Anne Fernald explains our need to goochie-goochie-goo at every baby we meet, and absolves

us of our guilt. This kind of talk, dubbed motherese, is an instict that crosses cultural and
linguistic boundaries. Caecilius was goochie-goochie-gooing in Rome; Grunt was goochie-
gooing in the caves. We at Radiolab did our own study of infant-directed speech, recording
more than a dozen different parents. The melodies of these recordings illustrate Fernald's
findings that there are a set of common tunes living within the words that parents all over the
world intone to their babies.

Then, science reporter Jonah Lehrer takes us on a tour through the ear as we try to understand
how the brain makes sense of soundwaves and what happens when it can't. Which brings us to
one particularly riotous example: the 1913 debut performance of Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring."
Jonah suggests that the brain's attempt to tackle disonant sounds resulted in old ladies tackling
each other. Disney might even show up for the brawl.

Correction: An earlier version of this piece incorrectly stated the dates of two performances of
“Rite of Spring” and the time that passed between them. The performance that inspired rioting
occurred on May 29th, 1913. The second performance that we discussed occurred in April of
1914. The audio has been adjusted to reflect this fact.

Correction: An earlier version of this piece incorrectly stated that the “Rite of Spring” was used
in the movie “Fantasia” during the part that featured mushrooms. It was in fact used during
the part that featured dinosaurs. The audio has been adjusted to reflect this fact.

Why music Become a feeling a deep feeling

Music how works, we want to do next is we want to want to stay on the subject but we are
going to explore this a little more deeply take a closer look at the connection between
language and music we are gonna add touch and that will take us to the ear the ear and then
into the brain, the brain Im into the big question, why does music or how does music become a
feeling, the feeling why do we get such deep pleasure or deep pain we will have pain coming
up to all simply because air pressing against your eager alright.

There is a psychology – there is a kind of deep universal music inside language, she discovered
it actually at a hospital the obstetrics unit which is very popular among expectant mothers,
these mothers came from the wards of this hospital and so they spoke as soon as they put the
baby down and no longer had the physical contact, bodily contact with a child, they started to
saying almost in one language after another. She heard these. I heard them use these melodies
was not Russian who to reach to reach the child to remain in touch with the baby I forbid you
disappeared so next day I brought my tape recorded hand for and old took her tape recorder
from that hospital and traveled all over the world recording parents as they talked to their very
babies it didn’t matter whether the parents spoke the romance language or a tone language
everywhere she went below the words she heard consistently the same melodies for example
I’ll start with approval when parent wanted to praise a child we would ask the parents to show
the baby they were happy good boy are you god just using their voice shown him you’re happy
with that () what these things had in common ? was the melody was a kind of a rise fall, so it
doesn’t matter what words the parents are saying it’s always really about this melody and why
that particular melody all she knows is it worked there’s something about this melody that
keeps the child doing something, there are she says other categories she discovered now with
a prohibition in contrast your goal is to stop the child from doing something the category that
says stop white a different melody it’s short it’s sharp not in musical terms it’s staccato there is
the category (oh look pay attention on that) now this frequently use rising pitch genre look
sweetie they frequently use higher pitch so Anne Fernald has found four universal melodies
that praise let’s stop and call attention and of course the melody that comforts judy and while
this may seem obvious to if you thing about it this is music that is understood by infants who
are just new in the world but we all know what it means we all know these songs we are used
to thinking of sounds as being about something speeches always about something but it feels
to me more like touch

Touch isn’t about something if you whack me on the arm in a sudden sharp way I’m going to
be startled or a gentle touch has a different effect and I think you know actually sound is kind
of touch at a distance.

I was in for an old director of the center for infant studies at Stanford and when anne says
sound is more like touch that turns out to be literally the case this is something I learned from
a friend of mine Jonah Lehrer (the connection between art and science)

Jonah thinking about sounds as a touch more like touch – how does sound get into or touch
brain take us on that journey it’s just waves of vibrating air – beginning your voice box
compresses air net travels through space and time into my here little tunnel waves of diffuse
vibrating air focused channeled into my eardrum which vibration a few very small bones and
the little bones transmit the vibration into this salty seat where the hairs are and the hair cells
are passing the hair cells become active when they are little invent by way they bend like trees
and breeze and when these hair cells been charged molecules blood inwards and activate the
cell, so the sound triggers the bones the bones disturbs the fluid the fluid, the fluid rocks the
hairs and then the hair is set off essentially electricity, that’s the language in there on all those
changes from weaves to bones to electricity all those things were a trip on their way to being
heard it’s only when the electricity finally forms a pattern in your brain only when it’s deep
inside that’s when you hear sometimes it seems to me more like touch.

Sound is kind of touch at a distance, all right now that we have gotten a sound and any sound
into our heads let me ask you, why some sounds let’s make it music ? why does music so many
of us so often feel so strongly ?

