Neuroscience: Deep dive with Gregory Chase Part 1

In part 1 of this deep dive, Gregory Chase joins Krista and Hannah  to discuss how neuroscience can help us understand how children learn music, including structuring lesson time, the importance of first three years, and the impact of hormones on learning.

How the Brain Learns - David Sousa
Bright from the Start - Jill Stamm
Boy Smarts - Barry McDonald

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Introduction to Audiation-based Piano Instruction and Music Moves for Piano

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Want to dive into audiation-based piano instruction? Check out Music Moves for Piano by Marilyn Lowe.

Transcript

Hannah: And I'm Hannah Mayo of Mayo Piano. 

Krista: Join us as we discuss common goals and challenges in the piano studio and offer research based ideas and solutions to guide every one of your students to reach their full musical potential with audiation.

Hannah: We continue diving into the nitty gritty of audiation based piano instruction and related topics. And today we are very excited to have Gregory Chase back on the podcast. We got to know Greg a little better last season when he joined us for what ended up being a truly great discussion and we knew we had to bring him back for more.

So welcome back, Greg.

Greg: Thanks, Hannah, and thanks, Krista. It's great to be here.

Hannah: Can you just remind us where you are from and how long you've been doing audiation based piano lessons? 

Greg: I'm in Regina, [00:01:00] Saskatchewan, in Canada, and I think it was 2014 that I found out about, Music Learning Theory, and it's been since then. Yeah, it's hard to believe. I guess that's almost nine years ago. 

Hannah: You're coming up on your 10 year anniversary. 

Greg: Yeah. 

Hannah: Well, let's just get right into it. We're going to be talking about neuroscience and a lot of research today. So I would like to start with this question. What inspired you to begin

learning about the neuroscience as it relates to music and as it relates to other things? 

Greg: Yeah, that's, that's a really good question. I think the interest was always there, and so was always a perk, when I heard somebody who was lecturing or talking about how the brain works or how the brain functions or the learning process. So my ears always kind of picked up with that. I can think of three, kind of impetus, occasions where it [00:02:00] really kind of drove me a little bit more.

And so the first was being a workshop, a conference that my wife went to and she attended a professional development for teachers and it was given by David Sousa on how the brain learns. And so she brought his book home, so I eagerly delved into that to learn a little bit more about it.

The second occasion would have been in 2007, when we found out that we were going to have a son. And so by that time, I knew a bit more about the brain, but really wanted to know more, and came across the book Bright from the Start by Jill Stamm,and she's from Phoenix, Arizona. Then the third occasion would have been yet another book in conference called Boy Smarts by Barry MacDonald in Surrey, BC. So those are kind of like the three starting points. 

Krista: So you mentioned How the Brain Learns by David Sousa. How did this change your thinking or your approach to teaching? 

Greg: Yeah, well, my wife teaches in school, and so she came back from that conference, and so it's really a [00:03:00] practical book on how to organize lessons or classes of when the brain is more receptive for learning. So again, it kind of turned my traditional teaching schedule on its head, just like MLT did, so, I have all this head turning, upside down stuff happening in my teaching.

But really the brain is at its highest peak for learning or retention within the first couple of minutes of entering the lesson. So, we want to use that time for teaching new material and not reviewing old material, which is what I was doing. I mean, in piano lessons, what do we do? Start off with scales.

And so I was missing that prime time of learning. And so that prime time, it does decrease a little bit as you're going. So then that's when you can be working on things. There's a period where it is lower and so you can be reviewing things that you had learned. But then there's second prime time, it's not as high as the first one.

So then a lot of times then that's when you can start [00:04:00] introducing another concept or building upon something that you were perhaps doing in the review. If it's like making an alteration to one of the folk songs or whatever you're doing in the lesson. So that's what really helped me. Those times really depend on how long the lesson is, where the prime time is and the secondary prime time.

So I'm always kind of keeping that in mind, yeah, as I'm teaching. 

Krista: I'm already taking notes. 

Greg: Oh. 

Hannah: Well, and I, I have a follow up question already. Let's say you have a 45 minute private lesson, we'll go with that first, how would you organize a 45 minute private lesson? And then second follow up question. How might you organize, let's say, a 50 to 60 minute partner or group lesson? 

Greg: So, I'm just going to grab my book.

Hannah: We have some lesson plans coming out?

Greg: Yeah. I know we don't [00:05:00] have the visual. 

