Music Saved Me. Well, welcome to the Music Saved Me podcast where we explore the transformative power of music in healing, recovery, and resilience. I'm your host, Lynn Hoffman, and today we have a truly special conversation ahead. I'm so excited. It's months in the making, dare I say, maybe even years. Our guest today is Dr. Ron Hirschberg, a pioneering figure in the field of veteran mental health and traumatic brain injury recovery. He's the brain health and trauma consultant for the HomeBase program, a national nonprofit dedicated to healing the invisible wounds of war for veterans, service members, and their families. Dr. Hirschberg has been at the forefront of innovative comprehensive care that addresses these complex challenges that are faced by those who've served our country. HomeBase, a Red Sox Foundation, and Massachusetts General Hospital program has helped thousands of veterans and their families through evidence-based clinical care, wellness programs, and community outreach. And under Dr. Hirschberg's leadership, the organization has become a beacon of hope for those struggling with post-traumatic stress, traumatic brain injury, and the many challenges of military to civilian transition. Today, we are going to explore how music intersects with this vital work from music therapy and clinical settings to the role of rhythm and sound in healing trauma and the ways that music can rebuild connection, purpose, and joy in the lives of veterans and their loved ones. Coming right up, we're going to talk with the incredible Dr. Ron Hirschberg. This is an I Heart podcast. Guaranteed human. Music saved me. Dr. Hirschberg, welcome to Music Saved Me. It's so great to have you here and to meet you finally in person and get to hear about all the great stuff you've got cooking. Thanks for having me, Lynn. It's really great to be here. I love what you and Buzz are doing on this podcast. It's really preaching to the choir. So thanks. Well, it's always exciting to know how music is helping people survive and thrive, and especially with the things that you're doing. Can you just tell us a little bit about, just to start about your journey to home base and what specific role that you have seen music play in the healing process for veterans who are dealing with PTSD and traumatic brain injury? Sure. Music has been a part of my life personally ever since I was a little kid. Going into medicine in the early 2000s, there was always this sort of tug and pull about what you can do with creativity in a profession. And I got the bug to get into working with people and going into rehab medicine, which is called physical medicine rehab in a residency down in Boston. And then one thing led to another, and I started working as a consultant in neurological rehab and trauma rehab. Over the years, I've been really interested in not just how people recover from medicines and physical therapy and different types of treatments, but also what resonates with them in the arts. And one thing is clearly kind of connects with all of us as music and can do a lot of wild things to the brain and really offer another avenue for rehabilitation and recovery. I think getting towards home base in 2017, I was working in a spalding rehab and my chairman at the time needed someone to help out at home base and I'm a civilian. And I was kind of launched into the military veteran community and just fell in love with the mission and how everybody around it, no matter what you do at home base, you're all behind that single mission to stomp stigma, to help invisible wounds and really help people transition from being in the service to being a civilian. So I got involved at home base around that time and then in 2020, I was involved with General Hammond, who was, as Buzz was saying, was on this show, who's the executive director of home base, amazing guy. He and Mike Allard, who's a chief operating officer, asked me to be involved in Boston Hope, which was the COVID field hospital in 2020. And so that's really around the time I got more involved in home base and how we can help veterans with other types of therapies. So the last like five years I've been involved in some of that in the area of what we call well-being and wellness and then brain health. So that was kind of the quick journey into home base. Well, what, I mean, what made you so interested in doing that work? I mean, did you have people from the military and your family growing up or did you witness things with friends? I do have a friend that was in the Army that did go through some challenging trauma. Otherwise, no, I have a great uncle that was in World War II and I didn't grow up around the military table, so to speak, the dinner table, so to speak. Yeah, I was, I think in 2017, I was just a little bit more pulled towards it. There's something about raising your hand and doing something that's bigger than yourself that is pretty amazing. I think a lot of people in the military and families are part of a self-culture that really can not only heal in a certain way, but they heal with each other. And that was really intriguing too. It's hard not to want to help when those are so selfless that they want to help all of us. And I agree with you. My dad suffered horribly with PTSD growing up, although we didn't know what that was at the time, and it took a long, long time to figure out what it exactly was. Had I only known then that music would be so helpful, but come to find out years later now my dad's past, but I found his old CD collection, and it was just like, it was massive. I had no idea how much he loved music, so there is such a connection