Professor Sarah Wilson (part 2)

Speaker 1 00:03

With information on the latest developments in assistive technology and initiatives, 2RPH in Sydney brings you AbleQuest.

Speaker 2 00:16

Thanks for watching!

Speaker 1 00:19

Hello, I'm Marnie Roper. In this segment of AbleQuest, we continue an interesting conversation with internationally renowned music neuroscientist, Professor Sarah Wilson. She has recently taken on the role of co-CEO of the Victorian Collaborative Center for Mental Health and Wellbeing. In the previous program, Professor Wilson explained how music enhances brain function and how brain activity changes when we listen to music or sing solo or sing in groups. Today, Professor Wilson discusses how music aids recovery in people with acquired or degenerative brain injury.

But before that, she continues to explain what makes singing different in terms of brain function and the restorative power of singing in a group. Barbara Sullivan asked her whether choir singing creates an ideal atmosphere for inclusivity and promoting acceptance.

Speaker 3 01:21

That's right. And there's that connectivity that exists between the group because they've shared these many emotional moments. I mean music moves through many emotions in time and you go on a journey together as you do that. And each individual's experience and expression of that is going to vary a little bit too. So how you sing, you might sing with a little bit more gusto or a little bit less is part of your expression of that. And so there's space for variation and drawing people together around that. The other thing though that you can't do when you speak, you can't all speak at once. You have to take turns. If you don't take turns, it's a cacophony and you can't understand it.

Whereas the power of singing is that you can sing in unison of one voice or in harmony. Again, the same line or voice that splits to make a more beautiful sounding effect and create something that feels much bigger than you. There's a body of work that looks at this kind of transcendence that comes with music and singing and that helps us feel part of something greater that is outside of ourselves but connected to us nonetheless. And I think this is often what people will say when they say they felt very moved by music. You know, they had the chills, they maybe had some tears. Another term for it is karmamuta, this being extremely moved or affected by the music.

I have a PhD student who's currently looking at this as we speak in the land and we know very little about it, but we know that music has the capacity to do this and can often also bring in that nostalgic element as well that we were talking about before in relation to autobiographical memory and shared past experiences that may reunite us again in a moment where we're singing or doing music together.

Speaker 2 03:26

That must be part of the benefit if you are singing in a choir to see the impact on an audience for example or people who are listening and being part of the experience.

Speaker 3 03:36

One other thing we didn't talk about in relation to what's different about singing is the embodiment of the cognition and the emotion. So it's in real time in your body and we know that when we have embodied cognition and of course emotions are always embodied but that embodiment adds an additional level of understanding and I think experiential depth for most people.

Speaker 2 04:03

Yes, I have a friend who's involved in bell ringing, and the way she describes it, even though she's not actually singing, everything's in her head, there's all the areas of brain function that you've described seem to come into play with something like bell ringing as well.

Speaker 3 04:19

Yes, that's right. So when we put people in the scanner, many regions of the brain light up. It has a broad activation effect on the brain and really brings together all of those functions into a unified or systematic way. So it's like a full brain workout, if you like, or a powerful vitamin for the brain in that we know that people who engage regularly in music then do better on other cognitive tasks. They're better at verbal learning tasks or working memory tasks. They're better at a whole range of other skills which is not surprising when you think that in any given moment the complex act of making music and producing music or singing is using all of those networks. So it's kind of a fun way to work out your brain, exercise your brain without realizing you're actually doing it.

Speaker 2 05:16

Do you sing? Do you make music yourself? 

Speaker 3 05:20

I do. I love to sing. Sometimes my kids wish I wouldn't sing quite as often, because I can't profess to be the world's best singer, but it's not about that. You don't have to be note perfect, it's actually the well-being aspects and the joy and the positivity that it brings. I also play piano and have played saxophone in the past, so I've had a life filled with music and I feel very, very fortunate for that.

Speaker 2 05:49

Now focusing on people suffering from an acquired or degenerative brain injury, and I know you've done quite a lot of work in this area, scientifically, how can singing be used in the rehabilitation process?

Speaker 3 06:02

So one of the things that we discovered really early in the work that we were doing was that there is an important overlap in the structures in the brain that support speaking and singing. And what we can do in the case of acquired brain injury is we can co-opt some of those structures to support rehabilitation. So if we think about someone who's had a stroke and they can no longer speak, some of those shared overlapping structures that are used for singing can then be used to relearn to speak after the stroke. And a particular therapy called melodic intonation therapy has been shown to be really efficacious in doing that.

Speaker 2 06:51

How does it work with a brain damaged by something like stroke?

