Sound Science: Researcher Investigates How Music Alters the Mind

Dr. Yune S. Lee has seen the power of sound on the mind. While working as a composer of music for commercials, he was captivated by how the right tune can affect a listener’s mental state.

Lee traded his work in the music industry for an academic career in neuroscience, which led him to UT Dallas, where he researches how rhythm helps focus the brain’s abilities to process language.

With funding from private and public sources, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Lee hopes to find concrete neurological evidence for the beneficial effects that many people believe sound therapy can provide.

Lee, assistant professor of speech, language, and hearing in the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, recently received $200,000 through an Intellectual Property Assignment/Sponsored Research Agreement (IPA/SRA) to investigate noninvasive brain stimulation via sound to improve cognitive and sensory function.

He also has a $411,000 NIH grant to investigate the use of rhythm therapy to understand the neural mechanisms underlying aphasia, a language disorder leading to difficulties in daily communication.

The IPA/SRA funding from South Korean company Digisonic supports research on the clinical effect of binaural beats, which are achieved when slightly different frequencies of sounds are played in the left and right ears. Digisonic hopes to develop an app based on the results of Lee’s study.

“When you feed your brain two different frequencies, the brain gets confused. It tries to resolve this discrepancy and generate a new third frequency,” Lee said.

In his study, Lee will control the two frequencies played to the research subjects. He will track effects using two types of brain imaging methods on young, healthy adults.

The first, electroencephalography, will document the wave frequencies generated and identify the temporal characteristics of the brain activities that cohere with them. The second, functional MRI, adds a unique component to the study. To identify brain regions, it will measure blood flow changes in response to binaural beats that give rise to enhanced cognitive functioning.

“Combining these cutting-edge analytic techniques and neuroimaging methods, we aim to lay the groundwork on the impact of binaural beat on cognitive and language function,” Lee said.

Lee’s NIH project pursues a novel sound therapy for those diagnosed with aphasia.

“Many people with aphasia can sing words that they otherwise cannot speak,” he said. “But the neural mechanisms behind this have been largely unexplored.”

Lee hypothesized that it may be the rhythm, not the melody, in singing that enables language recovery. He has been developing a rhythm video gaming therapy app in collaboration with California-based industry partner Flint Rehab and recently completed an NIH Small Business Innovation Research feasibility project.

“The idea of sound therapy has been around since ancient times. Everybody has some kind of experience using music for relaxation, for excitement or for focus,” Lee said. “We just haven’t had the tools to try to quantify the effects of music on the brain.”

– Stephen Fontenot