there. I wish I knew more. Wow. Was he in Vietnam? He was. He was a Green Beret in Vietnam. Oh, really? Special forces. So, yeah, he was involved in a lot of stuff that he very rarely spoke of. I mean, one of the things about Vietnam too, as you know, is that it's very common knowledge now that the welcome home was so poor at that. It was not a welcome that they deserved. And so, Home Base has really made a, has had a push over years to really honor all service members from all eras. So, people like who your dad, I'm sorry, your dad is passing. And thank you for your family service that honor all eras, not just the post-911, you know, younger veterans, but all types. Yeah, people see on TV all the time, all the beautiful honors and things that go on today and how much we thank the men and women who go do the work that, you know, to give us the opportunity to live the lives that we live. And I feel like we lose a lot of the information from those times. I mean, my dad was spit on when he got off the plane when he came home. These men and women were like just discarded. Like they were treated like garbage. And yeah, it's pretty cool how things have turned around and places like Home Base are starting to come up everywhere. I mean, there's a lot of good that's being done now. But it's hard. So we have to remember and tell people these things so that they know. And then working with these men and women has to be an incredibly rewarding experience, especially with music. So from a neurological perspective, doctor, what happens in the brain when someone, I've always been fascinated by this, when someone with trauma engages with music and are there particular types of, are there particular types of musical experiences that are extremely effective or more effective, especially with veterans? Yeah, you know, it's, it's really interesting because you think about the music that resonates with us as kids. And in other words, what are the, what are the types of positive memories that we have that let's say someone who's serving has had when they were between the ages of 13 and 28 or something like that. There's, it's been studied as far as like sort of where the, the area of the brain and the hippocampus shows specific memories to musical memory. And so, you know, the hippocampus, the center of the memory in the brain is actually not so far away from the amygdala, which is the, the center of fear and the response that is implicated in PTSD and stress. And so there has been a lot of thought and work around the fact that when you connect the distant memories, they may be connected to some fear responses or some positive responses. And it's kind of unclear how you can harness that to help people heal, but there really is something that is connected to memory and positive memories and negative and negative stress memories. So that's, that's part of it. And music in general, you know, neurologically affects every part of the brain. You know, when you, when you do like these fancy imaging studies and functional MRI, you see the music lights up the cortex and the top of the brain, the middle of the brain and the, you know, the, what's called the subcortical or the basal ganglia, which are the deep structures that are, that are affected in Parkinson's, the cerebellum in the back of the brain, the, the balance centers, even the brain stem has been shown to light up with certain types of music. So it's very diffuse. I think we're just in the infancy now of knowing like what types of music will help certain problems or issues. Yeah. And the stimuli, I mean, one thing we're looking at right currently, coincidentally at home base is looking at types of stimuli of different, two different types of music actually for PTSD. And we're in the middle of a study recruiting for, for veterans with PTSD that we're looking at a major minor scale, which is sort of the classic Western pop rock derivation. And then you have the Lydian scale, which is a sort of a tweak from that. I think the F sharp becomes an F major in them, in the major scale. And so we have someone working with us that has been involved in, in, in music therapy. Anyway, we're comparing these two types of stimuli to see if one of them leads to less stress. And that is this one, you know, there's so much going on on the world of music cognition and, and research. This is just one thing we're adding to the mix. So that's, that's in the research. It's fascinating. Yeah. I mean, because you think can you do mindfulness meditation practices, of course, that will help people heal, but can you also have other types of stimuli with music or visual arts that will really be effective in dampening the stress without medications or, or in addition to, you know, a medication regimen? Sharon, wouldn't that be nice? Can you imagine the day that you could prescribe music straight without any medications to interact with the body? Absolutely. Music, you know, it's really interesting because there's a field called precision medicine that, that, you know, medicine is, is really currently headed towards. And that's really tailoring people's diagnoses with the specific medicine based on their genetics and everything else. And you do wonder, you know, if music will follow that as a stimuli for different diagnoses, med rhythms is a, is an organization that, that I was involved, that have been involved in, that is a great music. Funny, I was just going to bring that up to you actually, because I believe I interviewed the gentleman in charge of Brian Harris. