Here’s an audio clip of the recent conversation that John and Valerie had with Andrea Murray from All Classical 89.9. In it you’ll hear about the man behind the orchestrations for Brain Chemistry for Lovers, the collaboration with the Portland Chamber Orchestra, and…..how Jimi Hendrix thwarted one medical career!

Valerie Day and Darrell Grant go in the 1190 KEX studios to talk with Paul Linnman about their upcoming Brain Chemistry For Lovers performances this coming Valentine’s weekend with the Portland Chamber Orchestra. It’s an action packed three minutes of fun…and you don’t even have to get up early in the past to hear it!

You get the idea.

In Brain Chemistry For Lovers, we wanted to take advantage of this ability that music has to take us into the feeling or limbic part of the brain. After all, inserting a science lecture into a concert means that you’re doing a lot of talking – an activity that stimulates the left side of the brain (Broca’s Area on the left side of the left frontal lobe, and Wernicke’s Area on the left temporal lobe) whose job it is to processes verbal information. We wanted to find songs that not only had lyrics that were applicable to the phases of love being described, but really helped the audience to “go limbic” – or feel the effects of the chemicals related to those phases. We could have written original songs for the show, but to make the contrast between the science and songs even stronger, we decided we needed songs that were really familiar. So familiar in fact that a broad range of people would be able to connect to a very powerful brain system having to do with emotional memory – called the amygdala.

Talk about being manipulated!

So who is this “we” I keep referring to? The master manipulators? Allow me introduce them!

The WE in Brain Chemistry:

Darrell Grant is every vocalists dream accompanist. He listens, responds, and often anticipates my next breath or phrase like he’s been accompanying singers all his life. In fact he has. The first vocalist he backed up as a young boy was his mom. In his professional life he’s been the man at the piano for a wide range of vocalists – from jazz legend Betty Carter to 60’s pop icon Lesley Gore. Plus, he loves to sing – which means his playing serves not only the singer, but also the song. He’s a natural as collaborator and musical director for this show. We’ve had a blast working on the scripting together too. His adlibs during “workshop” performances became an integral part of the process of molding the finished script. The character he plays in the show is the perfect foil for my science/singer self. By interrupting and asking me questions and making asides about the science of love – he adds some levity and playfulness to the proceedings. We have a lot of fun bouncing ideas back and forth in “real” life too! He and I took a list of the chemicals that occur in the different phases of love and then pulled songs about them from the repertoire we’d been performing together. Over the next year we scouted for songs that we were missing. The audiences we were “work shopping” the show for added to the list as well. Songs like “Fever” and “You Go To My Head” that I’d sung a million times became new again in this chemical context.

My husband John is also a natural for this project. After all the music he’s composed and arranged for (classical, country, pop, R&B, electronica…the list of styles is endless!) he has the right musical tool kit for the job. For some of the songs, Darrell and I went to John’s studio and recorded the arrangements we’d been playing live. Then John wrote the orchestrations over them using much of Darrell’s musical vocabulary. For others, he already had an idea of how they would go and arranged them from scratch. The resulting orchestrations are humorous, harmonically rich, and strikingly beautiful. Part Nelson Riddle, part Vince Mendoza with a dash of Danny Elfman thrown in, they take the songs to another level by creating an aural palette that has a personality all it’s own.

Thank goodness he comes cheap! The orchestrations took 5 months from start to finish. It’s never the writing that takes him time – it’s the inputting of all the dynamic markings, bowings, and chord symbols that leaves Malcolm and me at home alone for nights on end. The poor man is still catching up on his sleep. This has been a true labor of love for him.

