Adriana Barton on her debut book, and how music can be a source of health

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For Adriana Barton, music had become painful.

Barton picked up a cello for the first time at age five, and for the next 17 years, she devoted herself to drawing out perfect sounds from the instrument. Her steadfast pursuit of a career as a classical musician earned her awards, the opportunity to train with esteemed teachers and the chance to perform in illustrious venues, including Carnegie Hall. But it also brought repetitive strain injuries, guilt, overwhelming self-doubt and, eventually, an inability to play or even easily discuss this period of her life. (Ms. Barton, who was for years a health reporter for The Globe and Mail, did not even reveal the details of her music career to many of her colleagues and friends, including this reporter.)

In her debut book, Wired for Music: A Search for Health and Joy Through the Science of Sound, she discovers the various aspects of music that, for all her years of practising, were previously unknown to her. Thoroughly researched and tenderly written, it blends neuroscience and history with her own personal reflections and encounters with musicians across the globe.

As Ms. Barton explained to The Globe, our ability to engage with and benefit from music requires no formal training; it’s innately entangled in the innermost recesses of our brain:

Why were you so reluctant to reveal you had this past life as a classical cellist?

It was a source of shame. Sometimes I’d mention that I used to play the cello, but I didn’t necessarily want colleagues to know how far I’d gone and how far I crashed.

The pressure to succeed as a cellist was ingrained in me at such a young age. I was enrolled in a formal conservatory, and although I didn’t know it at the time, it was almost a Faustian bargain, where in exchange for all this free training – by that, I don’t mean a lesson a week; I mean theory, orchestra, et cetera with high school students when I was in primary school – I was expected to devote myself to the life of a professional musician-in-training.

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To face questions like, “What happened? Do you still play?” All of those questions felt so painful and awkward for me that I just preferred not to talk about it.

Since it gave you so much grief, why were you compelled to investigate music as a source of health?

Some of that came through my job at The Globe and Mail. I was fascinated as a health reporter by all this incredible research coming out and fascinated that something that was so fraught in my life could also have such tremendous human potential. And we now have the neuroscience tools to measure it in more detailed ways.

What were the health benefits of music that you found had the strongest evidence?

It’s absolutely known that music affects the pleasure and reward circuitry in the brain. That is irrefutable. It increases dopamine. It has downstream effects on the body’s analgesic system, so it is demonstrated that it relieves pain. Music can also relieve stress and preoperative anxiety.

It’s also been rigorously studied for depression and it does lift mood through that pleasure-reward circuitry I mentioned. And there’s been a lot of research in sports psychology and exercise; it’s known as a legal performance-enhancing drug. If you run in time to music, you will use less oxygen to perform the same tasks.

But the case you make isn’t for music to be used to treat this or that specific health issue. Rather, the reasons to tap into music are much broader.

The capacities we have for music evolved at the same time as the modern brain. So our wiring for music is so exquisite, it pains me that so many people in Western cultures feel alienated from it because it’s removing that joy and that potential in our lives. And I want people to reclaim that for themselves.

So why, then, do so many people describe themselves as unmusical?

Well, there are historical reasons which I get into in the book. In pagan Rome, in the transition to Christianity, there was a lot of distrust of musical instruments among the early church fathers, and that thinking permeated for centuries.

But another reason is the way most of us are introduced to music-making as children in Western cultures. In the brain, there’s something that some people call the “punishment circuit,” the periventricular system. And when that is activated, it pumps us up with adrenaline, preparing us for fight or flight because there’s a threat. That actually inhibits or short-circuits the pleasure-reward circuitry.

So if you’re learning an instrument and subjected to constant criticism or a very strict, negative environment, you’re going to be cut off from the pleasure-reward response to making music. And early messages from people that they’re tone deaf or that music is this hard activity can turn people off for life.

Given your own experience, what advice would you give parents who want their kids to learn music?

It’s important for parents to ask themselves what they want their child to get from music. If they want their child to become a top violinist or top pianist, intensive training is needed. But if they want their child to learn how to play music with others in social settings that are joyful, they might want to think about a more joy-based approach, with teachers who are super gentle and involve a lot of play.

How would you characterize your relationship with music now?

I consider myself very much a dabbler. I don’t have one instrument or one musical tradition and I don’t know what’s next. It just takes all the pressure off.

There’s a phrase called embodied cognition. And when I play an instrument, even one that I don’t know that well, I almost feel that my hands and fingers have their own brain doing their thing. It’s really hard to put into words, but I get this sort of digital pleasure that is a bodily feeling rather than a cerebral feeling. And it does take me out of my head. As someone who’s sort of high rev, it settles me down.

This interview has been condensed and edited.

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