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, he's. That's unbelievable stuff. He's great. He's a, he's a real driven, amazing music therapist who's created a company with his friend, Owen McCarthy. And med rhythms has been very effective for stroke and Parkinson's and other, and MS. It's based on rhythm. Yeah. And it's based on the science of neurologic music therapy. So there's, there's not only like the sounds as we were talking about different types of music that, that are effective, but there's also the fact that there's something really magical about rhythm that can help people with neurologic. My mom has a friend who had a stroke. Yes. And she said that when they would get in the car, well, when they do get in the car to go have lunch and hang out together, when she puts on the music in the car for them driving to the restaurant, because she had issues with speech and coming up with the right words and stuff after she recovered. And she said, she knew all the words to the song. She sings along to the song perfectly. Yeah. But can't come up with what, you know, she'll look at the words on the page, try to, you know, order something at the restaurant and can't, you know, get the right words out. So there, there's definitely something there that's incredibly, I don't know, magical. Yeah. You see that with Alzheimer's, dementia all the time. And it's, it gets back to what we were talking about before with the hippocampus. And some of the musical memories that are preserved, that may be preserved much longer than sort of usual memories. We'll be right back with more of the Music Saved Me podcast. Welcome back to the Music Saved Me podcast. Do you have an experience like that? Maybe without necessarily identifying who it is of like a veteran whose life, whose life was impacted or his or her family's lives were impacted by music during the recovery at home base? Yeah. I mean, I think what was, what was really impactful at home base was in 2020. When 2021, when we worked with songwriting with soldiers. This is an incredible group out of Nashville. I think they've written more than a thousand songs over the years. And they are co-writers with veterans. These are professional songwriters. And we did another study, a pilot. It was a small study of 10 veterans and who wrote 10 songs, meaning one song each. We did pre and post measures of stress and coping and depression and PTSD. It was a really, it was impactful study because we did show that pre and post, they were able to show improvement with their stress and depression. However, the songs are beautiful. I can send them to you and there we have a link we can give you. And there are these sessions that we created of two hours where one-on-one in a closed door, a professional songwriter sits with a veteran and they open up. Well, the veteran, like a clean slate, will, will start talking about their experiences. And the songwriter who's been trained in trauma focus therapy will also will say things like, tell me about this. And then that word, that phrase, that's, that's the chorus or they'll say, OK, we got to work with that because when you said, I don't know, I'll just make up a word, troubled or, you know, warrior or something out like that, something will stick. And then they'll try to, they'll, they'll do words around the chorus and then create verses together. And it's a communal collab. It's a collaboration in the project, in the song. Yeah. So I mean, to your question, I, I definitely saw more than one. One comes to mind, a gentleman named Blair, who was a medic and an Air Force medic. He worked with the army in post 9-11 in Afghanistan. And he, he talks about saving fellow veterans on the battlefield, but the guilt of maybe not being able to help them medically because he also wore the hat as the, as the, the corpsman, the medic. And it was a very powerful song that he wrote these lyrics and he wound up playing it for his family members and friends. And it was very therapeutic for him because it not only is a chance to really unleash and sort of open up and get it all out with the songwriter, but it's an, it's an ongoing recorded song that they could say, please listen to this and let's talk about it. And it feels good even just to give the person like the MP3 or the link. Yeah. So, so yeah, that he comes to mind of those, there's 10 great songs. It's, it's gotta be, I've spoken to a few veterans who've worked with music like you just described. And there's gotta be also some part of it, just the process of making it, where you're focused only on it, which also I've heard many times, you know, and constantly playing music, you know, playing a three minute song, and then they're back to their problem that they were having before, but they wanted to continue to play music because it kept their mind from thinking about other things, which makes a lot of sense. It's always, music has also been a part of the military culture for a long time. I mean, there's always kick ass music playing when they're on going to a mission, something to like pump them up, inspire them, know they're doing the right thing. But it also is part of a time where it could be extremely difficult for them being at war or in the military fighting that relationship with music. How do you work with that? Because you got to navigate between music that's helping them, but also maybe might be triggering them at the same time. I think that's a great point. It's a, it is, there's a lot of memories that are like smells or sounds or sites, right? Yeah. Hearing is one of the five senses. So definitely I've talked with people that have, you know, they hear something or see something and it really does bring them back. Sometimes