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But this wonder drug isn’t a drug. It’s altruism and compassion, a team of experts in the benefits of helping others told a crowd at an event co-presented by Kaiser Permanente at the Goethe-Institut Los Angeles.

Stephen G. Post, bioethicist and founder of the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love, pointed to a United Healthcare study that found that 68 percent of people who regularly engage in volunteer work reported that volunteering made them feel healthier. An even higher percentage—73—said that volunteering made them feel less stressed. And another study of Alcoholics Anonymous members, conducted by Post’s team, found that helping others could even have positive effects on a complicated mental and physical issue like alcoholism. “You double the likelihood of recovering from alcoholism in a one-year period if you’re helping other alcoholics at a significant level,” he said. It’s good to be good, said Post—and the science agrees.

David Levinson, who founded L.A.’s Big Sunday volunteer program, said that he’s seen these effects anecdotally over the years. As a screenwriter “stuck in development hell,” he got involved helping others as a form of self-preservation as much as for altruistic reasons. He said that most people want to help others but often don’t know where they’re wanted and needed.

Lisa Aliferis, KQED health editor and the moderator for the evening, introduced James Doty as “a neurosurgeon who preaches compassion.” How did this unlikely juxtaposition come about?

Doty said that people tend to think of neurosurgeons as arrogant, brusque, and rude because of the highly competitive, highly demanding nature of the job. “All of those statements are absolutely true,” he joked. But he’s been fascinated by kindness since he was a child growing up in poverty; he noticed even then that some people of means or in positions of power were blind to people’s suffering, while other people with nothing would help in any way they could. With the support of the Dalai Lama, he founded the Stanford University Center for the Study of Compassion and Altruism Research and Education.

Aliferis asked the panelists if even reluctant volunteers can reap the benefits of altruism.

“Absolutely,” said Post. The key is to “do something in an area you feel called to, do something that draws on your strengths, and don’t go overboard” by trying to do too much. Even an hour or two a week can make an impact.

The elderly can benefit from helping others just as much as adults or children can benefit; studies have shown that assisted living centers with volunteer programs have lower rates of both depression and mortality.

Aliferis asked if it’s altruism in itself that offers these benefits, or if the benefits might be the byproduct of being more out and about and active.

Doty said that physical activity isn’t part of the equation at all. “You just have to be passionately engaged and feel that the activity you’re engaged in is of value,” he said. In fact, compassionate behaviors have been shown to offer as much benefit to our bodies as getting exercise or being your ideal body weight. Plus, altruism is free.

Pointing to a UC Berkeley study that studied the same people over eight decades, Post said that the 12-year-olds who said they wanted to do something with their lives to help others were healthier throughout, and lived longer too. “It provides a protective halo over their lives that follows them all along,” he said.

Doty said that scientific research on this subject is important, especially from secular organizations. But it only matters if the intellectual research turns into action, and the research instills in people the value of engaging and creating community.

In the question-and-answer session, an audience member asked if the reason someone volunteers matters if the end results are the same.

It’s fine, said Levinson, if you want to look good or feel good; Big Sunday participants range from nuns who’ve devoted their lives to others to people volunteering because their probation officer told them to—and everyone in between. “You go into it for one reason, and different reasons appear to you as you continue on,” he said.

Doty said that he asked the Dalai Lama the same question—does the intent matter if the endpoint is good? The Dalai Lama said the reason is irrelevant as long as you’re doing something for others—unless, that is, you’re a Buddhist.

Post said that he agrees, but thinks it’s still important to keep the value of helping others at the forefront.

A teacher who works to instill compassion and kindness in young children asked how to do the same for adults. Doty said that it begins with the concept of self-compassion—recognizing and understanding your own suffering. You can’t reach out to other people unless you see it in yourself. The next step is identifying what you love and are willing to sacrifice for—and then extending that feeling continually outward.

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It all started with what Marcus called “the dumbest video game on the planet”: Guitar Hero. It’s a game that’s “very easy for ordinary people,” said Marcus, “but for people with rhythmic impairments it’s not so easy.” All the game requires is pressing the right button at the right time as colored dots slide down the screen. Yet the game was torture for Marcus, and even more so when the virtual crowd started booing. (“I became very familiar with that phenomenon,” he said.)