And then there’s the Brain Chemistry Band – Mike Horsfall on vibes, Gary Hobbs on drums and Kevin Deitz on bass. These gentlemen are the “professors of jazz” both literally and figuratively. They all teach at colleges in the Portland metro area  – and they all deserve Ph.D.’s in jazz having played with everyone from the Stan Kenton Orchestra to Kurt Elling, Dave Brubeck to Anita O’Day. They’re the cake AND the frosting when it comes to the show. Gary and Kevin are so solid when it comes to their sense of time, yet tastefully creative when adding their own vocabulary to the story of the song. And Mike…well, he is ALL frosting – cream cheese frosting to take the food metaphor way too far. He has a fantastic sense of humor – and a keen intellect that, when combined make for some great comping and solos.

So there you have it – the SOUND of Brain Chemistry For Lovers. The music in the show happens on “stage right”  – or the right side of the brain. The science of love is  TALKED about on “stage left” – or the left side of the brain. By the end of the show we hope to have both sides integrated and communicating with each other. Of course that’s a simplistic way of talking about the brain – but hey – this is performance art!

And what a world it is! Because of the latest advances in brain scanning technology, scientists can now look inside the brain and get a more complete picture of who we are and what makes us tick. Discoveries are being made every day that help to answer some of the questions that we humans have been asking for centuries. Questions like…

Who are we? Why are we the same yet different? Is it nature or nurture that ultimately shapes us as humans? And then there are the more pressing questions like….why doesn’t he ever put the toilet seat down? Why does she always nag about the dishes? and…why oh why can’t he find stuff in the refrigerator when it’s staring him in the face?

Ok – maybe those last few questions aren’t exactly earth shattering, but they do end up leading us to THE all encompassing question…what makes women and men so different from each other?

One book that helped to answer some of those questions for me (and that I still think about when faced with that open toilet seat) is called:

The Female Brain
by Louann Brizendine, M.D.

Dr. Brizendine is a neuropsychiatrist, neurobiologist and founder of the Women’s and Teen Girls Mood and Hormone Clinic in San Francisco CA. She knows the questions, has the tools to research the answers, and works with a ready made group of female subjects to study.

In her book, she writes about the female brain and what it undergoes as it develops from it’s life in the womb, through childhood, the teen years, childbearing, menopause and beyond. It’s fascinating stuff. I wish I could go back in time and give this to my teenage self and my new parent self. Knowing the chemical story behind what I was going through would have been helpful to say the least. But it’s still a VERY useful resource. Now that I’m in the throes of another female life “change” -  it couldn’t have arrived on my nightstand at a better time.

But I digress. Back to the subject at hand…

Though this is more of a book about the female brain than a book about the differences between the male and female brain, quite a few comparisons end up being made….

“More than 99% percent of male and female genetic coding is exactly the same. Out of the 30,000 genes in the human genome, the less than one percent variation between the sexes is small. But that percentage difference influences every single cell in our bodies – from the nerves that register pleasure and pain to the neurons that transmit perception, thoughts, feelings and emotions.”

That 1% variation manifests in many different ways. Here’s what Dr. Brizendine writes about how it makes men and women different when it comes to sex.

“The sex-related centers in the male brain are actually about two times larger than the parallel structures in the female brain. When it comes to the brain, size does make a difference in the way women and men think about, respond to, and experience sex……Males have double the brain space and processing power devoted to sex as females. Just as women have an eight-lane superhighway for processing emotion while men have a small country road, men have O’Hare airport as a hub for processing thoughts about sex whereas women have the airfield nearby that lands small and private planes…..This makes for interesting interactions between the sexes.”

Interesting interactions indeed!

These sex related differences first show up as early as eight weeks after conception. Up until then, we have unisex brains. Starting at eight weeks, a “fetal fork in the road” occurs.

“A huge testosterone surge in the eighth week will turn this unisex brain male by killing off some cells in the communication centers and growing more cells in the sex and aggression centers. If the testosterone surge doesn’t happen, the female brain continues to grow unperturbed. The fetal girl’s brain cells sprout more connections in the communication centers and those that process emotion.”