In terms of what we were just listening to like how does all that electricity from the ear going
up to the brain in next millisecond become a feeling – he is able to listen to the electricity as it
pulls in the ear and shoots up this big fat nerve to the brain it’s kind of a popping sound he can
actually listen to that nerve to the electricity so faster than I’m able to do here with my fingers
is that the sense it sounds like so yeah well how do they get how do they get this sounds I
actually have no idea I guess I sort of tap into the nerve this is the sound of sound entering
brain as electricity little pulses and as you can hear the electricity has meter what mark is
discovered is that when the electricity entering your brain is even and regular which is regular
this is regular it will sweep.

When the meter of the electricity is regular and rhythmic it will arrive in our mind and be
heard by us as a sound that we generally like this.

Where it gets interesting when the meter going from the year to the brain is irregular jagged a
with make unpredictable we get money here this is a this guy right here well jagged which, oh
here thus yeah and what mark has discovered is that when electrical impulses like that travel
from the air to the brain they will become heard by our mind as sound that we generally
don’t like.

If a sound entering my brain is disorderly an unexpected electrically speaking electrically, then

that would make feel uncomfortable and if it comes in a familiar and orderly way that will
make me feel comfortable there does, there does see to be a relationship between the kind
of electricity is sound produces and how we feel that sound.

The scientist have names for pleasant and unpleasant, consonant is pleasant dissonant is
unpleasant that’s not a science and these are fixed positions in your ear well mate it may be
fixed for scientist but you know maybe let me just propose this to you and what people find
pleasing and what people find painful is miglia bowl I’ll

A story it involves a musician Igor Stravinsky who is now considered to be one the great
composers of the 20th century the story about two concerts one year apart in the same city the
exact same pice of music the audience who heard it first and then the audience who heard it
later on heard totally different things this is may 1913 it was a Russian ballet, high art , is a
concert about springtime but as they settled, it was about radical change, that was the story of
the play is it’s a pagan ritual where the end the virgin gets massacred.

The music is fascinating the beginning is very charming, it does sound like the earth is warming
and that lasts for about a minute and then we get some tootsie of flutes.

Why so much feeling about a piece of music that’s why did they write you would think that
they rioted because they were hot or didn’t like those sounds because they did they thought
those danncers were making strange and odd gestures.

What happened that night through the lens of brain chemistry, what music can do to a brain.

Mean these are noise you’ve never heard before no it’s all very new but scientist are beginning
to figure out what happens in our brain when hear noises we have never heard before
especially dissonant noises those noises are wild fluctuation in brain activity this is Eon
Fisherman he is a neuroscientist and he studies those wild fluctuations in the brain on an area
of the brain called the auditory cortex let’s zoom music there are all kinds of neurons doing all
kinds of things one gang in particular pattern there are groups of neurons whose sole job it .
put it to turn that dissonant note dissect it take it apart and try to understand it we are a
pattern searching animals and this is how yawn fishman puts it and so at the level of the
auditory cortex the brain has this daunting task of having to be able to disentangle this
complex mixture of sound, most the time those neurons in the auditory cortex succeed in
finding the pattern.

Inside the brains of the people in the audience they trying to make sense of the new sounds
and feeling because the spring keeps being dissonant all the way through so they can never get
any rest and when those neurons fail repeatedly there are consequences chemical
consequences what happens is our neurons squirt out a bit of dopamine and what is dopamine
makes you feel happy that’s why sex and drugs make you feel euphoric but a little too much
like euphoria turns into literally schizophrenia really yes I don’t want to oversimplify
schizophrenia in any way shape or form but some of our most effective treatments for
schizophrenia work by suppressing dopamine release the brain so there’s some kind of
relationship too much dopamine has been show clinically to make people crazy.
That’s happened on may 29th 1913 music erupted neurons revolted right dopamine flooded
trough this is to their brains and people went mad literally mad let’s go to the second night in
our story the piece does come back to Paris right yes how much later after the riot it’s from
may to march actually was april so it’s almost a year later.

Perfect evidence of the brain’s astonishing plasticity see

Third children’s music it became Disney music in 1940, 27 years after Stravinsky caused a
violent riot

Remember those neurons we met earlier the one of the little voices I like them if it turns out
those neurons learn they learn fast because they’re actually part of a larger network of brain
cells with a very technical name called fugle network and this network does is it’s always sort
of monitoring listening to the sounds coming into the brain and turning those neurons to
better her those sounds we trying to get the station on the radio just getting it just right so our
neurons literally adjust literally we are talking the biochemical engineering sense so if on that
first night you just hear the right as pure noise all the way through from beginning to end if
you are listening if you are letting your cortical fugle network do its job it can actually reese
culp your brain and let you hear the you hear the patterns better as the symphony envolves is
it fair to say that this is a sort of tug of