Marcus discovered he had no sense of rhythm when he tried to learn the recorder in fourth grade. “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” said Marcus, “became my Waterloo very quickly.” His teacher dropped him after just two lessons.

This time around, things were different. With some encouragement and feedback from his wife, Marcus got better at Guitar Hero, eventually making it all the way through Foghat’s “Slow Ride” without the crowd booing. The game was a “gateway drug” to the real thing: “I decided I was going to spend the last two weeks of the summer trying to become musical,” said Marcus. “I practiced for six hours a day, and by the end of the two weeks, I sort of started to sound faintly musical.”

Marcus studies how children learn language and explained that scientists used to think there was a “critical period” during which children must acquire certain skills–either before age three or before puberty. But they later discovered this wasn’t set in stone and that it is possible for adults to acquire languages later in life.

Marcus was struck by Stanford biologist Eric Knudsen’s studies of barn owls, who navigate in the dark by using an internal map of the visual world. Knudsen distorted the perception of a group of owls by 23 degrees with a prism. The younger owls adjusted easily, but the older owls were unable to adapt. However, in a later study, when the older owls’ perception was adjusted incrementally, by just six degrees at a time, they too were able to make the same adaptation.

Marcus applied this idea to his guitar practice, focusing on learning just one or two chords at a time. He approached the guitar from an engineer’s perspective, trying to understand what made learning difficult.

Marcus spoke with guitar teachers about strategies that worked with their students. A Suzuki Method teacher told him that practice at home is more important than what happens in the classroom. She tells parents not to correct their children until they’ve made the same mistake three times, in order to create an environment where children and parents aren’t at odds. Another teacher told him that she has her students play the songs in their head on the subway away from their instruments–and to start from the middle of the song rather than the beginning so they can develop a sense of where they’re getting stuck and overcome any difficulties.

At a rock ’n’ roll summer camp where Marcus played with 11- and 12-year-olds, he discovered that although the kids were faster on their fingers, he had the advantage of knowledge gleaned from listening to music over many years.

Before the question-and-answer session, Marcus joined fellow guitar players Barrett Tagliarino–who had opened the evening by playing two songs solo–and Greg Bryant for a brief jam session. An audience member asked how long it had taken Marcus to learn the song. It was an improvisation, he replied–so either three minutes (about the length of time they’d rehearsed earlier in the day) or three years (Marcus’s total guitar experience).

The audience also asked Marcus how music impacts his mood, and what he discovers about his body, and the mind-body connection, when he plays.

Playing music “definitely puts [my mood] up,” said Marcus, who thinks people listen to and play music as a form of self-medication. Guitar has also made him much more aware of his body. For the first time in years, he’s riding a unicycle again–and he’s better than he was in college, he thinks, because he’s more aware of his body thanks to the guitar. In addition, guitar teaches you better posture–and improves your rhythm. At a wedding a few months ago, Marcus even managed to dance in time with the music. “For the first time in my life, people actually complimented me on my dancing,” he said.

There’s also a rush that comes from learning something new on guitar–the same “joy of discovery” and hit of dopamine that Marcus experiences when he learns something new in science.

But he cautioned that adults can be their own worst enemies when it comes to learning a new skill. “Older people have to cut themselves slack and often don’t,” said Marcus. They want to sound like Santana the first time out, whereas kids can enjoy the process rather than focusing too much on the end result.

Watch full video here.
See more photos here.
Buy the book: Skylight Books, Amazon, Powell’s.
Read music and gaming experts’ opinions on what we’ve learned from Guitar Hero here.
Read more from Kaiser Permanente on how music can improve mood here.

*Photos by Aaron Salcido.

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Guitar Hero, Rock Band, and numerous other immersive games have connected people to music in a new way. Some have even found themselves tapping into musical reserves they didn’t know they had. In advance of “What Music Does To Our Brains,” a Zócalo event, we asked several people in the world of games to offer some thoughts on the impact of Guitar Hero and the like. What have we learned?

We’ve learned about our own hidden talents and enthusiasms

Video games are incredible learning tools. Every video game is a virtual world with rules different from our own. Even in the most realistic of games, things behave differently from how they behave in our world, so players must discover how things work. Some video games teach skills that don’t benefit gamers’ lives, but music video games are different. All music games, whether they are about dancing, rapping, or playing a simplified instrument, teach the core fundamental of music: rhythm.

