Science of Music for Memory and Brain Health: 97
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In this conversation, Dr. Victoria Williamson discusses the profound impact of music on the brain, exploring its role in memory, emotional connection, and cognitive enhancement. She highlights the significance of music from infancy through adulthood and introduces the concept of binaural beats as a tool for sound therapy.
The discussion also covers her company, Audicin, which aims to provide sound solutions for wellbeing and productivity, backed by scientific research.
Stay in touch with Dr. Victoria and get a free trial of Audicin at this link.
Takeaways
- Music has been a part of human life for millennia.
- Newborns can remember melodies they heard in utero.
- Music is deeply tied to our emotional experiences.
- The brain processes music in a unique way that enhances memory.
- Binaural beats can help synchronize brain waves for various states of mind.
- Music can be used as a mnemonic device for better memory retention.
- The right kind of background music can enhance focus and productivity.
- Nature sounds in music can significantly reduce stress levels.
- Research is ongoing to explore the benefits of music therapy for various conditions.
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Episode transcript
Cheryl McColgan (00:00.868)
Hey everyone, welcome to the Heal and Rosh Ro podcast. I am so excited. I I think I say this when I'm talking to every guest, but that's because I only choose people that I really want to talk to for the most part. So today I have with me Dr. Victoria Williamson, and she is basically her life's work is all about music in the brain. And this is a topic that really gets me excited because I was a musician most of my time throughout school. I played saxophone for many years, also sang.
and then my interest in psychology and the brain. And at the time, even way back when, when I was in school at this point, there was a lot of research on the really positive effects in a child's developing brain with using music. So I know that that research is out here, but what I'm really excited to talk to Dr. Williamson about is how they're finding that music also works wonders on the adult brain. So very long introduction there, Dr. Victoria, but I kind of wanted to let you know where I'm coming from as well.
So welcome and could you just give people some background on how you got into this work? What sparked your interest in music?
Dr Victoria Williamson (01:04.371)
Well, thank you so much for inviting me. It's my absolute pleasure to be with you today. We share a lot in our background, you and me. So I paid for school teaching music. I'm a guitarist, classical guitarist, but I love all instruments. I love all forms of music, impossible to name a favorite. But I studied psychology. That's what I was drawn towards was understanding human behavior and
I was going to school in the sort of late 90s, early 2000s, where neuroscience was blowing up. And we were getting all these cool studies where you could see actual pictures of the brain working. And that was just magnetic to me. when I found out I could combine my two loves, I could combine psychology and music. That was it. That was my pathway right there. And it mattered not that I had to study for so many years and have this kind of uncertain academic life.
Cheryl McColgan (01:57.112)
haha
Dr Victoria Williamson (02:01.587)
because you follow your passion, right? And that's what you're all about. So we absolutely share that as well. So my pathway through research always clung to this idea that music is transformative in human life. And we've been making music as a species for as long as records exist. The oldest musical instruments we've ever found on planet Earth are 40 ,000 years old.
And these are very intricate bone flutes. They're carved from the bone of a vulture wing, and they use the same musical scale that we use in modern folk music.
Cheryl McColgan (02:42.082)
That's absolutely amazing. I never heard that before and I'm totally going to go look this up after we finish chatting.
Dr Victoria Williamson (02:47.887)
You will find it. It's a National Geographic and all kinds of things that were discovered in caves in the south of Germany. And it's absolutely transformative in our understanding of the importance of music in human life, because not only have we been making music for millennia, we've been making the same kind of music. So humans have intuitively developed with music, but music has been an agent of massive change in the human brain and body.
And there's a professor called Annie Patel. He's at Tufts in Boston. And he's talked about the impact of music on the human brain, mind, and body as being akin to that of the invention of fire. And what that allowed us to do was to cook our food. And once you're able to cook food, you change completely the aspects of nutrition you're getting, the job of consuming the food, the jaw changes, because we don't have to chew so much.
The gut microbiome changes because of the different kind of food compounds and structures that we're getting. And the invention of music and the use of music in human culture, there has never been a human society on earth found that hasn't used music of some kind. So it's universal. So the impact on the human brain and body has been this transformative. There isn't a special musical box in the brain anymore that there's a special area for cooked food. The evolution.
of our brain and body is one which takes best advantage of what we have. So what you find with music is something that stimulates multiple areas of our brain, all at the same time, visual area, auditory area, memory, pleasure centers, the thinking frontal planning areas of our brain are all studying music. So it's the perfect medium for our brain to engage. The brain loves music. And so there's so much power in there to do good.
And my whole career has been about firstly trying to understand that and then thinking about what's the little way that I can make a message of transformation through music because people do it in all kinds of wonderful ways. Music therapists, music healers, doctors using medicine and intensive care and stroke recovery, neonatal units. I see myself as part of a massive community and I'm here with my message, getting really excited about one kind of music, one aspect of music.
