2. BRAIN BASICS Think about the best singing experience of your life: it may have taken place in a performance, a voice lesson, or just driving around town. Can you remember the euphoria you felt when, suddenly, everything worked the way it should? This state of effortless flow is what you are seeking every time you open your mouth to sing. And yet, no matter how vocally skilled you get, there are inevitably days when singing feels challenging. The issues you experience on a “bad voice day” may not be noticeable to those who hear you, but you’ll be aware that you’re not at the top of your game. If you know how well you can sing, why isn’t it perfect every time? The reason is simple: humans are survival-based organisms. Staying alive is more important than performing well. The majority of your brain doesn’t care if you can float a high C; it cares that you survive the attempt. On a subconscious level, your brain is constantly assessing your environment for threatening signals. Is that person walking toward you friendly or crazy? Do you hear the sound of fireworks or gunshots? Are you smelling a cozy bonfire or a forest ablaze? These assessments occur in an ancient, reflexive part of your nervous system that we will call the first brain (Fig. 2.1). This first brain, which includes the brainstem and the cerebellum, is always asking the question, “Is it safe?” Let’s say you’ve been struggling to belt a high note without strain. One day, all the stars align, and it happens. When it finally comes out of your mouth, you’re not even sure how you got there, but you think, “Yes! I’ve figured this out!” The next day, you get up and vocalize, excited to go for the same phrase again. It cracks. You sing it again. It cracks again. You’re crestfallen; you can’t understand how your voice can be so inconsistent. From a neural perspective, this inconsistency makes sense. The lion’s share of your brain isn’t interested in high-level performance. It’s invested in keeping you alive right this second, not tomorrow or twenty years from now. Depending on the health of your nervous system, your first brain may have even interpreted the novelty of your big, beautiful note as a threat. The next day, when you approached the same phrase, it may have impaired the coordination of your vocal folds to dissuade you from ever trying that freaky thing again. So, what can you do about this? How do elite performers get around the brain’s survival mechanism to consistently sing their best? The first step is to understand threat and how the nervous system responds to it. THE THREAT BUCKET Have you ever felt like you were going to die when performing a song? On the one hand, it’s ridiculous; clearly, no mortal danger is going to come from going flat on the last note of “Bring Him Home.” On the other hand, the feelings of dread that can creep up as you approach a problematic vocal passage can feel real and terrifying. From your nervous system’s perspective, there may not be much difference between falling down a flight of stairs and nearing the climax of “She Used to Be Mine.” Both situations can produce a threat response. Threat is anything your brain thinks might be dangerous. As you go through your day, your brain is looking for patterns and making predictions based on what it perceives. When new information enters your field of awareness, the brain compares this novel stimulus to previous experiences and to what is expected in this environment. If you see a deer in the woods, you may marvel at the beauty of nature. If you see one in your kitchen, some different thoughts will probably arise. Based on the clarity of its predictions, the brain can react to potential threats as vehemently as real ones (e.g., performance anxiety). One of the goals of brain-based training is to improve your nervous system's predictive capacity. To form accurate plans, your brain needs trustworthy information and proper fuel, and all of your body systems need to participate. Erroneous data from any area can increase threat and degrade performance. Some things that can make prediction difficult are: • Lack of sleep • Injuries that haven’t been rehabbed completely • Dehydration • Underdeveloped motor control/weak muscles • Poor dietary choices • Issues with vision/hearing/smell/taste • Stress • Lack of sensation/numbness in areas of the body You probably read at least a couple of those items and thought, “Yeah, that’s me.” Maybe you’ve worn glasses since junior high, or you’ve sprained your ankle three times, and it still bothers you. When these issues begin to compound with other stressors, some nasty consequences can show up. Let’s imagine that your brain has a container in it called the threat bucket (Fig. 2.2). The level of water in this metaphorical receptacle reflects the total amount of threat coming your way. Didn’t sleep well last night? Threat increases, and the bucket starts to fill. Got up too late to eat breakfast and grabbed a donut as you ran out the door? More water in the bucket. Your train stalled underground for a half-hour and made you late to work? Now the level is rising fast. As threats start to accumulate in the bucket, your first brain will begin to get very scared; it believes that if the water reaches the top, you could die. So, it will create a spigot, and liquid will drain out in the form of some kind of output. Some of the possible threat-bucket outputs are: • Pain • Sickness • Breathing problems (asthma/ allergies/reflux) • Fatigue • Anxiety/depression • Loss of flexibility (physical or vocal) • Poor balance/dizziness/motion sickness • Migraines • Hormonal problems Nothing on this list is very much fun. But from a neural perspective, it makes sense why your first brain might give you these outputs. If you’re in mortal danger, the best strategy to keep you alive may be to stop moving. Think of an antelope and a lion on the African plains; if the predator gives chase, the prey will attempt to flee. If the lion succeeds in capturing the antelope, the animal will go into a state of shutdown, basically playing dead. This ancient reflex is based on the hope that a sudden change in vital energy will be enough to create a brief distraction, allowing a final possibility of escape. If you have ever had migraines, chronic fatigue, or frequent illnesses, you can understand how hard it is to move in the throes of these maladies. Even though there is no lion with its jaws around your neck, your threatened first brain reacts like that of the captured antelope. It thinks that the pain, illness, or fatigue it’s giving you is necessary for your survival. Performers are especially prone to threat-bucket outputs that are outside the realm of body pain. Almost all professionals have had to go onstage injured at some point, ignoring the brain’s advice to stop moving. If the signals continue to be disregarded, the brain may think, “Wow, I gave you a ton of ankle pain, but you still tapped in 42nd Street every night for weeks. Since pain didn’t work, it’s time to try something else to keep you still.” It may hinder your immune system, give you depression, or mess with your hormones. Unresolved high threat eventually leads to a shutdown of some sort. To avoid these unpleasant outputs and sing your best, you have to lower the level in your threat bucket. This is why many other body systems beyond your two little vocal folds can have a substantial impact on your voice. Threat levels can be reduced through improvements in the following systems: • Movement maps (moving your joints through a full and controlled range of motion) • Sensory capability (e.g., vision, hearing, taste, smell, touch) • Balance • Respiration habits One of the goals of this book is to help you discover drills that lower threat in your singing and your life. NEUROPLASTICITY The term neuroplasticity refers to changes in brain structure or function that are either directly measured in individual neurons or inferred from measures taken across neuronal populations (Fig. 2.3). In essence, it means that the brain can change. You wouldn’t be reading this book if you didn’t believe in this concept: education is neuroplasticity in action. Until fairly recently, it was thought that neuroplasticity was exclusively the claim of youth. We now know that to be untrue, and that your brain can and will change until the day you die.1 Neuroplasticity isn’t good or bad; it just is. You can make positive plastic changes that improve performance and reduce pain, but you can just as easily have negative plasticity. Here’s an example: Maybe you found a song that you learned and fell in love with; everything felt smooth, and the words seemed like they were written for you. When you took this winning new tune to an audition, you forgot to give a proper tempo, and the accompanist played too slowly. The dragging pace led to a lack of breath coordination and a cracked high note, which made the director involuntarily wince. Ugh. The next thing you know, your new favorite song goes in the garbage; the negative plasticity of the performance experience would make singing it again too painful.