But, okay, so a 40 minute lesson, within a matter of a few minutes, you're at your prime time, and then you have about five minutes, six minutes where they're at the peak, then it'll slowly decline, to about five minutes. 22 minutes is when the downtime is, so about 22 to about 28 minutes, you've kind of got that downtime.

Then you have a slow increase to your prime time. So at about 30 minutes, 31 minutes into the lesson, you have that second prime time, which lasts a couple of minutes, and then it'll drop. And I know the viewers can't see, but that's just kind of a graph. And so there are graphs that even for 80 minutes, the downtime is going to be much longer. Again, you still get that second prime time. Yeah, but you can be doing new things.

Hannah: For those that can't see, basically the theme is you've got kind of a [00:06:00] longer prime time, and then a down time, and then a shorter prime time. Very interesting. And I've actually heard this from a lot of, music scholars as well, with lesson organization. Just recently, Vanessa Cornett, author of Mindful Musician was talking about this in a conference session.

Okay, one more follow up question. I have a pretty good idea of what I would like to be doing during the prime times, but what might you be doing in the down time? 

Greg: You know what, in the downtime, that is when I will review things that we were doing in the previous lesson. So if I assign them a piece, that's when I'm going to hear that piece. And so then, whether it's a folk song, whether it's a supplemental piece, whatever the case may be. Then what ends up happening, if there's more, or there's more learning to take place on that piece, because we've only learned part of it, well, that's what I do in that second prime time.

Is that we then learn, or if it's a folk song that they've [00:07:00] been working on, so then now are we going to learn the chord roots? Are we going to be learning an accompaniment pattern to go along with that melody? So then that's where I use the second prime time. So it's usually, for me, it's usually a follow up on the review material that I hear in that downtime. 

Krista: And when you started to organize your lessons in this way, what changes did you see in your students and in your lessons? 

Greg: The retention. They retain much more, yeah, because instead of at the end of the lesson trying to teach them something new. When their brain is totally saturated, right, because how many times do we teach a piece to a student and they may come back and say, well, I don't remember. I can't remember it.

And I go, yeah, that's my fault because I did that at the end of the lesson and I should know better. Right? Our students, as I said before, our students are our best teachers. They let us know when we're doing things out of sequence and out of the way that it should be. 

Krista: Yeah, that's totally true. So I, in my [00:08:00] lessons, I usually have the students at the beginning of the lesson stand up and move. Is that maybe not the best use of the time? Should

I maybe try to start them at the piano and teach them something new and then get up and move during the downtime? What are your thoughts? 

Greg: No, I think it is fine to do that because you haven't reached that prime time the minute that they walk in the door. You've got a little bit of leeway to go up to that prime time. So as you're getting up to that prime time, for them, for the retention, yeah, you can do the movement, you can do those various activities, or the activity time that we do in Music Moves for Piano, they're still learning.

Krista: Mm hmm. 

Greg: In the process, but we just use that to get up, to get up to those moments. 

I was just 

Hannah: thinking that feels like it actually would work really well with this idea because you're kind of like warming up the body, warming up the musical mind and kind of waking up the senses and then you land on that prime time, you learn the new [00:09:00] thing and your retention would be better. That makes a lot of sense. 

Okay. So the other, one of the other books that you mentioned was Bright from the Start by Stamm. 

Greg: Yeah.

Hannah: So what, what did you learn from that one? 

Greg: You know, as parents to be, you often fall into the craze of buying parent books and, and trying to be the best parent, I'm going to be the best parent I can. And so I noticed a few books, that caught my attention. But this definitely, I noticed this book. It was hardcover. It was just out at the time. It was expensive. I thought, oh, do I want to, do I not? Thought about it and then I went back to buy it and it was worth every cent, of it. So the book is really the simple science backed way to nurture your child's developing mind from birth to age three. And so that's just kind of the subtitle of it.

So Jill Stamm, she's a co-founder of New Directions Institute in Infant Brain Development. And really, her daughter was born four months premature. And the doctor [00:10:00] said she would never walk or talk. So she really dedicated herself to improving her daughter's life. And 32 years later, she was writing the book.

And her daughter was living proof that nearly every baby's brain has that potential to adapt, to flourish, and the right for the attention. So, again, I talked about the word potential, that they have the potential to adapt and flourish. And again, MLT, we talk about potential of learning all the time.

So once I knew more about MLT, I found there were so many similarities between the practical applications and games that she suggested in Bright from the Start, to Music Learning Theory . Like I must say that one of the things that I really liked about the book, that is it's written so that the average parent can understand neuroscience.