Dr Victoria Williamson (05:12.147)
that can make a difference in the world we live in today.
Cheryl McColgan (05:15.404)
Yeah, and I really am excited to get into that towards the end because I went to your website and listened to a couple of the clips of the music before we got on the interview. And it's really, really different, but I kind of want to save that for a little bit later when we get to that. In the meantime, though, you mentioned a couple of things there as far as the music's effects on the brain. And one of the two things come to mind when you were saying those things, the first was
Dr Victoria Williamson (05:30.898)
Yeah.
Cheryl McColgan (05:43.832)
I think one thing that people focus on and as we get older becomes more of an issue is memory. And I think in your work, reading your bio that that's something. I think that would be really interesting to chat about because maybe there's some actionable things that people can find their ways to use music to improve their memory. And then the second thing that you mentioned, you said there's a lot of power of music to do good. And I think like 99 .99 % of the time music just…
makes me feel good in so many ways. But in your bio, it mentioned something about earworms, which I think is such an interesting phenomena. So I don't know which one of those you want to take on first, but music and memory would be an awesome thing with some actionable tips. And then I really need to know about this earworm thing because that happens to me sometimes and it drives me crazy.
Dr Victoria Williamson (06:16.615)
Right.
Dr Victoria Williamson (06:32.221)
you're not the only one. And actually they're beautifully linked because ear webs are a music memory phenomenon. So they're kind of part of what comes with the gift of how beneficial music can be for the memory is that means music is powerful in memory. And if it's powerful in memory, it's going to go awry occasionally. And that's the kind of earworm side of things when it gets stuck on repeat. But let's go to the general.
Cheryl McColgan (06:33.652)
I… Good.
Cheryl McColgan (06:54.306)
You
Dr Victoria Williamson (07:01.139)
memory area first. So we know that music marks human life. So I wrote a book about 10 years ago called You Are the Music. And the way I set up the narrative of that book was to look at human life from cradle to grave, and how important music is throughout each of our journeys, how it's woven into the life course, the human life course, even if you tried and avoided music, I don't think you could manage it.
especially these days. But right from when we are born, there's crazy evidence. Did you know that newborns are already remembering music?
Cheryl McColgan (07:42.06)
Wow, that's great. I didn't know that.
Dr Victoria Williamson (07:45.085)
So there have been studies done where they played in utero babies, very simple melodies. And then when they're born, they've played them those same melodies compared to other similar melodies that the child has not heard before. And they get a significant relaxation effect to the familiar melody.
Cheryl McColgan (08:05.676)
Very cool.
Dr Victoria Williamson (08:06.003)
So already in utero, that memory is starting to cook. It's starting to take in sound messages, because we can hear long before we can see anything notable. So your brain is starting to learn about patterns, predictions, and memory from sound principally.
And the Cradle to Grace thing plays out there because there's a lot of evidence that one of the last senses that we're blessed with on our journey is sound. But right from the start, we have this powerful memory for sound. it's starting to tell us all the important things we need to know about our environment. Newborns also react to the sound of their caregivers' voices far more strongly than anybody else. And that's based on the Neutro Exposure Party as well. They become familiar with the sounds.
particularly as the mother. Everything from her heartbeat to the way her joints sound to the rhythm of her walk. This is all musical signals that the child has picked up on and is starting to build. So before our children can speak, which is an enormous cognitive effort in a typically developing child, we signal to our infants with music. We talk to them like this. Right?
Cheryl McColgan (09:25.592)
Yes!
Dr Victoria Williamson (09:26.279)
We use infant directed speech, which is essentially musically loaded. We're using musical structures to emphasize the shape of the language, the pauses of the language, what the vowel sounds are, which is the first thing a child will start to repeat. So that's our form of communication. It's our form of connection with our young, but it's our first form of communication as well. And if you have a neurodivergent child like I do, my son is nonverbal, non -speaking.
And so music is a large part of our ongoing communication. And the memory system is what supports that. And the memory system of the human brain, there isn't a special memory for Musicbox, rather it's hyper -connected, as I was talking about before, to all kinds of powerful systems, particularly the emotion system in the brain. So right in the core of your brain,
you've got a system called the limbic system, which is attached to your brainstem. Imagine this is your spine coming up. It goes into the brainstem first and the hindbrain, the mammalian hindbrain. And on top is that wiggly brain structure, the cortex that we're all familiar with when see a picture of the brain. But right in the middle are the ancient senses. And in there is emotion and memory. And they're tied up together with superlane highways, which is why, as our emotional development begins, as a teenager,
And we have first love, have emancipation, we have financial freedom, we have heartbreak, we have all of these first really emotional experiences. The music that is tied to those transformative times in our lives becomes our soundtrack. That's the music we forever remember. That's the music we can recognize at half a second exposure. I know what that is. I know all the lyrics. Wash.
