While listening to music, neuroscientist Daniel Levitin, asks the questions “where do goose bumps come from?" and “what's going on in my brain that allows the goosebumps to happen?" Levitin leads a group of researchers as they investigate music's fundamental physical structure; its biological, emotional and psychological impact; its brain altering and healing powers and its role in human evolution. The Music Instinct: Science and Song, a fascinating two-hour documentary on the science of music, premieres Wednesday, June 24, 2009 at 9 pm (ET) on PBS (check local listings).
The Music Instinct: Science and Song is a production of THIRTEEN in association with WNET.ORG one of America's most prolific and respected public media providers. Researchers and scientists from a variety of fields are using groundbreaking techniques that reveal startling new connections between music and the human mind, the body and the universe. Together with an array of musicians from rock and rap to jazz and classical, they are putting music under the microscope.
“The brain is teaching us about music and music is teaching us about the brain," says Levitin. “Music allows us to understand better how the brain organizes information in the world. There are a lot of different factors that go into our emotional appreciation of music [like] the memories we have of a particular song that we heard at a particular time in our lives."
Internationally renowned performers Bobby McFerrin and cellist Yo-Yo Ma describe the way musical intervals are used or combined to create melody and harmony. McFerrin, together with the “World Singers," sing a cappella to demonstrate that basic elements of music; pitch, tempo, rhythm and melody create specific reactions in our brains. Yo-Yo Ma plays two notes and then five more notes and then plays different combinations that demonstrate the way musical intervals are combined to create a melody or harmony.
Percussionist Evelyn Glennie encounters music in a unique way, as fundamentally a “physical phenomenon." Profoundly deaf, Glennie “hears" music not through her ears, but by feeling vibrations through the floor and in her body: low frequencies through her legs and feet; high sounds in particular spots on her face, neck and chest.
Rock stars Jarvis Cocker and Richard Hawley were asked to participate in a new experiment to reveal the difference in the brain when two people perform music together as opposed to solo. Neuroscientists wonder how two brains interact since music is fundamentally a social activity. Cocker was asked to enter a fMRI machine, while Hawley played his guitar in the room. When the Scan was analyzed it showed a measurable difference in brain activity when Cocker sang alone compared to when he sang with Hawley playing guitar. During the duet, Cockers brain was more active in areas for phrasing and coordinating music as well as cognitive and emotional interaction.
Research also shows that music has enormous potential to help explore the complexities of human brain function. For example, there's a strong connection between the auditory and motor regions of the brain, and music seems to engage the motor system in a way that other modalities do not. People with motor disorders like Parkinson's disease have improved their ability to walk while listening to a rhythm track, and stroke patients who have trouble with speech show signs of improvement when they receive music therapy. And there's new evidence that music can actually change the physical structure of the brain a fact that has critical implications for both education and medicine. One thing is clear, proven and agreed upon; music has a profound capacity to influence and alter the human experience.
The Music Instinct: Science and Song is a co-production of Thirteen for WNET.ORG and Mannes Productions Inc., in association with ARTE/France, NDR, Australian Broadcasting Corporation with the participation of YLE. Award-winning filmmaker Elena Mannes is writer, director. Narrator is Audra MacDonald. Executive Producers are Elena Mannes and Margaret Smilow. Available in HD. Major funding for this program provided by the National Science Foundation, Mary Rodgers Guettel, NAMM FOUNDATION, National Endowment for the Arts, Rita and Frits Markus, The Vital Projects Fund, the Irving Harris Foundation, Sono and Victor Elmaleh, Thea Petschek Iervolino and public television viewers.
Web exclusive video as well as video excerpts from the program are available online. The website incorporates an active blog with experts discussing current scientific breakthroughs involving music and science. A robust educational section will offer interactive and sharable widgets for students. In a series of two contests, the web has partnered with Indaba Music (http://www.indabamusic.com/) enabling artists all over the world to create music together online. The winning mixes will be distributed as the Music Instinct: Science and Song Album on emusic.com and available on www.pbs.org/musicinstinct.
About WNET.ORG
New York public media company WNET.ORG is a pioneering provider of television and web content. The parent of Thirteen, WLIW21 and Creative News Group, WNET.ORG brings such acclaimed broadcast series and websites as Worldfocus, Nature, Great Performances, American Masters, Charlie Rose, Wide Angle, Secrets of the Dead, Religion & Ethics Newsweekly, Visions, Consuelo Mack WealthTrack,Wild Chronicles, Miffy and Friends, and Cyberchase to national and international audiences. Through its wide range of channels and platforms, WNET.ORG serves the entire New York City metro area with unique local productions, broadcasts and innovative educational and cultural projects. In all that it does, WNET.ORG pursues a single, overarching goal to create media experiences of lasting significance for New York, America and the world. For more information, visit www.wnet.org.
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