If there is a path of study with a chance to lead us to the Fountain of Happiness, it is neuroscience. The field is so hot right now that it appears to be sucking up half the health-related research funds in the English-speaking world. Some of that is directed at music’s role in the human brain.

“I know people who don’t like food or nature of even friendship. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t like some form of music,” says Jonah Lehrer, author of Proust was a Neuroscientist, a colloquial look at memory and cognition. In it he makes the point that music fires just about every cognitive function in our head; it helps us relate, feel and even think.

The effect is so universal that it’s attracted neuroscience’s star researcher and commentator V.S. Ramachandran, who has linked music with synaesthesia – the mingling of senses (hearing a note and seeing it as a colour) that results in metaphor.

This all fascinates Tim Deslippe. “Music impacts our brains, music impacts our emotions and music impacts things we are just beginning to understand.  Neuroscience gives us the knowledge and concepts to begin discussing these things from a common point of reference.”

Making Waves

Deslippe doesn’t work in a university lab; he occupies an office at Family Services a la famille Ottawa, and he’s organized a free one-day conference that explores the subject. Making Waves: Music, Minds and Communities will happen May 7 at Carleton University, from 9 am – 4:30 pm, and it brings Dr. Laurel Trainor, founding director of the McMaster Institute for Music and the Mind to direct the discussion.

Presentations include Trainor’s talk on resonating with music, the benefits for social, emotional and cognitive health; music therapy and mental health; colours of sound and paint; as well as well as music documentaries and performances. The goal is to make a connection between what happens to our cerebral cortex (thinking brain) when our amygdala (the emotional or lizard brain) and music interact.

Tim Deslippe. Photo by Mike Levin

“Since we are doing this conference to celebrate mental health week, we really want to focus on the aspects of health that music can provide. I think there is a recognition that health is a dynamic multi-faceted construct. Anything that allows us to come together in social groups and have shared experiences enriches our lives. Using music to influence our experiences and to understand how music impacts our brains means that we have one more tool available in our pursuit of well-being,” Deslippe adds.

There’s more to music than its health benefits. It also has the power to change human nature, according to music-producer-turned-neuropsychologist Daniel Levitin. Two years ago the McGill university professor published The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature, which uses a genetic-selection link to show how music has helped lead the evolution of human sociability, through chemical production leading to co-operation.