Cheryl McColgan (11:18.636)
And not only, yeah, and not only that, it makes you feel a certain way, right? Like when you hear a song that you first heard in high school or something that you loved, it's a flood of memory that comes back with that and feelings too. I can see now how you're saying it's all tied up in that kind of ancient brain area because the amount of things that come up for me when I think of that stuff and certain songs come on or whatever, it's…
It's really amazing. Like I can get sad instantly or get really happy instantly depending on what song comes into my memory from that time period. And I think it's especially tied to, as you're saying, that period of time where we're really still developing and having all these major life changes like in late or early, late teens, early adulthood kind of timeframe.
Dr Victoria Williamson (12:11.357)
You're so right, you're so right. And that sort of minimally conscious experience is similar to smell. You had that experience as well when you smell a perfume you haven't smelled for years. Right, I was doing my daughter's hair for dance class the other day. It's first time I've sprayed hairspray for a while and I went, the 80s.
Cheryl McColgan (12:20.056)
Yes, hairspray for my skull.
Cheryl McColgan (12:30.324)
Yeah, right, exactly.
Dr Victoria Williamson (12:35.187)
I was right back there. But that is the same kind of brain connection. It doesn't have to go through the conscious processing, those big evolved human cortex centers right sitting on the top doesn't need to pass through those. So it's fast. It's quick. And these are memories are like the pathways we would make through long grass.
So if you imagine you find a pathway to a beautiful beach for the first time, it's all long grass and you walk through it. And the first time you walk through it, you're going to make a little indentation. The more you go down and visit that beach, the more you're going to tread that path, the easier it's going to be and the quicker it's going to be for you to get there. Well, that's what happens with memory. When people ask me, why can I remember the song that was playing in my high school dance, but I can't remember what I had for breakfast yesterday.
Cheryl McColgan (13:28.119)
Right.
Dr Victoria Williamson (13:29.383)
It's like, how many times have you thought about that dance versus how many opportunities you've had to think about breakfast yesterday? It's the way that we process our life experiences that says a lot about our memory experiences and because music weaves its way into so many of our significant life moments. And this is to say nothing of our favorite films, our favorite concerts that we go to.
The connections we make with people, the songs we associate with people. First dance at a wedding, all this kind of stuff. Music is part of human ceremony, it's part of human celebration, it's part of human commiseration worldwide. And because of that intimate relationship, there's an intimate relationship with our brain too.
Cheryl McColgan (14:19.19)
And now that you've kind of explained how this is in the, you know, a deep part of our brain, but it can also, I think, affect, you said that the centers that are more cortex and memory related, any tips or tricks for, you know, those of us who are getting older and finding themselves forgetting things a little more often, you know, there's, there's a bigger catalog up there now is what I like to think of it as it takes me a little longer to go through the memories, you know, but
Dr Victoria Williamson (14:45.543)
Right. Hugely valuable.
Cheryl McColgan (14:47.96)
How can we use or is there a way to use music, say as an adult you're trying to learn something newer or trying to remember something well, is there a way that you can use music to make that memory stick a little easier or have it stick around longer?
Dr Victoria Williamson (15:06.707)
Okay, that's a good question. let's deal with the sort of two parts of that, which is music for learning, essentially. So creating new memories that you want to hold on to, maybe music for studying. And then there's this idea that music can help keep your memory healthier for longer, which is 100 % true. And the neuroscientists are starting to now reveal why. So in terms of the learning, I've often spoken about the power of music as a mnemonic.
And mnemonics are what world memory champions use to recall 40 ,000 cards shuffled at random. Just so it's a fancy word for memory tricks. And mnemonics rely on allowing us to encode large amounts of information with little effort. So they put 40 ,000 cards to remember. How do you get that into just a few bits of information? And the trick to it is to link different things together.
It's how musicians go on stage and play an hour of music from memory. It's because when they practice, they've linked sections together. They've played always this section this much and then the next section this much and then they join them together and they've become a bigger section and so on and so forth. When you remember a dance routine, when you remember a workout routine, it's the same. You remember in sections and then it starts to stitch together and it gets to be a bigger thing. All of a sudden you can do an hour without thinking about it. Well, music can be a connector.
Putting music to memories can give you triggers as to what piece of information should come next. You can do this small scale. So if you're trying to remember a pin number, try putting it to a little four -tone melody. Try singing your pin number to a musical note. You'll remember it better than if you're just trying to remember the numbers themselves, because the music has a more natural fluid link from the memory.
