Brain Asymmetry and Schizophrenia

[drew hempel]

What's really wild is that just a few years ago it was discovered that chimps have the same left-brain asymmetry of the crucial language area as humans do -- the "planum temporale."

But even more wild is that in schizophrenia this asymmetry is missing and the right-side of the planum temporale is just as big as the left-side.

But apparently those who study music intensively increase the left-side asymmetry and thereby increase their language skills.

Here's one study: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=9422693

Anyway considering that "schizophrenia" is often applied to people who believe they have "shamanic" powers -- as per the DSM III manual for psychiatry -- I thought this would be of interest.

[drew hempel]

See trained musicians have great brain synchrony while listening to music -- but the synchrony has stronger amplitude in the left-side. Meanwhile nonmusicians have stronger right-brain dominance while listening to music.

http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1139863.1139871

"In addition, consistent left hemispheric dominance, in terms of the strength of phase synchrony, was observed in musicians while listening to music, whereas right hemispheric dominance was observed in non-musicians. These results suggest that professional training in music is able to elicit context-sensitive functional connectivity between multiple cortical regions resulting in different listening strategies to music."

[drew hempel]

Music increases the alpha waves and now studies show alpha waves are the best for neural coordination -- faster learning -- also achieved in meditation

http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1139863.1139874

But meditation just increases synchronization -- not necessarily left-brain amplitude.

http://www.fredtravis.com/talk.html

[David L]

interesting. Being that I'm a musician I can identify with what was said. I've been playing guitar for about 10 years, I'm about to be 22, and I have gotten really deep into it these past 3 years or so, deciding that music is my thing and that's what I want to do.

Around that time is when the development of my awareness increased dramatically. It could however have something to do with biology, my body and brain changing but I mainly attribute the growth to music and maybe that mixed with the use of psychedelics.

When I'm writing by myself or with my band its a dialectical exercise. Through the use of substances - pot, shrooms, and meditation I've been able to let, or rather my unconscious seems to have been amplified or my conscious mind has become more receptive to the unconscious allowing sounds, images - ( that could provoke sounds) pour out from the unconscious and then using the conscious mind to work with the material and organize it.

When I'm playing I don't feel pain, nor happiness just I guess what I would call "pure being" or just being, in the moment. I sway to the music and travel with it.

Could the introduction of music and music education with schizophrenics possibly help reconcile or ease their symptoms? Restore balance?

[drew hempel]

David -- it's an interesting question. Parkinson's Disease was found to be greatly healed by music therapy. The new book "This is your brain on music" by dr. daniel Levitin details how music affects the cerebellum which connects our emotions with our movements.

Anyway this is my field of expertise so you might be interested in my research -- see my Dec. 31st article "the secrets of psychic music healing" at http://anomalist.com and that links to my previous work as well.

The key issue on schizophrenia is that Western music increases left-brain asymmetry but music as a whole can not be traced to any one part of the brain. As Dr. Howard Bloom details, music is the only sensation that transcends the brain. In this sense trance-inducing and alchemical music could actually create schizoid-like symptoms. In fact Dr. Alain Connes, the creator of noncommutative geometry for quantum chaos, states that music theory provides the formal language to understand quantum logic which he describes as "schizoid." So obviously the cutting edge of technology is creating conditions which currently are perceived as pathological. Us experimenters in altered states have to be very sly.

[David L]

haha wow. Very interesting. Yes the edges of the boundaries that few venture to. The pathological - the unknown.

Reminds me of what McKenna had to say about Schizophrenics in The Invisible Landscape. Making the comparison of Schizophrenia and Shamanism.