So the exciting thing about it is that she kind of goes through the development of the brain, at what age this is [00:11:00] developed, at what age this is developed. And so then when my son was born, I could tell which parts of his brain were developing by what he was able to do. And so it was really neat. I didn't do weird experiments with it.

I refrained. I just, I just observed as much as I possibly could. When we're born our brain is really only about a third developed from what it's going to be and then the frontal lobe, the logic and reasoning part of our brain, isn't really developed until our mid twenties. So, I mean, it takes a long time to develop the brain.

Unfortunately, it regresses the same way, from the front to the back. And that begins around the mid seventies, that we do that. So, while Jill's book really only deals with the first three years of life, I just found it to be a really fascinating read, and a book that you can definitely understand. And then some of the practical applications, even with [00:12:00] music, that she is giving, I just thought really aligned with Music Learning Theory.

Hannah: So I have this conversation a lot with, particularly piano teachers, but music teachers in general about how we budget our time over the years of a student's life and how there are certain activities that traditionally are associated with beginning piano lessons. and I'll give some examples. Like drilling the music alphabet or counting one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. These kinds of activities that if you just waited a little bit longer, the student would be more receptive to them. Their brain would be a little bit more primed for that kind of thing. So I don't even know if I'm asking a question. I just want you to validate me on this. 

Greg: That's, that's even, with psychology too. I mean, you can't force a brain to learn something if it's not ready.

Hannah: Yes. 

Greg: No matter what you do. Okay, here's, a true life experience. [00:13:00] I was working with a student on a piece, I can't remember now what it was, I'd have to look on his lesson sheet. And, so we were starting to add in the chord roots of the left hand accompaniment, and he was just struggling with it.

So after a couple of weeks, I thought, you know what, Greg, he's not ready for this. Let him be, move on, you will be able to catch up on the review when you come back to do the review of that unit. And so, there's times when we just have to say, he, she, they are not ready just yet.

Yeah, give it a break. 

Krista: And you mentioned one other book and that was Boy Smarts by Barry MacDonald. And where did this lead you? 

Greg: Okay, Boy Smarts is about mentoring boys for success at school. And so, it really, it offered real life guidance based on the growing body of research, from leading authorities, that parents and educators that we often use. So, there's lots of practical advice on dealing with individuals, [00:14:00] and how various individuals learn and behave.

I learned that you need to reframe things, and so a lot of times with behaviors, we'll see certain behaviors happening and we'll want to label it. No, switch it around and do kind of another type of reframing it. And that is even helped with Music Learning Theory, because things are reframed in Music Learning Theory of how what we learn traditionally.

So again, there was this whole reframing process that was happening, in dealing with individuals that we also get with Music Learning Theory. But probably the biggest takeaway for me was understanding the impact of hormones on brain development. Yeah, and the corpus callosum. So, because testosterone really slows things down, while estrogen will speed things up.

So, the corpus callosum is what connects the two halves of our brain. So, it's going from the right [00:15:00] hemisphere to the left hemisphere. So, in brains where there's a lot of estrogen, the corpus callosum is bigger and allows for more connections to pass from the right to the left. In the U. S. they quote that it's about 50 percent bigger, in estrogen brains.

In Canada we say it's about 30, but now there's new data out that kind of indicates that that difference is even smaller. I think the take home on that fact is that those that are higher in testosterone are going to be slower. The left brain will develop slowly and you don't have as many connections that are going from the right to the left.

So even with high testosterone, the left hemisphere is underdeveloped than the right. At the time of birth, it's really not ready to receive those neural connections. And so what the right brain does is that it tries to weave its way through and to try and connect to the left brain, but it can't because it's [00:16:00] not ready to receive, just like what we were saying earlier, it's not ready yet to learn.

So in this case, the brain isn't ready to really receive those neural connections, but those connections have to go somewhere. So what they do is they actually turn around and they come back and reconnect with the right hemisphere of the brain. And so they suspect that that is why that the brains that are high in testosterone may have problems with spelling and word puzzles because that's a left brain function.

And also with learning process challenges. And so it can be seen in fMRIs that with a brain that's high in estrogen, the lights will go on all over the brain when they're doing word puzzles and things, spelling. Whereas with a brain high in testosterone, that activity tends to be localized more to one side only, and it doesn't include everything.