Speaker 3 06:55

So it's been around for a long time, and there have been a number of studies looking at its efficacy that have given us some insight. But it would be fair to say that we need more research to fully understand the mechanisms of how it works. But we do have some clues from work that we've done. And I'll talk about the work that our lab has done looking at this. We did a really interesting study using functional magnetic resonance imaging. When you use an MRI scanner, but instead of taking a picture of the structure of the brain, you're taking a picture of the brain in action while it's doing a task. And this study was a precursor to understanding melodic intonation therapy and how it works. So if you bear with me, I'll describe that first and then move to the melodic intonation therapy.

Speaker 2 07:47

Great.

Speaker 3 07:48

But the MRI study compared expert singers with what we called, you know, shower singers, people who are naturally everyday singers and good at it, but not necessarily trained, and then self-confessed poor singers. And what we got them to do in the MRI scanner was to imagine that they were either singing a well-known tune or that they were engaging in a language task. And then once we'd taken pictures of those different cognitive functions, we looked at the level of overlap between the language network and the singing network. And we found something really interesting. We found that the extent to which the two networks overlap depends on how trained you are. So if you're a self -confessed poor singer, it turns out there's complete overlap.

And largely, it looks like you're singing with your language network, which might account for the fact that it's not really sounding that great. So it gave us some insight into that. And then at the other extreme, if you were a very well -trained opera singer, a professional singer, then there was very limited overlap between the two networks. And you'd almost through the training and the plasticity of the brain, develop almost an independent singing network.

Speaker 2 09:13

and you're applying a certain intellectual component there to the singing because as you're singing you're bringing all your understanding and training into it.

Speaker 3 09:23

Yes, that's right. It's an analytical approach, the task, high -level perceptual skills. All of those areas of the brain that we spoke about that light up when we listen to music, a key number of those regions involved. But with respect to the language network, the singing network sat alongside it. There was a side-by-side representation rather than this overlap that we saw in the less proficient singers. And then of course the group in the middle who are naturally good everyday singers, which is quite true of the population more broadly, they had some degree of overlap but not complete overlap.

So if we take these set of findings and now think about melodic intonation therapy, what it does essentially is if you have a stroke in the brain that impacts your language network, disrupts it or damages certain parts of it and you're having difficulty speaking after the stroke, then not in all cases but in certain people who've had a stroke in the anterior region of the brain, in the frontal lobes what we call who show broke as aphasia. Then melodic intonation therapy can be used to help them learn to speak again and it works in about 50% of people with whom it's done. So what it does is it takes very simple sentences that a person would need to utter in everyday life and then the therapist puts those to a very simple melody.

It's almost like pronounced emotional speech. It's tongue slash emotional speech. The melodies are very simple and they follow the natural inflection or intonation that the speech pattern would have. And it seems that when that happens, that engages parts of the singing network that can take on and presumably are separate from the areas of the language network that has been damaged. That can take on that kind of really intoned, strongly intoned speech and the person can practice those and then in response to questions, they can practice singing back the answer and then they gradually speak back the answer and the idea is to move from a very intoned singing response to... a spoken response.

Speaker 2 11:46

Now you talk about wellbeing. Your most recent role is as the co-CEO of the Victorian Collaborative Centre for Mental Health and Wellbeing. Why has it been established and what does it aim to achieve?

Speaker 3 11:57

This is a very exciting initiative and I feel so grateful and privileged that I've had the opportunity to take up this role. The Victorian Collaborative Center was established on the back of the Royal Commission into Mental Health in Victoria as the very first recommendation for driving transformative change to the mental health system across Victoria. So we have a very big and wide remit and a very important one. And it's a very humbling thing and that's where that gratitude and, you know, sense of responsibility, I guess, for that large remit comes from.

Of course, we can't do everything all at once, but one of the key things that we're doing is leading to better coordination and collaboration amongst different parts of the sector. So we know we have fabulous researchers in Victoria doing lots of research. [?] ... are wonderful working for mental health and causes of mental illness. We've got wonderful clinicians working tirelessly treating people with if you could. And then we've got people with lived and living experience who are supporting each other, their families, carers, friends, and attempting to also lead change and improve the system based on their expertise and experience. 

The Collaborative Centre's mission, in a nutshell, is to bring all of those that you gather and into the one place when we do our work. So breaking down silos that we know currently exist in the system, and which people often describe as a bit of a labyrinth to find their way to the right service. Our role is going to be helping people have a much better path through and for it to have all of those perspectives embedded to lead ultimately to better outcomes for people.

Speaker 1 13:48

Barbara Sullivan has just been speaking with Professor Sarah Wilson, a leading music neuroscientist. You have just been listening to Ablequest, a programme that looks at developments in assistive technology.

Speaker 1 14:05

From Barbara Sullivan and Marnie Roper, thank you for listening and goodbye to our next program.