritual or religious beliefs, it does feel like music in a time where things seemingly increasingly feel divisive and separate is like one of the greatest medicines for us all collectively. And human universals.

So interestingly, a lot of the composers list Beethoven, they became more religious or religious if they didn't start up being released toward the end of their lives. Yeah. Another incredible, have you heard of Inayat Khan? It's a Sufi musician and poet. I have a book from him,

The Inner Life and the Mysticism of Sound I'm going to give you. So he was an Indian classical musician, became a Sufi teacher, brought Sufism to the West in 1910, and he wrote a lot around music as like a spiritual medicine. And he wrote the use of music for spiritual attainment and healing of the soul, which was prevalent in ancient times, is not found to the same extent now.

Music has been made a pastime the means of forgetting instead of realizing God. That's right. Oh, that's very beautiful. And so on the opposite end, you know, music, especially because going back to the environment I work in, right? But when I first, if you try to bring a program like this in a large institution, a lot of clinicians or policymakers, they think of music as a pure form of entertainment or just an art form, something aesthetic. But now we know it's so much beyond that.

And in the healing context, you know, that music has been healing us for things 4,000 BC. And really things are big. beginning of humanization and we know that babies, they remember music they heard in unilateral. Because so they were an experiment they conducted in infants, right? I think when they were 12-month-old. And they were able to detect or differentiate the pieces of the sounds they heard while they were in utero and show more interesting attention compared to novel music. So that memory was there before anything else. So it's really incredible

and in the healing context also in the human connection context as well. Yeah, and there is this, you have this slide also just to like really ground it of the you know the different transmitter release. Right, like what's happening when we're

paying real attention to a musical piece versus TikTok or drug addiction or your favorite food, what's happening neurologically. We don't have to get too much into the science of it, but I'm curious what What is one fundamental shift you wish everyone listening right now made to their relationship to music? I think music has been made into just type of mass consumption, right? It's just one of the many types of stimulations, brain stimulators, that we can purchase.

So it's very commercialized. But going back, going back to what you were referencing earlier on the spiritual side, And if we really look at the root of music could be, it's really a part of the human universal and it impacts it so viscerally. And so it should really be perceived as much more than entertainment. So I would advise much more intentional listening. And many of your being may already do that, you know, curating your own playlist based on. That may help align with the circadian rhythm.

You know, everyone should have a morning playlist and very much. that time playlist, depending on your preference, and also for the outcome, right? So we design very different music programming if the targeted cohort is dementia versus, you know, stroke recovery or intraoperative or someone that's just having a bad day and need a little pick-me-up. So being very intentional and mindful in selecting your acoustic environment is very, very important. Well, I am excited to explore conversations like this more on the podcast. I think it's very helpful and really important work that you're doing. And I know at times felt frustrating where these different aspects of you hadn't yet come together. And now your life's path and purpose very much so is in informing people and what you're finding by bringing the two together. And I think it's a great permission slip also for anyone who's listening right now and feels stuck between choosing multiple paths. that you can really trailblaze and carve your own way. So it's really cool that what you're doing, yeah.

Thank you. Yeah. I'm a big admirer of your work as well. And other piece of advice is if you ever feel stuck, you know, music is for me, personally, it's movement and it's a moving meditation. That's why I'm very drawn to a flow type of yoga as well. So it can really help, you know, especially if you gravitate or rumination and everybody experienced anxiety

had to a different extent because of what's going on in the world right now. So I would say strategically harnessing that very easy to implement and free resource.

You don't really need to spend a lot of money and go out of your way to curate anything special but just being very mindful in curating your acoustic environment can go a long way.

Yeah. Amazing. Well, Sadd, well, we're going to leave links down in the description where people can look more into your trials and your work. And yeah, I hope you start going on more podcasts. I saw you somewhere online, reached out. I'm so happy I did. And I think this is the start of many more different media appearances for you and sharing your work with the world.

So yeah, that's it. Do you have any last messages before we head out? No, thank you for. And I'm so glad you responded so strongly to the piece I shared. Yeah. No, it was so beautiful. All right, everyone. please let us know in which ways this episode has resonated, connected with you personally,

and what changes would then stem from that. I'm curious, for me personally, playing music and getting really intentional to the music that I'm listening to and the different frequencies that are being embedded in our subconscious mind, to leveraging it for relaxation or more higher energy stuff is something I'm very passionate it to keep on looking into and leveraging. And yeah, so that's all. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me.

Until next time, be well. Thank you. All right, we did it.