Now, on the flip side, again, reframing, the brain high in testosterone is often higher in math [00:17:00] and creativity and spatial visualizations and analysis. And that's a right hemisphere function. So even my wife, I'll say to her, well, we could do this, this, and this. We could put this here, this there, that. And she goes, well, I don't know.

I can see it in my head, what it would look like, and she goes, Well, I don't see it, but I'll just trust you that it will look good. And we'll do it, and so usually there's revisions that we do. But, I mean, that's just part of that spatial visual being able to see it. And because of the more connected halves in the brain that are high in estrogen, even if there's learning problems, or even if they suffer a stroke, they will actually recover better, and improve faster than those that are high in testosterone.

So even due to that self connecting, you know, right hemisphere of the brain and high testosterone. People, they really suspect that this may be part of the reason why there are greater numbers of learning [00:18:00] disabilities, autism, and some other disorders that happen in the high testosterone brain.

But I think, after all that, the biggest thing to remember is that practice helps more brain connections to be laid down permanently. Yeah, so, we really want that encouragement and that teaching affects the shape and the power of the brain in later life.

Hannah: I'm going to ask the same question that Krista asked about one of the previous books. How did all of this information and new understanding start to shape the way you teach? And to parent also, I'm curious. 

Greg: It's the understanding. It has given me the understanding to know why I'm seeing what I'm seeing. And also the understanding of how to deal with it. For example, I may have a student, I have some students, testosterone equals movement. I'm just going to say that. And [00:19:00] so it's not uncommon that I will walk to a cupboard and my student will get off the piano bench and walk behind me.

And I'm going, what are they doing? Why are they doing that? Or we think that they're climbing all over the piano and doing everything. And it's like, no, they're learning. Even, later I'll talk a little bit more about movement, but, movement is important for learning. And so if they're moving, they're learning.

And I think sometimes we kind of miss that sometimes and don't necessarily realize that. We think that they're being disrespectful. No, they're trying to comprehend what we're doing and what we're saying. So I think it is really giving me the understanding of what's happening and why it's happening. Also has given me the understanding don't give them ten things to do at once. It's too much yeah, give them one thing at a time. Again, what does [00:20:00] that do that just falls completely in line with Music learning Theory.

Hannah: That completely explains when a student will play something at the piano and then run to the other side of the room. And you start to notice it, the first time you're like, what is happening? And then you notice it's a pattern. And then to have something that explains this pattern about why you're seeing all of your young students running to the other side of the room after they play something.

I mean, that's just really validates. So for teachers out there, if you're wondering why your students are running to the other side of the room after they play, now you know. 

I'm sure it also increased your patience. I think the more understanding I cultivate over the years, the more patience I have. And it's so funny when parents see their kids in lessons, you know, rolling on the floor, doing things that might be perceived as bad behavior. And I'm fine with it. And they're looking at me like, are you going to do anything about this? Or should I do something about this? And, this is [00:21:00] also one of the reasons why a lot of teachers prefer the parents not to be in the room or to maybe be behind a screen or in the next room over so they can still hear but not see what's going on.

 Let them, let them move their bodies in these ways that you might not quite understand because it really is all connected to the learning.

Greg: It's not uncommon that I'll have, especially with younger children, all of a sudden you might have one kid laying on the floor doing the spinning, while the rest of us are doing some other activity, but I know he's learning. He's still being able to hear and process, and that maybe the more activity that he has and the more movement that he has, is that he needs that in order to process what is happening.

Hannah: And it can be chaotic. It takes some getting used to as a teacher. It can feel a little chaotic, but the more you see the growth too, is another validation for kind of letting the chaos 

happen to a point.

Krista: And Greg, you mentioned earlier when talking about, [00:22:00] Bright from the Start that you found a lot of similarities between, that book and Music Learning Theory. So what inspired you to learn about Music Learning Theory and Dr. Gordon? 

Greg: I think what really caught my attention was when Jenna Olson came and, examined one of my pedagogy students. And so she kind of gave me her elevator speech, at the bottom of the stairs because my studio was up on the second floor. And I think what really caught my, attention is that, she had mentioned that it's based on how the brain learns and processes music.

Really, you say the word brain and you got me. I mean, it's that simple. And it was really the missing piece that I was looking for, because after reading that and after reading Boy Smart, I was going through a period of, you know, do I really want to be teaching? There's got to be more to teaching than what I'm doing because I was going the traditional route.

And I thought after reading Bright from the Start and after reading Boy Smart, [00:23:00] how can I take those practical applications and apply them to music? Well, you know, as they say, when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. And that's exactly what happened, is that I found the missing link in my teaching that I had been looking for, which was wonderful.