It'll help you link those things together. If you're studying, I always used to use exactly the same playlist in the same order.
Dr Victoria Williamson (17:15.655)
when going through my study notes. And my study notes would start to take on the form exactly how a musician would study a large piece of music in order to perform it from memory. Things like studying, taking exams, they are a performance from memory. Same thing preparing a large presentation or a talk from memory. Having music as your cue, as your background, will help you encode larger bits of information better, quicker.
Cheryl McColgan (17:42.11)
that's brilliant and something that I never seemed to be and I you know everybody learns a little bit differently or their brain works a little bit differently and I would think I would think having a background in music that that would have worked well for me but I often find if I play music in the background if I'm trying to write in particular I just find it's very distracting but I could see like maybe if I were studying and just had it quietly in the background maybe it's sort of
Dr Victoria Williamson (17:52.033)
sure.
Cheryl McColgan (18:11.296)
subconsciously links or is there a particular kind of music like you said when you studied you had this was there a particular type of music that facilitates that better because I don't know in some ways my brain friends that distracting with certain tasks but I can see the utility of it it seems like something that would work for me if I could figure out how to do it properly.
Dr Victoria Williamson (18:24.721)
Right.
Dr Victoria Williamson (18:31.231)
Right. the key to making effective background music is something science has been interested in for a couple of decades now, because you're absolutely right. It is not just you. Music is very distracting for a lot of people. And that's because there's a lot of overlap in the brain between the parts that are interested in language and the parts that are interested in music. They're both sounds, they're both sequences. It's not surprising the brain is kind of seeing them at some level as the same thing.
So how do you create music that goes effectively into the background? So part of the work I do at Audison at my company is to use all of this science to create effective background music. But to give a couple of simple tips, avoid any music with lyrics in it. Even if they're foreign lyrics, there's a cool study that showed that people were trying to study and they tested them with German opera in the background. It's as distracting as any type of the brain does not care.
Cheryl McColgan (19:15.861)
Yeah
Dr Victoria Williamson (19:29.821)
that it's not your language, it's a verbal signal. So it thinks, I should pay attention to that. It might be important. So anything with lyrics, nah, that's going to hamper your chances. So pure instrumental music is going to be a lot better. You also want to choose instruments that have things, musically we call them lower attacks, softer decays. So they're basically instruments that are less bright.
So think a trumpet is bright, cymbal is bright, something that has a sudden onset, it has lots of high frequencies. That's more alerting to your brain. That's pure evolution. If something is making a very high shrieking sound, it might be an emergency. It might be another human screaming, it might be an animal about to attack you. So avoiding those kind of frequencies and sticking to lower frequencies, so lower piano, softer flutes.
kalimbas, soft drums, the sort of meditation instruments. The shamans of the past knew what they were doing when they were choosing the instrumentation that formed part of chants and formed part of meditations, ancient Asian meditations, for example, ancient Indian meditations. They knew what they were doing. All we're doing with science is looking at the brain and saying, okay, that makes sense because of aviancy what's going on. But all the human
instincts are right in terms of what music is best for us when we're trying to focus our mind.
Cheryl McColgan (21:04.482)
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I think now you mentioned that science has been working on this. One of the things that I've seen come up lot more commonly lately, and I don't know that I've ever actually looked into what the definition of this is or what it means. And I would love to hear your perspective on this, but binaural beats. And I think it's used quite often to help people sleep. But I could also imagine maybe it's this kind of repetitive thing that could be a nice background. Can you speak to maybe how that binaural beats, what effect that has on the brain?
and what they actually are. Because I don't, like I said, I don't think I've actually looked up what that definition is.
Dr Victoria Williamson (21:35.035)
Absolutely.
Dr Victoria Williamson (21:39.793)
Yeah, sounds cool, listening to binaural beats, but what are they? Absolutely. So I got into binaural beats about three years ago when I co -founded this company, Audison, which is audio medicine. So we were trying to create audio treatments to improve wellbeing and productivity. And from what I knew coming from my academic background, so I was in a university studying away, trying to make my career. And I decided to break away, partly for personal family reasons.
and also to try and chase my dream of making the world a better place with music. And with Audison came the opportunity to dive into binaural beats, because this was a new technology at the time, but it had a lot of promise. So I got to asking in the labs around the world that were using this, because the science that you see published is about two to three years least behind what's actually going on in labs.
So the stuff that's going on in labs right now, for the most part, apart from bulletins, you'll see in major, you know, public conversation in two to three years time. So I was asking around and they were saying, yeah, this is promising. You need to look into this. This, this, this can have a transformative effect. Okay. What is it? Right. So a binaural beat is an auditory illusion. Makes it sound like magic. What it is, is you, when you're wearing headphones like me,
You send a signal of a certain frequency into one end and a slightly different frequency into the other end. It can be slightly higher or slightly lower, doesn't matter. The brain is really interested in the fact that these don't meet up. It's interested in it, but it doesn't like it. The brain likes consistency. It likes to understand its environment. So what it does is it actually generates its own frequency that represents the difference.
