Kind: captions
Language: en
the well-known writer and neurologist
Oliver sax is exploring the idea of how
the brain reacts to music he is trying
to figure out why some brains can't
decode music at all While others are
sensitive to the slightest musical
Nuance in general I'm a bar lover and
have always been you know even when I
was a uh a kid when I was five I'm told
that I was asked what my favorite things
in the world were and I said smoke
salmon and bar and 70 years later it's
still pretty much the
same in his quest Dr saxs is offering
himself up as a test
subject a team of neuroscientists at
Columbia University have designed a test
that will reveal if the brain of Dr
Sachs loves Bach as much as he does and
roll back and forth Hal Hinkle gives Dr
sax a device to rate his emotions
while at the same time a scan will
record the activity of his
brain he'll hear two pieces of music One
by Bach and one by
Beethoven first the
bach then the Beethoven
the composers are different but the
music shares certain
qualities Oliver that completes the
first emotional scan I would like to
hear how that was for you the uh the bar
sort of blew me away uh especially that
point where the soprano came in and
there was a wonderful harmonic
modulation uh but the bethoven
F sort of left
reflect the results of the scan
amazingly seem to confirm his
feelings what you can see just in an
immediate uh overview here is that this
is your Bach brain and this is your
Beethoven brain sorry ludic yeah sorry
ludic there's not much
there Bach clearly excited much of his
brain including the many regions
essential to appreciate the complexity
of
music but unlike Beethoven Bach
activated the amydala which is vital to
processing
emotions here we see large activity
associated with the right amydala when
you're listening to B there is none of
that when you are listening to this very
comparable piece in Beethoven
but during another part of the test Dr
sax was unable to distinguish Bach from
Boven uh again we'd like to hear what
your response was to it well I'm sort of
confused I could hardly differentiate
bar from bethoven and that of it seem to
move me very
much but his brain tells a different
story The remarkable finding for you was
even when you might have thought it was
Beethoven even when I was confused your
brain can tell Bach from
Beethoven Dr saak clearly favors Bach
Over
Beethoven even when he couldn't tell
them apart the brain scan on the left
still shows increased
activity so in fact his brain recognizes
the difference and makes its preference
clear
and so my brain knows even when I don't
that's the conclusion your brain can
distinguish them even when you don't
uhhuh