Robert Gupta: Between music and medicine

111,580 views ・ 2012-10-02

TED


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

00:00
Translator: Joseph Geni Reviewer: Morton Bast
0
0
7000
00:23
(Music)
1
23095
17803
02:38
(Applause)
2
158155
3099
02:41
Thank you very much. (Applause)
3
161254
5360
02:46
Thank you. It's a distinct privilege to be here.
4
166614
3673
02:50
A few weeks ago, I saw a video on YouTube
5
170287
1924
02:52
of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords
6
172211
2280
02:54
at the early stages of her recovery
7
174491
2159
02:56
from one of those awful bullets.
8
176650
2185
02:58
This one entered her left hemisphere, and
9
178835
2121
03:00
knocked out her Broca's area, the speech center of her brain.
10
180956
3516
03:04
And in this session, Gabby's working with a speech therapist,
11
184472
3906
03:08
and she's struggling to produce
12
188378
1789
03:10
some of the most basic words, and you can see her
13
190167
3112
03:13
growing more and more devastated, until she ultimately
14
193279
3179
03:16
breaks down into sobbing tears, and she starts sobbing
15
196458
2876
03:19
wordlessly into the arms of her therapist.
16
199334
3976
03:23
And after a few moments, her therapist tries a new tack,
17
203310
2317
03:25
and they start singing together,
18
205627
1635
03:27
and Gabby starts to sing through her tears,
19
207262
2141
03:29
and you can hear her clearly able to enunciate
20
209403
2663
03:32
the words to a song that describe the way she feels,
21
212066
2461
03:34
and she sings, in one descending scale, she sings,
22
214527
2920
03:37
"Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine."
23
217447
3609
03:41
And it's a very powerful and poignant reminder of how
24
221056
2981
03:44
the beauty of music has the ability to speak
25
224037
3564
03:47
where words fail, in this case literally speak.
26
227601
4776
03:52
Seeing this video of Gabby Giffords reminded me
27
232377
1753
03:54
of the work of Dr. Gottfried Schlaug,
28
234130
2801
03:56
one of the preeminent neuroscientists studying music and the brain at Harvard,
29
236931
3751
04:00
and Schlaug is a proponent of a therapy called
30
240682
2419
04:03
Melodic Intonation Therapy, which has become very popular in music therapy now.
31
243101
5013
04:08
Schlaug found that his stroke victims who were aphasic,
32
248114
4323
04:12
could not form sentences of three- or four-word sentences,
33
252437
4650
04:17
but they could still sing the lyrics to a song,
34
257087
3303
04:20
whether it was "Happy Birthday To You"
35
260390
1949
04:22
or their favorite song by the Eagles or the Rolling Stones.
36
262339
2638
04:24
And after 70 hours of intensive singing lessons,
37
264977
2939
04:27
he found that the music was able to literally rewire
38
267916
4002
04:31
the brains of his patients and create a homologous
39
271918
2452
04:34
speech center in their right hemisphere
40
274370
1892
04:36
to compensate for the left hemisphere's damage.
41
276262
3499
04:39
When I was 17, I visited Dr. Schlaug's lab, and in one afternoon
42
279761
3385
04:43
he walked me through some of the leading research
43
283146
2516
04:45
on music and the brain -- how musicians had
44
285662
3835
04:49
fundamentally different brain structure than non-musicians,
45
289497
3064
04:52
how music, and listening to music,
46
292561
1510
04:54
could just light up the entire brain, from
47
294071
2254
04:56
our prefrontal cortex all the way back to our cerebellum,
48
296325
3474
04:59
how music was becoming a neuropsychiatric modality
49
299799
2827
05:02
to help children with autism, to help people struggling
50
302626
3623
05:06
with stress and anxiety and depression,
51
306249
2785
05:09
how deeply Parkinsonian patients would find that their tremor
52
309034
3415
05:12
and their gait would steady when they listened to music,
53
312449
3381
05:15
and how late-stage Alzheimer's patients, whose dementia
54
315830
3409
05:19
was so far progressed that they could no longer recognize
55
319239
2896
05:22
their family, could still pick out a tune by Chopin
56
322135
2786
05:24
at the piano that they had learned when they were children.
57
324921
3662
05:28
But I had an ulterior motive of visiting Gottfried Schlaug,
58
328583
3047
05:31
and it was this: that I was at a crossroads in my life,
59
331630
3218
05:34
trying to choose between music and medicine.
60
334848
2785
05:37
I had just completed my undergraduate, and I was working
61
337633
2961
05:40
as a research assistant at the lab of Dennis Selkoe,
62
340594
2873
05:43
studying Parkinson's disease at Harvard, and I had fallen
63
343467
3463
05:46
in love with neuroscience. I wanted to become a surgeon.
64
346930
2867
05:49
I wanted to become a doctor like Paul Farmer or Rick Hodes,
65
349797
3778
05:53
these kind of fearless men who go into places like Haiti or Ethiopia
66
353575
4117
05:57
and work with AIDS patients with multidrug-resistant
67
357692
2831
06:00
tuberculosis, or with children with disfiguring cancers.
68
360523
3789
06:04