So let's say I sent 150 hertz into here and 155 into here. The brain says, OK, I'll create a 5 hertz frequency to match them up.
Dr Victoria Williamson (23:43.665)
And that is the binaural beat. So it's binaural because it's come from a signal from two ears, b, two, aural ears. And then the beat is the frequency beating between those two bands. So it's actually coming from your own brain, is the binaural beat, as a result of the sound that you're exposed to. And if you hear it, it sounds like a soft beat or hum in the background. Now, I listened to pure binaural beat tracks when I was first, I thought,
people can't listen to this. It's like, I'm not working to that. Dude, that's impossible. Like three minutes and I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, my brain's going to explode. You can't do that. And then I got talking to our amazing engineer, Marie Souza Aghiya, and she has studied human sound perception and performance. And she knew about how to best embed binaural beats in real music.
So it's like, if you had a supplement that tasted foul, but was brilliant for your health, what do you have to do? You have to hide it. You have to mix it with something else to get it in. Can you think of something like that? I'm struggling. Creatine doesn't taste bad. It doesn't taste of anything.
Cheryl McColgan (24:59.928)
I'm a weirdo because, no, I'm weird though because if I know it's good for me, I'll just do it anyway. But it's like, you know, the old adage that they'd say a teaspoon of sugar helps the medicine go down. Like you just make it taste better or sweeter or different somehow, right?
Dr Victoria Williamson (25:06.215)
You'll just do it anyway.
Dr Victoria Williamson (25:13.819)
Right.
Dr Victoria Williamson (25:18.821)
You absolutely got it. So she convinced me that if you engineered binaural beats properly, it's like putting the medicine of binaural beats into sugar. So what you need to do to make binaural beats effective is have them properly engineered, because the pure form is just a bit tasteless and difficult to swallow. And we're only human. If something sounds horrible, we're not going to listen to it. And if we don't listen to it, it can't do us any good.
So what does it actually do? What does medicine actually do? So when the brain generates this frequency, what the other brain waves start to do around it is to synchronize to it. The brain's generating this signal. It must be important. So the other brain waves start to synchronize, and they start to entrain. So we entrain to a beat when we dance to music. It means to move along with. So your brain waves start to centralize and to synchronize to this signal.
Good is that. Well, the speed at which the brain is synchronizing will help you get into different states. If your brain is synchronizing at a very low, slow way, you'll get sleepy. If your brain is synchronizing to a reasonably high medium wave, around 10 hertz, you'll feel relaxed but awake. And the higher you go, to about 30 hertz, you'll start to get into flow, focus, and then up to creativity.
So you're basically helping the brain slowly and gently move into states that you need it to be in for whatever the task is or the time of day is that you need it to be in.
Cheryl McColgan (27:00.672)
Okay, I'm so excited to do this trial of autism now because this could be life changing. What was going through my mind when you were saying that is, is that, is binaural beats the only way that you can cause these effects in the brain? Or are you working with other sound patterns or sound technologies that do something similar depending on what you're trying to achieve? is that really the best way that you found?
Dr Victoria Williamson (27:27.539)
It's the best way I've found to do brain entrainment in a way that is palatable. It's like you can listen to a pure binaural beat track. You can put yourself through that and it may have a similar effect, but there's actually scientific studies out there that pure binaural neural beat tracks can impair productivity. And in certain frequencies as well, when they're not well engineered, especially in the theta band, so that's relatively low, not quite sleep, but not quite awake and focused.
It can induce nausea and headaches. The problem is if it's not engineered well, your brain is very good at spotting something that isn't quite right. And the brain's response to something that isn't quite right is universal. It thinks it's a poison. It's exactly why people get car sick. It's because the brain is getting signals that aren't quite right. You're still but your eyeballs are moving. This doesn't make sense to the brain. So its reaction is
I must have been poisoned. Therefore, I must purge it to make my system healthy. That's why we feel can feel nauseous when we travel. And the same can be true of something like binaural beats. If it's not engineered well to be palatable to the brain, then it can damage productivity and it can even make you feel unwell. So I've always prided ourselves at autism that we test absolutely everything on ourselves and we make sure that it is safe before it goes out to anybody.
Because music is power. It has the power to do good. It can have the power to do harm if you're not putting all the testing in there. And that's what we do. So.