And I think that's really what makes Music Learning Theory and Gordon's work so unique and so vital, is that he was a musician who was interested in psychology and education. Up to this point, all the research that had been done about how we learn music was by psychologists who were interested in music and education.

So Gordon was really able to come from it at the complete opposite direction of what others had, and so then he was able to give us what we have today. As mentioned earlier, just reading The Bright from the Start and Boy Smarts, the concepts I met in Music Learning Theory really reinforced what I previously [00:24:00] read.

So I think that is why it was really easy and fast for me to accept the concepts of Music Learning Theory, as I could really interweave the two of them.

Hannah: Can you give us an example? 

Greg: Sure. So, Bright from the start, Jill Stamm, she kind of speaks to learning language, and the importance of learning it in person, and how learning through TV videos or audio recordings really do not work well in language acquisition. They found that it's just not as effective. Then, in reading Music Moves, now I'm reading Music Learning Theory, Gordon's writing, you know, the learning sequences, then we read how he really says that the most efficient and effective way to learn songs and chants in different tonalities and meters is when they're performed by a human voice. And he said, we don't really need to avoid recorded music, but it's not really going to be as supportive for learning than it would [00:25:00] be for learning speech. through the recordings. Yeah, so I mean that again, a lot of comparisons I found. Probably one of the biggest concepts from Boy Smart is that of the corpus colossum, and we were just talking about movement and what we do in MLT.

So, as mentioned earlier, that big bundle of fibers going from the left, from the right to the left hemisphere, in high testosterone brains. It's trying to find its way. We want to get those connections going. Well, the way that we can get those connections going is bilateral stimulation.

And it's actually needed. And I suspect that even some of the people who are listening right now, if you think of it, you might be fidgeting with something. Your foot might be moving a little bit. You might be doing something with your fingers. That's bilateral stimulation. Okay. So both of you. Okay. Exactly. Right. You do. Proof in point. Do you want to tell them what you were [00:26:00] just doing?

Hannah: I do this all the time. I clasp my fingers together and roll my thumbs. They call it twiddling your thumbs. I do this all the time. And Krista's doing something 

Krista: And I had taken my ring off and I was just spinning my ring around my finger. So we were both doing exactly what you said.

Greg: Yeah. So why do we do that? Because we need that movement to get that bilateral stimulation, to get those neurons going from the right side to the left side of the brain. And so we do that. Well, what do we do when it comes to teaching rhythm with students? We put the beat in our feet, and we have this bilateral simulation going side to side, right?

And that is so important. So when I read that, I just thought, wow, I know why. I know why we need to do that. It's that bilateral that stimulates that bilateral movement to get both [00:27:00] hemispheres of the brain firing at the same time and to be working together. So I just thought, oh, this is cool.

Yeah, so that's why it works. I didn't need to be convinced that it would work. I knew it would work. 

Hannah: And so many people that get introduced to Music Learning Theory are not convinced at all. So it's amazing to hear, that you were convinced and it's because of your understanding of the neuroscience research that got you there so quickly. 

Greg: Definitely. 

Krista: And Greg, what other sources did you use for understanding the brain and neuroscience? 

Greg: Well, being the geek that I am, I have a friend and she said, you don't like learning. You absolutely love it, because, she knows I'm always doing something. So it was when I was doing my master's at Buffalo one summer, I actually took a medical neuroscience course. on [00:28:00] Coursera.

I don't know if you get those notifications. Some of them are free. This one was. It was by Duke University. And I thought, I'm going to delve into this. I'm going to take this. And so it really allowed me to understand the brain and how it worked. I wasn't taking it for the purpose of being able to diagnose medical issues of the body and the brain, which is really where the course ended up.

I really wanted to know, how does the brain work? So, we looked at fMRIs, and we had to find, different parts of the brain, which are the different parts and where they are in the brain. There's some great apps. I have a great app that's a 3D of the brain. So you can, you can really go through and find where all the different things are.

I have two, three inch binders, which are just packed full of notes and lectures and, different things like that. And it's definitely something that I could revisit and refresh to deepen my understanding, but it was [00:29:00] free. And I spent the summer on it, and so then that really gave me a much better understanding of the brain itself, how neurons work, what happens, myelination. We've got, electronic, and we have, chemical neurons, and all of these other things, so it really helped me to understand the brain, and how it works, how it functions, where things are, the purpose of the different parts of the brain, which is very interesting.

