Between music and medicine
-
0:08 - 0:26(Music)
-
2:23 - 2:26(Applause)
-
2:26 - 2:31Thank you very much. (Applause)
-
2:31 - 2:35Thank you. It's a distinct privilege to be here.
-
2:35 - 2:37A few weeks ago, I saw a video on YouTube
-
2:37 - 2:39of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords
-
2:39 - 2:41at the early stages of her recovery
-
2:41 - 2:44from one of those awful bullets.
-
2:44 - 2:46This one entered her left hemisphere, and
-
2:46 - 2:49knocked out her Broca's area, the speech center of her brain.
-
2:49 - 2:53And in this session, Gabby's working with a speech therapist,
-
2:53 - 2:55and she's struggling to produce
-
2:55 - 2:58some of the most basic words, and you can see her
-
2:58 - 3:01growing more and more devastated, until she ultimately
-
3:01 - 3:04breaks down into sobbing tears, and she starts sobbing
-
3:04 - 3:08wordlessly into the arms of her therapist.
-
3:08 - 3:10And after a few moments, her therapist tries a new tack,
-
3:10 - 3:12and they start singing together,
-
3:12 - 3:14and Gabby starts to sing through her tears,
-
3:14 - 3:17and you can hear her clearly able to enunciate
-
3:17 - 3:19the words to a song that describe the way she feels,
-
3:19 - 3:22and she sings, in one descending scale, she sings,
-
3:22 - 3:26"Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine."
-
3:26 - 3:29And it's a very powerful and poignant reminder of how
-
3:29 - 3:32the beauty of music has the ability to speak
-
3:32 - 3:37where words fail, in this case literally speak.
-
3:37 - 3:39Seeing this video of Gabby Giffords reminded me
-
3:39 - 3:42of the work of Dr. Gottfried Schlaug,
-
3:42 - 3:45one of the preeminent neuroscientists studying music and the brain at Harvard,
-
3:45 - 3:48and Schlaug is a proponent of a therapy called
-
3:48 - 3:53Melodic Intonation Therapy, which has become very popular in music therapy now.
-
3:53 - 3:57Schlaug found that his stroke victims who were aphasic,
-
3:57 - 4:02could not form sentences of three- or four-word sentences,
-
4:02 - 4:05but they could still sing the lyrics to a song,
-
4:05 - 4:07whether it was "Happy Birthday To You"
-
4:07 - 4:10or their favorite song by the Eagles or the Rolling Stones.
-
4:10 - 4:13And after 70 hours of intensive singing lessons,
-
4:13 - 4:17he found that the music was able to literally rewire
-
4:17 - 4:19the brains of his patients and create a homologous
-
4:19 - 4:21speech center in their right hemisphere
-
4:21 - 4:24to compensate for the left hemisphere's damage.
-
4:24 - 4:28When I was 17, I visited Dr. Schlaug's lab, and in one afternoon
-
4:28 - 4:30he walked me through some of the leading research
-
4:30 - 4:34on music and the brain -- how musicians had
-
4:34 - 4:37fundamentally different brain structure than non-musicians,
-
4:37 - 4:39how music, and listening to music,
-
4:39 - 4:41could just light up the entire brain, from
-
4:41 - 4:44our prefrontal cortex all the way back to our cerebellum,
-
4:44 - 4:47how music was becoming a neuropsychiatric modality
-
4:47 - 4:51to help children with autism, to help people struggling
-
4:51 - 4:54with stress and anxiety and depression,
-
4:54 - 4:57how deeply Parkinsonian patients would find that their tremor
-
4:57 - 5:00and their gait would steady when they listened to music,
-
5:00 - 5:04and how late-stage Alzheimer's patients, whose dementia
-
5:04 - 5:07was so far progressed that they could no longer recognize
-
5:07 - 5:10their family, could still pick out a tune by Chopin
-
5:10 - 5:13at the piano that they had learned when they were children.
-
5:13 - 5:16But I had an ulterior motive of visiting Gottfried Schlaug,
-
5:16 - 5:20and it was this: that I was at a crossroads in my life,
-
5:20 - 5:22trying to choose between music and medicine.
-
5:22 - 5:25I had just completed my undergraduate, and I was working
-
5:25 - 5:28as a research assistant at the lab of Dennis Selkoe,
-
5:28 - 5:32studying Parkinson's disease at Harvard, and I had fallen
-
5:32 - 5:34in love with neuroscience. I wanted to become a surgeon.
-
5:34 - 5:38I wanted to become a doctor like Paul Farmer or Rick Hodes,
-
5:38 - 5:42these kind of fearless men who go into places like Haiti or Ethiopia
-
5:42 - 5:45and work with AIDS patients with multidrug-resistant
-
5:45 - 5:49tuberculosis, or with children with disfiguring cancers.
-
5:49 - 5:52I wanted to become that kind of Red Cross doctor,
-
5:52 - 5:54that doctor without borders.
-
5:54 - 5:57On the other hand, I had played the violin my entire life.