Although most music has elements of pitch, music requires rhythm. Since percussive instruments don’t require pitch, many music games are great at teaching gamers how to play percussion. There are games that are controlled with bongos, congas, maracas, taiko drums, and drum sets that all give players valuable experience playing those instruments. In addition, Rocksmith and Rock Band 3 can teach gamers how to play a real guitar.

Many musicians are disappointed that some games like Guitar Hero don’t educate players about performing on a real musical instrument. Even so, those games are great at revealing to gamers the joy of performing. Often, by playing music games, players discover that they have musical skills. This can lead to an interest in learning how to play actual instruments.

Even the Cro-Magnons had musical instruments, so music has been a cornerstone in human culture since the very beginning. Modern technology has allowed us not only to present the joys of music in new ways but also to create new ways to perform. Upcoming games like PixelJunk 4am and Fract OSC use game style interfaces to create music. Gamers who might be intimidated by traditional instruments may be surprised to discover how much they enjoy expressing themselves musically through these games.

Matt Gilgenbach is co-founder of 24 Caret Games, an independent game studio that is creating the rhythm game Retro/Grade. He’s been professionally developing games for 9 years and has shelves full of almost every musical instrument used for a game interface.

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We’ve learned about the visceral power of making music–even vicariously

A few years ago I interviewed a player who made an intriguing distinction between playing Rock Band and playing a first-person shooter like Halo. “There’s a big difference between pressing X and having someone shoot someone else on the screen, and pressing X a couple times and successfully putting out a guitar riff,” he said. “Even though you haven’t actually put out the guitar riff, the game makes you feel like you have. Maybe in some sense, it’s not real creativity: it’s you doing what the game wants you to. But the feeling you get inside–it makes you feel like you actually played the song.”

It took me a while to understand what he meant, but I think it comes down to this: shooting another character in a video game doesn’t put a real bleeding corpse in your living room, but pressing buttons or hitting drum pads on game-controller instruments does bring forth real music.

Player after player has explained to me that his or her Guitar Hero and Rock Band experience “feels real” or “feels creative”–and it’s worth noting that most of these players are also musicians. My research suggests that the “realness” of the musical experience in these games is constituted in two ways: first, through players’ respect for the aesthetic quality, technical difficulty, and emotional power of the original recordings coming out of the speakers; second, through the games’ capacity to inspire the visceral feeling of making music. Players are collaborating with game designers and recorded musicians to stitch recorded musical sound and performing bodies back together. The satisfactions of this endeavor aren’t necessarily undermined by the fact that the player doesn’t occupy the same performing body as the person who first produced the music. In short, these games teach us that virtual performance can generate visceral musicality.

Kiri Miller is the Manning Assistant Professor of Music at Brown University. She is the author of Playing Along: Digital Games, YouTube, and Virtual Performance, recently published by Oxford University Press.

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We’ve learned how to reconnect with our creations

In the recent decade, the rise of digital music distribution–while greatly increasing public access to cultural goods–has made it harder for the artist to profit from his or her creative labor. With streaming music services such as Spotify, musicians make fractions of a cent with each sale of their product, and breaking into the “mainstream” music industry becomes much more difficult. In this context, musical games have emerged as an experimental space in which both professional and amateur users engage in an imagined stage performance to create a personal connection to their creative work. Guitar Hero, Rock Band, and other popular musical game franchises have provided a social forum in which gamers experience creative labor immediately and immersively, without the perceived threats and limitations of the so-called “real world.”

In virtual games, the player is neither fully immersed in the game nor completely outside of it. There is no “magic circle” to contain the space of gameplay. The distinction between real and virtual is blurred, becoming a continuum. Here, the music industry becomes just one potential creative space among many, allowing creators to interact with their creative products in many new ways, outside of what used to be seen as fixed economic structures, to see possibilities over “realities.” Musical video games allow the user a much more “human” and personal approach to creative work. They create a virtual space that allows them to reclaim parts of themselves that are repressed or threatened by the economic pressures of the “real” world.

Mike D’Errico is a graduate student in the UCLA Department of Musicology. As an electronic musician and producer, his interests include production techniques in electronic dance music, chiptune and video game music, and the ethics of virtual performance.

*Top photo courtesy of fiskfisk. Photo of Mike D’Errico by Matt Salinder.

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