Cheryl McColgan (29:05.912)
Yeah, I think that's a great point that you brought up because my first experience with this when I first learned about it and kind of wanted to see, of course, you know, I went on YouTube as one does. And, you know, I think you're right because I think some of them that were designed for sleep and I would try that and I would be laying there listening to it and I would be thinking, well, you know, I don't know if this is as relaxing as I, I don't know if it was having the intended effect. So my guess is.
Dr Victoria Williamson (29:15.944)
Bye.
Dr Victoria Williamson (29:31.483)
Hmm
Cheryl McColgan (29:32.234)
any random thing that you find on YouTube, much like anything, it may or may not be accurate, factual, all, you know, everything. So it's nice to, you know, if you're going to use this for purpose, for memory, for doing better work, for focus, that it makes total sense to, you know, use a product where you know that there is some science behind it and that somebody's actually
Dr Victoria Williamson (29:41.309)
Right.
Cheryl McColgan (29:53.398)
looking out for your best interests because again, like I said, I had varying experiences with what I found there and not all of them were great. I didn't get nauseous or anything like that, but I just felt like they just didn't really do anything. And that's why I wanted to ask you about it. Because so many of these kinds of things come up and you wonder, is it just like the next fleeting thing that people think is gonna work, but it doesn't actually. But it sounds like now that there is some good research to back it up too.
Dr Victoria Williamson (30:02.661)
Me too.
Dr Victoria Williamson (30:17.863)
Mm.
Dr Victoria Williamson (30:22.705)
Yeah, so the thing about binaural beats is in the pure form, in the basic form, they're not hard to make. You can make them in any audio synthesizer, which is why you can find loads of free ones on YouTube. would most of us order our medicines off the internet without knowing what kind of lab they came from and ingest them and hope for the best? No. And some of these binaural beat tracks are designed for
elderly design for children. And I'm thinking, as a scientist, I'm thinking, my hackles are up because I'm like, this isn't fair that this is out there, but it is. But we're really hoping that we can, we can bring some trust, we can bring safety, we have a lab, we've done all the scientific studies, because the beauty of binaural beats is it's come from science. Right back in 1852, this was discovered by physicists called William Henry Job. And since then,
It's science that has been studying this phenomenon. So how to apply it into something we can use in our everyday life is something that's come from evidence. And the way we do it in autism, everything comes from the evidence. So what we want to do is drive forward a responsible and ethical product that people can trust and that I would be happy if it was in my grandmother's care home or if it was in my child's therapy center, you know?
That matters to me.
Cheryl McColgan (31:50.52)
And I'm sure, and you mentioned your son before, and I'm guessing that at least in part, some of this work is finding new ways to communicate with him or new ways to help him just have a better experience in his world. And you mentioned your company, Audison, so think now's a great time that we just move into that. it's basically, I went to the website earlier today, and like I said, I experienced some of the music. And so now I'll just describe that from a lay person who had no idea what to expect.
And so if you go to the website, which by the way, Dr. Williamson is generously giving listeners a 30 day free trial. So you'll go to healnurishgrow .com slash audison. And that'll take you to the website. You can get this 30 days for free so you can experience it too. But also on the website, before you even sign up, there are like three little play buttons that you can click. And my experience of it was there was definitely something like
underlying that I couldn't put my finger on. But then there were some sounds that I recognized. There were some nature sounds, some water sounds, and it kind of reminded me like, I don't want to say this because it's not exactly like this at all, but it definitely reminded me of massage studio type of music in the way that it was like the cadence and it was relaxing. But it was just a different in a way that I couldn't put my finger on. So.
Dr Victoria Williamson (32:55.707)
Mmm.
Dr Victoria Williamson (33:05.245)
Mm -hmm.
Cheryl McColgan (33:14.784)
Anyway, I'd love to have you expound on that. That's the experience from a lay person. I didn't get to listen to it for an extended period of time, so I can't say any effect as far as focus or any of that. But it was just, I didn't dislike it and it was different. And that was my initial impression. So I'd love to hear more about that.
Dr Victoria Williamson (33:32.925)
Well, thank you for listening. That's very kind. Yeah, so the three samples are there to sort of give an idea of some of the different kinds of music that Audison makes. So part of what we do is we pioneer the background music, because that's what people need. You we don't need another thing taking up time. Audison is about providing nervous system regulation on the go. You don't need to do
anything. This is about getting you the benefits of mindfulness, meditation, yoga on the go. And it takes as little as 10 minutes a day listening to autism to get the benefits of your nervous system. So that includes building up your HRV resilience, improving your late levels of relaxation, improving sleep, reducing irritability.
And then once you're in a nicely regulated state, you can boost productivity, creativity. We even have Finnish, our company is from Finland originally, beautiful Finnish forest that you mentioned there, you've heard a little bit in the sound. It's even being used by Finnish Olympic athletes as part of their training because nervous system regulation benefits everybody. We are all in a world where our nervous systems are being pushed to beyond anything they were ever designed to cope with.