-
5:57 - 6:01Music for me was more than a passion. It was obsession.
-
6:01 - 6:04It was oxygen. I was lucky enough to have studied
-
6:04 - 6:07at the Juilliard School in Manhattan, and to have played
-
6:07 - 6:12my debut with Zubin Mehta and the Israeli philharmonic orchestra in Tel Aviv,
-
6:12 - 6:14and it turned out that Gottfried Schlaug
-
6:14 - 6:17had studied as an organist at the Vienna Conservatory,
-
6:17 - 6:19but had given up his love for music to pursue a career
-
6:19 - 6:23in medicine. And that afternoon, I had to ask him,
-
6:23 - 6:26"How was it for you making that decision?"
-
6:26 - 6:28And he said that there were still times when he wished
-
6:28 - 6:30he could go back and play the organ the way he used to,
-
6:30 - 6:34and that for me, medical school could wait,
-
6:34 - 6:36but that the violin simply would not.
-
6:36 - 6:39And after two more years of studying music, I decided
-
6:39 - 6:42to shoot for the impossible before taking the MCAT
-
6:42 - 6:44and applying to medical school like a good Indian son
-
6:44 - 6:47to become the next Dr. Gupta. (Laughter)
-
6:47 - 6:50And I decided to shoot for the impossible and I took
-
6:50 - 6:53an audition for the esteemed Los Angeles Philharmonic.
-
6:53 - 6:56It was my first audition, and after three days of playing
-
6:56 - 6:59behind a screen in a trial week, I was offered the position.
-
6:59 - 7:03And it was a dream. It was a wild dream to perform
-
7:03 - 7:06in an orchestra, to perform in the iconic Walt Disney Concert Hall
-
7:06 - 7:10in an orchestra conducted now by the famous Gustavo Dudamel,
-
7:10 - 7:13but much more importantly to me to be surrounded
-
7:13 - 7:17by musicians and mentors that became my new family,
-
7:17 - 7:20my new musical home.
-
7:20 - 7:24But a year later, I met another musician who had also
-
7:24 - 7:27studied at Juilliard, one who profoundly helped me
-
7:27 - 7:31find my voice and shaped my identity as a musician.
-
7:31 - 7:34Nathaniel Ayers was a double bassist at Juilliard, but
-
7:34 - 7:38he suffered a series of psychotic episodes in his early 20s,
-
7:38 - 7:40was treated with thorazine at Bellevue,
-
7:40 - 7:44and ended up living homeless on the streets of Skid Row
-
7:44 - 7:46in downtown Los Angeles 30 years later.
-
7:46 - 7:50Nathaniel's story has become a beacon for homelessness
-
7:50 - 7:53and mental health advocacy throughout the United States,
-
7:53 - 7:55as told through the book and the movie "The Soloist,"
-
7:55 - 7:58but I became his friend, and I became his violin teacher,
-
7:58 - 8:00and I told him that wherever he had his violin,
-
8:00 - 8:03and wherever I had mine, I would play a lesson with him.
-
8:03 - 8:06And on the many times I saw Nathaniel on Skid Row,
-
8:06 - 8:09I witnessed how music was able to bring him back
-
8:09 - 8:12from his very darkest moments, from what seemed to me
-
8:12 - 8:14in my untrained eye to be
-
8:14 - 8:18the beginnings of a schizophrenic episode.
-
8:18 - 8:21Playing for Nathaniel, the music took on a deeper meaning,
-
8:21 - 8:23because now it was about communication,
-
8:23 - 8:26a communication where words failed, a communication
-
8:26 - 8:30of a message that went deeper than words, that registered
-
8:30 - 8:33at a fundamentally primal level in Nathaniel's psyche,
-
8:33 - 8:38yet came as a true musical offering from me.
-
8:38 - 8:42I found myself growing outraged that someone
-
8:42 - 8:45like Nathaniel could have ever been homeless on Skid Row
-
8:45 - 8:49because of his mental illness, yet how many tens of thousands
-
8:49 - 8:52of others there were out there on Skid Row alone
-
8:52 - 8:57who had stories as tragic as his, but were never going to have a book or a movie
-
8:57 - 8:59made about them that got them off the streets?
-
8:59 - 9:03And at the very core of this crisis of mine, I felt somehow
-
9:03 - 9:07the life of music had chosen me, where somehow,
-
9:07 - 9:10perhaps possibly in a very naive sense, I felt what Skid Row
-
9:10 - 9:13really needed was somebody like Paul Farmer
-
9:13 - 9:17and not another classical musician playing on Bunker Hill.
-
9:17 - 9:19But in the end, it was Nathaniel who showed me
-
9:19 - 9:22that if I was truly passionate about change,
-
9:22 - 9:26if I wanted to make a difference, I already had the perfect instrument to do it,
-
9:26 - 9:31that music was the bridge that connected my world and his.