I wanted to become that kind of Red Cross doctor,
69
364312
2924
06:07
that doctor without borders.
70
367236
2004
06:09
On the other hand, I had played the violin my entire life.
71
369240
3543
06:12
Music for me was more than a passion. It was obsession.
72
372783
3742
06:16
It was oxygen. I was lucky enough to have studied
73
376525
3163
06:19
at the Juilliard School in Manhattan, and to have played
74
379688
3079
06:22
my debut with Zubin Mehta and the Israeli philharmonic orchestra in Tel Aviv,
75
382767
4355
06:27
and it turned out that Gottfried Schlaug
76
387122
2038
06:29
had studied as an organist at the Vienna Conservatory,
77
389160
3224
06:32
but had given up his love for music to pursue a career
78
392384
2383
06:34
in medicine. And that afternoon, I had to ask him,
79
394767
3681
06:38
"How was it for you making that decision?"
80
398448
2536
06:40
And he said that there were still times when he wished
81
400984
2029
06:43
he could go back and play the organ the way he used to,
82
403013
2772
06:45
and that for me, medical school could wait,
83
405785
3217
06:49
but that the violin simply would not.
84
409002
2775
06:51
And after two more years of studying music, I decided
85
411777
2560
06:54
to shoot for the impossible before taking the MCAT
86
414337
2809
06:57
and applying to medical school like a good Indian son
87
417146
2576
06:59
to become the next Dr. Gupta. (Laughter)
88
419722
2858
07:02
And I decided to shoot for the impossible and I took
89
422580
2632
07:05
an audition for the esteemed Los Angeles Philharmonic.
90
425212
2943
07:08
It was my first audition, and after three days of playing
91
428155
3002
07:11
behind a screen in a trial week, I was offered the position.
92
431157
3026
07:14
And it was a dream. It was a wild dream to perform
93
434183
3918
07:18
in an orchestra, to perform in the iconic Walt Disney Concert Hall
94
438101
3500
07:21
in an orchestra conducted now by the famous Gustavo Dudamel,
95
441601
3584
07:25
but much more importantly to me to be surrounded
96
445185
2986
07:28
by musicians and mentors that became my new family,
97
448171
3890
07:32
my new musical home.
98
452061
3194
07:35
But a year later, I met another musician who had also
99
455255
3710
07:38
studied at Juilliard, one who profoundly helped me
100
458965
3089
07:42
find my voice and shaped my identity as a musician.
101
462054
4358
07:46
Nathaniel Ayers was a double bassist at Juilliard, but
102
466412
3281
07:49
he suffered a series of psychotic episodes in his early 20s,
103
469693
3739
07:53
was treated with thorazine at Bellevue,
104
473432
2346
07:55
and ended up living homeless on the streets of Skid Row
105
475778
3476
07:59
in downtown Los Angeles 30 years later.
106
479254
2446
08:01
Nathaniel's story has become a beacon for homelessness
107
481700
3445
08:05
and mental health advocacy throughout the United States,
108
485145
2858
08:08
as told through the book and the movie "The Soloist,"
109
488003
2145
08:10
but I became his friend, and I became his violin teacher,
110
490148
3146
08:13
and I told him that wherever he had his violin,
111
493294
2510
08:15
and wherever I had mine, I would play a lesson with him.
112
495804
2971
08:18
And on the many times I saw Nathaniel on Skid Row,
113
498775
2679
08:21
I witnessed how music was able to bring him back
114
501454
2809
08:24
from his very darkest moments, from what seemed to me
115
504263
2967
08:27
in my untrained eye to be
116
507230
1960
08:29
the beginnings of a schizophrenic episode.
117
509190
3800
08:32
Playing for Nathaniel, the music took on a deeper meaning,
118
512990
3254
08:36
because now it was about communication,
119
516244
2558
08:38
a communication where words failed, a communication
120
518802
2910
08:41
of a message that went deeper than words, that registered
121
521712
3158
08:44
at a fundamentally primal level in Nathaniel's psyche,
122
524870
3489
08:48
yet came as a true musical offering from me.
123
528359
4547
08:52
I found myself growing outraged that someone
124
532906
3977
08:56
like Nathaniel could have ever been homeless on Skid Row
125
536883
3909
09:00
because of his mental illness, yet how many tens of thousands
126
540792
3339
09:04
of others there were out there on Skid Row alone
127
544131
3105
09:07
who had stories as tragic as his, but were never going to have a book or a movie
128
547236
4756
09:11
made about them that got them off the streets?
129
551992
2262
09:14
And at the very core of this crisis of mine, I felt somehow
130
554254
4013
09:18
the life of music had chosen me, where somehow,
131
558267
4095
09:22
perhaps possibly in a very naive sense, I felt what Skid Row
132
562362
2969
09:25
really needed was somebody like Paul Farmer
133
565331
3011
09:28
and not another classical musician playing on Bunker Hill.
134
568342
4141
09:32
But in the end, it was Nathaniel who showed me
135
572483
2050
09:34
that if I was truly passionate about change,
136
574533
2727
09:37
if I wanted to make a difference, I already had the perfect instrument to do it,
137
577260
4323
09:41