Cheryl McColgan (34:34.647)
Yes.
Dr Victoria Williamson (34:54.141)
So having the audits and sound there is a period of time where you can be doing something else. You can be training, you can be doing housework, you can be running around after the kids. As long as you can wear your headphones, which I run with my kids on the headphones sometimes. As long as you can wear your headphones safely, you can have this sound on and your nervous system is being regulated. What that means is it's triggering the parasympathetic nervous system, getting you out of fight and flight.
and into rest and digest. Whether it's nervous system is relaxing, respiration is regulating, heart rate is regulating, blood pressure is lowering, and the body is centralizing and it is becoming present. This is what the binaural beat achieves because it synchronizes and entrains and calms the brain. So the way I use it going about my day,
As you mentioned, I have a son who is severely disabled with autistic traits. So he's nonverbal. He has a lot of meltdowns. He has very strong difficulties regulating in a world that wasn't made for him.
My day, when it isn't about audison, is about helping my son to regulate in our world. And that's about at the moment, a lot of external things that people on the spectrum find to be helpful for regulating the nervous system. He does his stimming, does his trampoline, he does lots of, I do massages, lots of movements. This is like the internal sound version of that. It's regulating the nervous system for you from within.
And the scientific studies that we've done, we've studied people for weeks, months, our longer studies are over years. And the month long study is my favorite because if you listen to Audison, you get a significant relaxation effect within 10 minutes. We've done a scientific study showing that. But the month long study is where you start to see the cumulative benefits of using Audison. That's where you start to see really cool things in heart rate, heart rate variability.
Dr Victoria Williamson (37:09.351)
which is the hot bio measure that everybody's talking about right now, which is a measure of how healthy your nervous system is. Measure it with the aura ring, measure it with your Apple watch. I'm all into this kind of bio measuring. There you go. Totally right. We've got the original aura team, a lot of them who created the aura ring is now on the audison team, making audison alongside us because they've seen the effect. The original CEO, Petri Latunen.
Cheryl McColgan (37:20.002)
Totally gonna do it.
Cheryl McColgan (37:30.84)
Sound very cool.
Dr Victoria Williamson (37:38.596)
is on record saying that Audison has impacted his HRV more than any other form of external method he's found, as measured on his own device.
Cheryl McColgan (37:47.768)
That's amazing.
Cheryl McColgan (37:51.564)
Wow, that's really amazing. Okay, everybody, she's giving you a free trial. I better hear from everybody that they're doing this. And I wanna track this, because I do track my heart rate variability. So think that's very, if nothing else changed in your health world other than that, that would be a huge worthwhile benefit of your service. But it's not just that. As you mentioned, it's this overall nervous system regulation, which I think, I don't know.
Dr Victoria Williamson (37:54.227)
It's super cool.
Cheryl McColgan (38:18.744)
again, 99 .999 % of people really need in this world that we're living in. Any other? So you mentioned the way that you use it. mean, we're primarily trying to get that rest and digest. you doing anything? You mentioned the Olympic athletes. I'm wondering if, okay, so that's more for recovery. I'm wondering if you're doing anything with like, you know, helping like physical performance kind of things, or is there any way to tap into that for, like you mentioned, training or going to the gym, that kind of thing?
Dr Victoria Williamson (38:24.723)
Totally.
Dr Victoria Williamson (38:35.399)
Bye.
Dr Victoria Williamson (38:48.433)
Yeah. So when we first heard from the Olympic athletes who were interested in audison, we were a bit abused because we thought from everything I knew about music and training, audison didn't seem to fit. You know, there's a there's a large body of wonderful research on music and exercise led by people like Professor Costas Cariagoris in the UK that details the kind of music that is good for training.
And it's a lot about the beats per minute and this sort of thing that's good for training. And I thought, that's not autism. We don't make that kind of music. But it's the people themselves. It's these wonderful athletes who said, you've got the wrong idea, actually, because what you really need for a good training session is flow. You need to be in the zone. I want to tune out all the signals that are telling me.
tired, don't want to do this, whatever, I'm not enjoying this. Those need to be quiet. And I need to be focused and present. And when that was explained to me, it clicked. Okay, I get it. Like, this isn't if you're the kind of person that doesn't need to really motivate you, and you might be and if you are cool, fantastic, there's music for you. Absolutely. But there are athletes out there who's really are seeking flow.
And that's what certain app tracks within Autism will do. If you open the app, you can select what you want to achieve from the app. Just select Focus.
any of those tracks are a binaural beat frequency level that will induce this experience of flow, getting you in the zone. Now we originally can see that as being for work.