They say if you take a medium sized pizza dough and you scrunch it up, that is kind of like the, cortex of your brain because you'll have the divots and everything in it. So that's about the size of our brain that we have. So that was a really great find. It was intense, but it was great. You know what? Facebook. Believe it or not. And I know when I was in one of my,doctoral courses, I gave this as a suggestion, and people said, oh, I would never have thought of that. But there's a lot of neuroscience Facebook groups. [00:30:00] What is so great about them is that you can get the research almost as soon as it's ready to be published.

So a lot of times I can have access to the research before it's even published in an article or a journal because people will publish it on Facebook first, which is great. Also ResearchGate is a group that you can belong to and you get lots of academic research and the same with Academia. Those are just two sources that I use. So I get, emails almost daily of the different articles. They know what I'm interested in, and so then I can decide do I want to download it? Do I want to read the abstract? Or, no, this is not me. Delete. Yeah, so those are kind of the sources that I use.

Google as well, right? Can't forget Google. 

Krista: Well, Greg, we're so grateful to have you in this Music Learning Theory and audiation Based Piano Instruction community because [00:31:00] there's just so much to learn with all of this that it's impossible to focus on every single facet of this type of instruction. So we are just, again, so grateful that you have done this and done all this research and continue to

do this research and to be sharing it with all of us. So we're not done, but thank you. 

Greg: Oh, you're, you're welcome. My pleasure. 

Hannah: And I just have to say that I have many posts and answers to posts in Facebook groups that I will copy and paste to my notes app. And I think that you are the most copy pasted person of everyone. Because you have all of this amazing information and it's all backed by research and it's things that you are not going to always remember because it's very detailed, but it's things you want to remember.

So I think you get the award for most copy pasted Facebook thread [00:32:00] answers.

Greg: Guys are too kind. You really are. Thank you. 

Krista: So all of this research, Greg, where has it led you? 

Greg: Into the abyss. No, but seriously though, it's really allowed me to go deeper. Because I have the understanding Of now of what I'm reading. Some things I still have to look up to kind of, jog my memory, but oftentimes as I'm reading an article, I'll annotate, I'll make notes on the margin. It's not uncommon, even when I go back and I look at an article, 'cause I'm trying to look up something, you know, and find where it is, I'll have a comment on it. This is why we do this in MLT, or this is the reasoning, that we do it. Also the research and life events have led me to understanding the importance of music and its impact on the auditory processing disorder. And again, there's loads of information on language development, developmental dyslexia, music and neuroscience. So, it has just given me [00:33:00] a much deeper understanding, of why we do what we do.

Hannah: Greg, can you tell us about some of the research studies that were the most eye opening? Did anything surprise you? Or were there any unexpected findings? 

Greg: I think one thing that really surprised me gleefully was how much Gordon's music aptitudes tests are used in neuroscience research.

Hannah: Really? 

Greg: Yes. The first time I came across that I actually had to reread it because I wasn't sure and so that really validated Gordon's work in my eyes. So now when I come across an article that interests me, a lot of times I'll read the abstract and then I will quickly flip to the resources and the bibliography to see if Gordon's name is in there. And you have to watch because there's two E. Gordons, so you have to watch. So you're always looking for the E. E. [00:34:00] Gordon, not just the E. Gordon, unless you know his writing and that's what they have referenced him as. So, I mean, I think that really validated what Gordon said, his work, in my eyes, because it is in multiple neuroscience research. Because they will use it to get a basis.

Because you have, generally in research, you need to have some sort of form of basis that you're going to start building upon. And so a lot of times they'll use his aptitude and audiation tests. You will see PMMA, IMMA, AMMA. You will see how they are using it so often when it comes to their research.

So I think that's one of the things that really surprised me, because I wasn't expecting. It was fantastic to see it because then now when people kind of question MLT on Facebook groups, I can say yes, but [00:35:00] neuroscience recognizes. And MAP the Music Aptitude Profile, I mean, that is the gold standard of aptitude tests and the world knows it.

Hannah: Were there any other Gordon nuggets scattered? Other than the aptitude testing, just by chance? 

Greg: Lots. I don't know if you want to delve into that now or later.

Hannah: And that concludes part one of our interview with Gregory Chase. What a cliffhanger. Join us next time for part two and to hear more about all of the Gordon nuggets that Greg found in the neuroscience research. Until then, thanks so much. We'll see you soon.