When I was 17, I visited Dr. Schlaug's lab, and in one afternoon he walked me through some of the leading research on music and the brain -- how musicians had fundamentally different brain structure than non-musicians, how music, and listening to music, could just light up the entire brain, from our prefrontal cortex all the way back to our cerebellum, how music was becoming a neuropsychiatric modality to help children with autism, to help people struggling with stress and anxiety and depression, how deeply Parkinsonian patients would find that their tremor and their gait would steady when they listened to music, and how late-stage Alzheimer's patients, whose dementia was so far progressed that they could no longer recognize their family, could still pick out a tune by Chopin at the piano that they had learned when they were children.
Kao sedamnaestogodišnjak sam posjetio laboratorij doktora Schlauga, i u jedno popodne proveo me kroz jedno od vodećih istraživanja o glazbi i mozgu -- o tome kako su glazbenici imali iz temelja drugačiju strukturu mozga u odnosu na ne-glazbenike i kako glazba i slušanje glazbe mogu jednostavno osvjetliti cijeli mozak, od prednjeg mozga pa sve do malog mozga, o tome kako glazba postaje neuropsihijatrijska metoda za pomoć autističnoj djeci, za pomoć onima koji se bore protiv stresa, tjeskobe i depresije, kako se teško oboljelim od parkinsonove bolesti primjetno smirivalo podrhtavanje i hod postajao stabilniji kada bi slušali glazbu, i kako bi oboljeli od Alzheimerove bolesti, čija je senilnost toliko uznapredovala da nisu više prepoznavali svoju obitelj, još uvijek jasno prepoznavali Chopinovu melodiju za klavir koju su naučili kada su bili djeca.