that music was the bridge that connected my world and his.
138
581583
4769
09:46
There's a beautiful quote
139
586352
1672
09:48
by the Romantic German composer Robert Schumann,
140
588024
2464
09:50
who said, "To send light into the darkness of men's hearts,
141
590488
5209
09:55
such is the duty of the artist."
142
595697
2425
09:58
And this is a particularly poignant quote
143
598122
2436
10:00
because Schumann himself suffered from schizophrenia
144
600558
2739
10:03
and died in asylum.
145
603297
2108
10:05
And inspired by what I learned from Nathaniel,
146
605405
2462
10:07
I started an organization on Skid Row of musicians
147
607867
2364
10:10
called Street Symphony, bringing the light of music
148
610231
3193
10:13
into the very darkest places, performing
149
613424
2644
10:16
for the homeless and mentally ill at shelters and clinics
150
616068
2587
10:18
on Skid Row, performing for combat veterans
151
618655
4030
10:22
with post-traumatic stress disorder, and for the incarcerated
152
622685
3410
10:26
and those labeled as criminally insane.
153
626095
3804
10:29
After one of our events at the Patton State Hospital
154
629899
2393
10:32
in San Bernardino, a woman walked up to us
155
632292
2521
10:34
and she had tears streaming down her face,
156
634813
2317
10:37
and she had a palsy, she was shaking,
157
637130
2466
10:39
and she had this gorgeous smile, and she said
158
639596
3022
10:42
that she had never heard classical music before,
159
642618
1982
10:44
she didn't think she was going to like it, she had never
160
644600
2426
10:47
heard a violin before, but that hearing this music was like hearing the sunshine,
161
647026
4102
10:51
and that nobody ever came to visit them, and that for the first time in six years,
162
651128
3369
10:54
when she heard us play, she stopped shaking without medication.
163
654497
4803
10:59
Suddenly, what we're finding with these concerts,
164
659300
2958
11:02
away from the stage, away from the footlights, out
165
662258
3042
11:05
of the tuxedo tails, the musicians become the conduit
166
665300
3621
11:08
for delivering the tremendous therapeutic benefits
167
668921
3122
11:12
of music on the brain to an audience that would never
168
672043
3093
11:15
have access to this room,
169
675136
1802
11:16
would never have access to the kind of music that we make.
170
676938
5832
11:22
Just as medicine serves to heal more
171
682770
3431
11:26
than the building blocks of the body alone,
172
686201
3298
11:29
the power and beauty of music transcends the "E"
173
689499
3767
11:33
in the middle of our beloved acronym.
174
693266
2735
11:36
Music transcends the aesthetic beauty alone.
175
696001
3638
11:39
The synchrony of emotions that we experience when we
176
699639
3010
11:42
hear an opera by Wagner, or a symphony by Brahms,
177
702649
3257
11:45
or chamber music by Beethoven, compels us to remember
178
705906
3646
11:49
our shared, common humanity, the deeply communal
179
709552
3908
11:53
connected consciousness, the empathic consciousness
180
713460
3415
11:56
that neuropsychiatrist Iain McGilchrist says is hard-wired
181
716875
3573
12:00
into our brain's right hemisphere.
182
720448
3076
12:03
And for those living in the most dehumanizing conditions
183
723524
3396
12:06
of mental illness within homelessness
184
726920
2161
12:09
and incarceration, the music and the beauty of music
185
729081
2783
12:11
offers a chance for them to transcend the world around them,
186
731864
4632
12:16
to remember that they still have the capacity to experience
187
736496
3382
12:19
something beautiful and that humanity has not forgotten them.
188
739878
3952
12:23
And the spark of that beauty, the spark of that humanity
189
743830
2861
12:26
transforms into hope,
190
746691
2800
12:29
and we know, whether we choose the path of music
191
749491
2960
12:32
or of medicine, that's the very first thing we must instill
192
752451
3209
12:35
within our communities, within our audiences,
193
755660
1939
12:37
if we want to inspire healing from within.
194
757599
3931
12:41
I'd like to end with a quote by John Keats,
195
761530
2676
12:44
the Romantic English poet,
196
764206
2045
12:46
a very famous quote that I'm sure all of you know.
197
766251
2938
12:49
Keats himself had also given up a career in medicine
198
769189
3019
12:52
to pursue poetry, but he died when he was a year older than me.
199
772208
3321
12:55
And Keats said, "Beauty is truth, and truth beauty.
200
775529
5073
13:00
That is all ye know on Earth, and all ye need to know."
201
780602
6498
13:09
(Music)
202
789857
164123
15:53
(Applause)
203
953980
28476
About this website

This site will introduce you to YouTube videos that are useful for learning English. You will see English lessons taught by top-notch teachers from around the world. Double-click on the English subtitles displayed on each video page to play the video from there. The subtitles scroll in sync with the video playback. If you have any comments or requests, please contact us using this contact form.

https://forms.gle/WvT1wiN1qDtmnspy7