Hmmmm…..that explains a few things about gender differences. But there seem to be so many variations on this gender theme. What about the body that’s genetically male but whose brain hasn’t gotten that huge testosterone surge? What about the tom boy who never likes to play with dolls and prefers rough and tumble interaction?  Are our personalities and sexual orientation influenced by how much of these hormones are present at different stages of development when we’re in utero?

Dr. Brizendine takes a brief look at these questions, but there are others that go unanswered. Namely, what about those women who don’t bear children? Especially those for whom not having a child was a conscious choice? Female brains and bodies are hardwired for bearing children, but not all women desire to have them. What do their brains look like as they go through the different stages of life? And what about those male brains? The examples of the men she writes about don’t resemble most of the men that I know. Am I living in a bubble where only the men who are in touch with their feminine brains live?

Some scientists hypothesize that there is a continuum. While we may have male or female bodies, our brains aren’t just one gender or the other, but a mix of the two. In my next blog, Sex In The Brain – Part Two, we’ll take a closer look at this continuum through a fascinating documentary that aired a couple of years ago on the BBC called “Secrets of the Sexes: Brain Sex”.

Stay tuned!

Peace On Earth 2009 (photo by Tasha Miller)

Happy Holidays and best wishes for a New Year filled with Peace, Love and Hope…..

A couple of weeks ago, Darrell Grant and I took Brain Chemistry For Lovers to Wilf’s for a preview show. We were joined for the first time by the “Brain Chemistry Band” – the professors of jazz – Kevin Deitz on bass, Gary Hobbs on drums, and Mike Horsfall on vibes. Also appearing for the first time was the video part of the show created by filmmaker Jim Blashfield. In it, our imaginary lovers, Alice and Bob, come to life, and our “science guy” (and real life science advisor for the script), Dr. Larry Sherman, converses with us through the miracle of modern technology about the science of Romantic Love.

I was insanely nervous. Darrell and I had been “workshopping” the show for a little over a year at Wilf’s – reading from the latest version of the script – trying out new songs or a new order of existing songs. We felt like this was the perfect setting to try out the video, launch the band, and to make an attempt at doing the show from memory. Before we knew it, our little home turf “preview” (read rehearsal in front of live audience) had morphed into a performance in front of OPB’s Art Beat crew, VH1 (who had come to town to videotape an interview with John and I about NU SHOOZ for a show to air March 09), and Marty Hughley from the Oregonian.

But it turned out all my nervousness was about nothing. Just making it through the script  took all my attention, the band sounded great, and even the problems with video timing turned out to be humorous! The audience was attentive and very forgiving – we had a lot of wonderful support from those who had been with us from the beginning when the show was little more than an outline in our minds.

So thanks to those who came to see us, to Wilf’s for hosting, and especially to Jim Blashfield, Larry Sherman, John Smith, and our tech crew, Dave Caldwell and Luke Norby for making it all go.

And Marty liked it too! Here’s the link to his review.

And for those of you who missed this performance, we will be doing one more “preview” before “the really big shew” in February where we perform with the Brain Chemistry Band AND the Portland Chamber Orchestra at the Liberty Theater in Astoria and the Newmark Theater in Portland (as a part of the Brain Awareness Lecture Series). We’ll be at Wilf’s on a Saturday night – January 10th. See you then!

Here’s a paragraph from the forward:

“From birth to death, love is not just the focus of human experience but also the life force of the mind, determining our moods, stabilizing our bodily rhythms, and changing the structure of our brains. The body’s physiology ensures that relationships determine and fix our identities. Love makes us who we are, and who we can become. In these pages we explain how and why this is so.”

And of course they totally had me when I read this:

“During the long centuries when science slumbered, humanity relied on the arts to chronicle the hearts mysterious ways. That accumulated wisdom is not to be disdained. This book, while traveling deep into the realm of science, keeps close at hand the humanism that renders such a journey meaningful. The thoughts of researchers join those of poets, philosophers and kings.”

The authors have an immense appreciation for the arts and use quotes from many great artistic and philosophical minds to underline their scientific perspective. The result is a very readable and compassionate take on our most complex and important emotion – love.