-
9:31 - 9:33There's a beautiful quote
-
9:33 - 9:35by the Romantic German composer Robert Schumann,
-
9:35 - 9:40who said, "To send light into the darkness of men's hearts,
-
9:40 - 9:43such is the duty of the artist."
-
9:43 - 9:45And this is a particularly poignant quote
-
9:45 - 9:48because Schumann himself suffered from schizophrenia
-
9:48 - 9:50and died in asylum.
-
9:50 - 9:53And inspired by what I learned from Nathaniel,
-
9:53 - 9:55I started an organization on Skid Row of musicians
-
9:55 - 9:58called Street Symphony, bringing the light of music
-
9:58 - 10:01into the very darkest places, performing
-
10:01 - 10:03for the homeless and mentally ill at shelters and clinics
-
10:03 - 10:07on Skid Row, performing for combat veterans
-
10:07 - 10:11with post-traumatic stress disorder, and for the incarcerated
-
10:11 - 10:15and those labeled as criminally insane.
-
10:15 - 10:17After one of our events at the Patton State Hospital
-
10:17 - 10:19in San Bernardino, a woman walked up to us
-
10:19 - 10:22and she had tears streaming down her face,
-
10:22 - 10:24and she had a palsy, she was shaking,
-
10:24 - 10:27and she had this gorgeous smile, and she said
-
10:27 - 10:29that she had never heard classical music before,
-
10:29 - 10:32she didn't think she was going to like it, she had never
-
10:32 - 10:36heard a violin before, but that hearing this music was like hearing the sunshine,
-
10:36 - 10:39and that nobody ever came to visit them, and that for the first time in six years,
-
10:39 - 10:44when she heard us play, she stopped shaking without medication.
-
10:44 - 10:47Suddenly, what we're finding with these concerts,
-
10:47 - 10:50away from the stage, away from the footlights, out
-
10:50 - 10:54of the tuxedo tails, the musicians become the conduit
-
10:54 - 10:57for delivering the tremendous therapeutic benefits
-
10:57 - 11:00of music on the brain to an audience that would never
-
11:00 - 11:02have access to this room,
-
11:02 - 11:07would never have access to the kind of music that we make.
-
11:07 - 11:11Just as medicine serves to heal more
-
11:11 - 11:14than the building blocks of the body alone,
-
11:14 - 11:18the power and beauty of music transcends the "E"
-
11:18 - 11:21in the middle of our beloved acronym.
-
11:21 - 11:24Music transcends the aesthetic beauty alone.
-
11:24 - 11:27The synchrony of emotions that we experience when we
-
11:27 - 11:31hear an opera by Wagner, or a symphony by Brahms,
-
11:31 - 11:34or chamber music by Beethoven, compels us to remember
-
11:34 - 11:38our shared, common humanity, the deeply communal
-
11:38 - 11:42connected consciousness, the empathic consciousness
-
11:42 - 11:45that neuropsychiatrist Iain McGilchrist says is hard-wired
-
11:45 - 11:48into our brain's right hemisphere.
-
11:48 - 11:52And for those living in the most dehumanizing conditions
-
11:52 - 11:54of mental illness within homelessness
-
11:54 - 11:57and incarceration, the music and the beauty of music
-
11:57 - 12:01offers a chance for them to transcend the world around them,
-
12:01 - 12:05to remember that they still have the capacity to experience
-
12:05 - 12:08something beautiful and that humanity has not forgotten them.
-
12:08 - 12:11And the spark of that beauty, the spark of that humanity
-
12:11 - 12:14transforms into hope,
-
12:14 - 12:17and we know, whether we choose the path of music
-
12:17 - 12:20or of medicine, that's the very first thing we must instill
-
12:20 - 12:22within our communities, within our audiences,
-
12:22 - 12:26if we want to inspire healing from within.
-
12:26 - 12:29I'd like to end with a quote by John Keats,
-
12:29 - 12:31the Romantic English poet,
-
12:31 - 12:34a very famous quote that I'm sure all of you know.
-
12:34 - 12:37Keats himself had also given up a career in medicine
-
12:37 - 12:40to pursue poetry, but he died when he was a year older than me.
-
12:40 - 12:45And Keats said, "Beauty is truth, and truth beauty.
-
12:45 - 12:52That is all ye know on Earth, and all ye need to know."
-
12:55 - 15:39(Music)
-
15:39 - 16:07(Applause)
- Title:
- Between music and medicine
- Speaker:
- Robert Gupta
- Description:
-
When Robert Gupta was caught between a career as a doctor and as a violinist, he realized his place was in the middle, with a bow in his hand and a sense of social justice in his heart. He tells a moving story of society’s marginalized and the power of music therapy, which can succeed where conventional medicine fails.
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDTalks
- Duration:
- 16:27
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for Between music and medicine | ||
Thu-Huong Ha approved English subtitles for Between music and medicine | ||
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for Between music and medicine | ||
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for Between music and medicine | ||
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for Between music and medicine | ||
Morton Bast accepted English subtitles for Between music and medicine | ||
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for Between music and medicine | ||
Joseph Geni added a translation |