Dr Victoria Williamson (40:35.613)
But out there in the field, being used for two, three years now, we've learned that people training feel the same benefits. That actually being in the zone is such a precious thing. And the great thing about Audison is like all music, there's variety there. So if you like darker music, we've got beautiful composers who grew up in the sort of Finnish, you know, dark, inspirational, atmospheric. There's tracks like Lava that are there too.
capture that. And then there's beautiful light stuff, know, like Lakeview, I saw you light and shadow. These wonderful tracks are much, much lighter. They will feature a lot of nature sounds. You're absolutely right. Of the kind I saw you working in your yard, in your new yard, a few months ago that you have looks beautiful. And the benefits of being out in nature, of hearing those sounds and being out there. Now we're not always in a world where we can capture that. I don't have a garden.
Cheryl McColgan (41:22.486)
Yes. Thank you.
Mm.
Dr Victoria Williamson (41:34.077)
Certainly nothing as beautiful as yours. So it's very nice that you let me in to see it. But having those nature sounds, we know significantly reduces cortisol, significantly increases HRV, significantly lowers heart rate. There's loads of research out there that nature sounds versus urban sounds has this beneficial effect. So that's partly why it's in order to see this well. We're putting all that science into the sound.
Cheryl McColgan (41:38.21)
You
Dr Victoria Williamson (42:01.127)
But ultimately it is music and people come to music with their own preferences. So there's a variety of tracks in there. So whatever works for you of the kind that you need, it'll be there.
Cheryl McColgan (42:12.386)
Yeah, and I would imagine, mean, this seems like such a fun project. I mean, obviously it's doing a lot of good with just whatever library you have now, but I can imagine that over time, like you'll get more and more people interested in maybe musicians that want to work with you and do this kind of, you know, interesting new kind of thing. So I don't know, I think it's really exciting and I can't wait to implement this into my personal health and wellness routine because I can totally, what I was thinking of when you were talking about flow, how certain sports,
are much more amenable to that. So can see how you're saying like some sports that might have to be the more like pump you up kind of, you know, fast beat hardcore music. then on the other hand, like I was, I played golf in college and, you know, golf is very much a flow state sport. And I can totally see how if I would have been walking down the fairway, you know, listening to one of these tracks and coming up to my next shot, I just
I think there's something there too, if you haven't worked with any Finnish golfers yet, I would definitely have them check it out. Well, anyway, Dr. Williamson, this has just been amazing. Before we go here, I do want to share with my audience, you have a really amazingly cool study coming up. Anybody that's interested in anything that we talked about here today, or if you're just a biohacker and you're interested in optimizing your experience, which I know is a lot of you out there listening,
Dr Victoria Williamson (43:12.541)
noted. Thank you.
Cheryl McColgan (43:34.968)
Dr. Williamson has a very cool study coming up. So can you share a little bit about that and how people can get in touch if they're interested in participating?
Dr Victoria Williamson (43:43.571)
Thank you so much. we are just in this coming to the US in very soon. We are launching a study which has been funded by public funding in Finland. We are looking for people from particular groups to try our orders in and let us know how it impacts their daily lives. So this would be paid research. We are more than happy to recompense people for their time and effort. But we are science driven but with people.
We want always to write something that works for people, that fits into their lives. And the only way we can do that is by asking them. So the study is interested in three main target groups within the US, and that is nurses, people with diagnosis of ADHD, and biohackers. So these are three target groups that have very potentially different requirements from autism.
but that come down to three groups of people that would benefit from nervous system regulation to meet their goals or to help meet the demands that they're facing. So if anybody sees themselves in one of those groups or knows anybody who is, where the Audison website is going to have a sign up link on it. But if you would like to know more, my door is open. I'm victoria at audison .com. You're more than welcome to get in touch with me.
If you've tried it and you want to give me some feedback as well, that's always more than welcome. If you want to know more about the study before clicking on anything, just let me know and I'll be more than happy to talk to you about it.
Cheryl McColgan (45:17.688)
Dr. Williamson, has just made my heart so happy today to have this conversation because I love it when people are doing the work that is so meaningful to them and that brings them joy and brings joy to the world and helps people feel better. So thank you for taking the time today and thank you for making this amazing product and your life's work, like all this years of music that you did coming into this thing. So amazing. It is.
Dr Victoria Williamson (45:34.707)
Thank you.
Dr Victoria Williamson (45:43.737)
It's exciting. It's so exciting. It's just wanted to make a difference with music is what they're to ride on wherever I lay. And if they can say tick, I'll be lying happy.
Cheryl McColgan (45:56.044)
love it. Thank you again so much.
Dr Victoria Williamson (45:58.767)
And you. And you. Thank you.