Their explanation of our “triune” brain – the reptilian brain, limbic brain and neocortex – is the best I’ve read. The authors describe the evolution of these brains, how they function, and how they work together to create the unique brain that we humans possess.

Here’s a short primer on these three brain structures courtesy of Lewis, Amini and Lannon (these are edited for brevity – for the full text – please check out the book!):

The Reptilian Brain: “The oldest or reptilian brain is a bulbous elaboration of the spinal cord. This brain houses the vital control centers – neurons that prompt breathing, swallowing and heartbeat. The startle center is here too, because a swift reaction to abrupt movement or noise is the principal reason animals have brains at all. As long as the reptilian brain survives, it will keep the heart beating, the lungs expanding and relaxing, salt and water balanced in the blood. The qualities that set us apart from other animals, or that distinguish one person from another, do not belong to this archaic conglomeration of cells.”

The Limbic Brain: “The limbic brain collects sensory information, filters it for emotional relevance, and sends outputs to the other brain areas thousands of times a day…Humans beings are immersed in a sea of social interchange, surrounded by a subtle communications network that most do not notice. The limbic brain is our internal cryptographic device, allowing us to decipher a flood of complex messages in an instant.”

The Neocortex: “ The neocortex (from the Greek for “new” and the Latin for “rind” or “bark”) is the last and, in humans, the largest of the three brains….Speaking, writing, planning , and reasoning all originate in the neocortex. So do the experience of our senses, what we know as awareness, and our conscious motor control, what we know as will….Another gift that the neocortex bestows is the skill of abstraction: every task that calls for symbolic representation, strategy, planning, or problem solving has it’s headquarters in the neocortical brain.”

So what do these different brains have to do with love? Well, the triune brain presents us with some challenges when it comes to why we love, who we fall in love with, and the path our love takes. Simply put, our newest brain – the neocortex, can help us think about love, but much of what we feel when it comes to love is not under our cognitive control.

“The scientist and the artist both speak to the turmoil that comes from a triune brain. A person cannot direct his emotional life in the way he bids his motor system to reach for a cup. He cannot will himself to want the right thing, or to love the right person, or to be happy after a disappointment, or even to be happy in happy times, People lack this capacity not through a deficiency of discipline but because the jurisdiction of will is limited to the latest brain and to those functions within it’s purview. Emotional life can be influenced, but it cannot be commanded. Our society’s love affair with mechanical devices that respond at a button-touch ill prepares us to deal with the unruly organic mind that dwells within. Anything that dies not comply must be broken or poorly designed, people now suppose, including their hearts.”

OK – so we cannot control many aspects of romantic love – like who we fall in love with and why. Does this mean that we have no free will when it comes to love? Is romantic love just nature’s way of making sure our species survives?

In Brain Chemistry For Lovers we’ve tried to take a look at these questions from the perspective of both the neocortex (the science of love) and the limbic brain (the songs of love). We discuss the brain chemicals occurring in the different stages of love (activating the speaking, writing and reasoning part of the neocortex), and then bring it on home emotionally with music. Even though lyrics activate some of the verbal areas of the brain, most music “goes limbic” – that is it goes beyond the verbal centers and straight to the heart where it is felt and understood on a more intuitive level.

In “A General Theory of Love”, the authors have this to say about the limbic brain: “The emotional brain, although inarticulate and unreasoning, can be expressive and intuitive. Like the art it is responsible for inspiring, the limbic brain can move us in ways that have only the most inexact translations in a language the neocortex can comprehend.”

It’s a challenging yet wonderful experience to go from thinking to feeling and back again in the context of this show. I’m grateful to the authors of this book for inspiring me to delve even deeper into these two different ways of perceiving that so often seem in conflict with each other yet must somehow learn to coexist. It also gives me a greater appreciation for those who have used words to somehow give voice to the incredible array of feelings we have when it comes to love – so that we might be able to share our experiences, and know we’re not alone in having them.