Bolero and the Brain

 Whenever there are discussions on babies and their development (With the various lockdowns that we have had, is it any surprise that so many people around us are now having babies? 4 couples currently that I know of had babies within weeks of each other), the question of music and babies invariably pops up. 

Unfortunately, there is not a lot of published scientific work on the long term effects of classical Indian (or really, any non-Western classical) music on brain development, even though there are plenty of anecdotal reports of how listening to Hindustani or Carnatic instrumental or vocal music influence enhances overall brain development, builds nascent musical talent etc. Recently, there was an entire issue devoted to "Music in the Lives of Young Children" in the journal Early Child Development and Care. One of the articles in this issue was on the effect of Carnatic music on the mathematical abilities of young children aged 5 and 8 (listening to Carnatic music significantly improved mathematical ability).

We all read about how listening to Mozart is supposed to make babies brainier and programs like Little Einstein try to introduce short fragments of Western classical music to toddlers. When I was pregnant with Ani, Lori, my labmate in the Pittsburgh Retrovirology Lab, at Pitt, had shared a CD (those days, we still had CDs!) that was a compilation of well known symphonies. It had the usual suspects- Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, Beethoven's 5th and 9th symphonies, The Blue Danube etc. Then, right at the end, as though giving a small nod to a more modern time, the CD included Ravel's Bolero. Have you heard this? Depending on your mood, it could either be haunting or utterly annoying. That tune, once you have heard it, never gets out of your head.

Any time the CD reached Bolero, I would lunge towards the player and stop the track and breathe a sigh of relief if I managed it before the first strains of that tune started. However, many times, regardless of whether or not I managed to either shut down the system or skip the track, the tune would have already started inside my head, relentlessly marching forth in that unmistakable whiny tone set to the backdrop of that military beat.

Today, after nearly a decade of Bolero-freedom, I sought it willingly because I had forgotten how infuriating it is. And I also learned a little more about Marcel Ravel. 

Ravel apparently started un-Raveling (haha!) right about the time that he wrote Bolero. This near constant obsession with the same tune came around the same time that he started showing early signs of a mental disorder called that progressively affected his language and motor ability. People think now that he suffered from a condition called PPA and CBD. In this paper from last year, a group of scientists described  the obsession of another artist with Bolero. This artist (and former scientist), Anne Adams, painted the elements of Bolero with great attention to detail. Coincidentally, this phase corresponded to an early phase of subclinical PPA in her as well.  As her dementia and aphasia progressed, her paintings became increasingly photographic representations of what she saw around her. 

Below are the paintings and information about them as well as her clinical status as per the paper “Unravelling Boléro: progressive aphasia, transmodal creativity and the right posterior neocortex” in the journal Brain in 2020.

 Painting done by Anne Adams in 1991, 9 years before clinical symptoms of PPA 

Unraveling Bolero; done in 1994, 6 years before PPA symptoms 

Representation of pi, 1998, 2 years before her clinical symptoms

ABC Book of Invertebrates, done in 2000, the year her symptoms were apparent and she was diagnosed with PPA

Arbutus Leaves, painted 2 years after diagnosis in 2002

Amsterdam, painted in 2004, 4 years after diagnosis. By this time, she was unable to communicate through spoken language. 

Here is a CT scan of her brain against the phases after diagnosis

Finally, the authors say 

 , "AA was enchanted by Ravel's ‘Boléro’, composed by a man with the same syndrome, PPA, and possibly the same underlying histopathology, CBD (Baeck, 1996; Amaducci et al., 2002). AA's interest in ‘Boléro’ arose before she developed overt PPA symptoms or learned of Ravel's illness. Furthermore, AA painted ‘Unravelling Bolero’ at nearly the same age and disease stage that characterized Ravel when he wrote ‘Bolero’, suggesting that some patients with early PPA may be drawn to themes of repetition, texture and symmetry, perhaps because their thriving posterior cortices are increasingly tuned to these stimulus qualities. Whatever its basis, the relationship between AA and Ravel sheds new light on how neural systems interact to enhance the creative process"

So while Bolero might still make me lunge to turn it off and yet stay in my head forever, now I will have this additional amazing story to think about. Repetitions, symmetry etc are attractive to people with certain neural traits. While the link between art and mental disease is well known (you can see this by Googling schizophrenia and art), to me, these case studies and research work also highlight the importance of art in people with mental disorders: that such amazing works of art were made by Anne Adams even as her disease progressed to me indicates that perhaps creativity and art might even slow down mental disorders... I suppose that is a separate story altogether.