I guess, you know, it can be very traumatic because certainly it will bring you back to Fallujah or Afghanistan or wherever Vietnam immediately. But the flip side is it can be healing because there is a certain comfort that the brotherhood, sisterhood have with each other. And so you mentioned this in the beginning, there's something about transitions and the military world, the veteran going into civilian society, that is so much of the challenge that we see at home base. Yes, it's about depression, anxiety, PTSD, whether without substance use at times. But a lot of times it's about transitions. One thing that's very clear is that many soldiers or sailors that have been overseas have a certain type of comfort and belonging with each other. And so it's possible that you, you know, you'll hear a song or see something and it will bring them back right to the bunker where maybe you and I who haven't served overseas would be fearful. They would be comforted by knowing that that's where they are. Sort of ironically, they were sleeping the best, they were happy, which is kind of a hard thing to grapple with sometimes. Sure is. I mean, and in a way, when you think about it, I mean, of course, that's the worst of the worst, war, fighting, you're trained to be a machine, really. But in general in life, we do go through a lot of transitions that we're not prepared for. Parenthood, retirement, transitioning into different roles in your life. So I would imagine that in general, whenever you're moving in out of something that's big into something that's big in your life, you're going to need some help. And why can't it be music? Yeah, no, I totally agree. You know, it should be part of the whole transition program. Let me ask you, what gives you hope in this work? And if you could share one message with veterans who may be struggling right now or anyone who may be struggling right now about the potential for healing through music and comprehensive care, what would that be? I would say that although it sounds cliche, there's a lot of hope out there for people that are having a really tough time and that they're much less alone than they think they are. Is music going to be the answer? Of course not. But is it part of the answer? I think that the arts and music can really do something to use your word again, magical, that medicine can't and therapy can't. And I think that we're getting to a point where creativity and the arts can really be a wonderful complement to traditional therapy. And what I'm sort of, what I'm thinking about here is the roughly 22 or more suicides a day that our veterans, it's roughly one an hour every single day. There's a veteran that takes his or her life. It is a really sobering statistic. We're not there yet. I don't know when we will be, but I really hope that music and the arts will be part of that healing journey that really takes people back to their youth. It is something that can be kind of becoming a force for people. And hopefully, like we were saying before, there'll be some precision medicine and music where we can really look towards trauma and towards some of those very dark regions of depression that music can be part of at least in addition to everything else. So that's a beautiful hope. And yeah, and I second that. And I know probably everyone I know would agree with you on that. And speaking of creativity, I heard, and if you're willing to talk about it, if not, I won't, but I heard you were working on the arts, a new documentary. Can you tell us a little bit about what you're working on? Oh, yeah, I mean, I love to. I'm a little over my head. I definitely, it's the first one I've done. And I'm excited. I'm speaking of music, working with an amazing musician named Vadim Nezolovsky, who's a pianist who's at Berkeley School of Music. The film is a short film that's going to be about a half hour. I was inspired by going to Ukraine with Homebase actually in March, looking at Invisible Wounds and partnering with the psychologists and physicians there. And we saw many soldiers and families and one soldier named Sasha in particular, I got to know, I met with him in his room and he happened to be a professional ballet dancer. And he's, you know, for, he's 40 years old or so and grew up in the ballet. And when the full scale invasion happened in February 2022, he's married with a daughter. They were all in Kiev, but he was in Paris at the time on tour with the Kiev City Ballet. And he got the news and said, he raised his hand and said, I'm going to the army. And he joined the military and Sasha, you know, went through as an artist. He was, he's always been a soloist on stage as a principal dancer. It follows his story into the battlefield where he's injured by a, one of those, you know, other drones that are becoming more and more scary overseas. So he's, he's psychologically affected by this drone and he goes and he gets help in that hospital that we met and recovers and then he goes back to fight. And so yeah, for the last, six months I've been involved in this and I have a whole team of people and even my daughter who's 17 is my production assistant, you know, and, that's wonderful. Yeah, I'm excited. So we'll have the trailer out soon and, and yeah, it gets into the sort of that same, the same kind of path of we're talking about is arts and healing and I'm really thrilled to have the opportunity to do it with home base and with, you know, with this, with this crew of people. I'm excited for you. You know, these aren't easy things doing, forget about the, the topic of what you're dealing with, but then producing a documentary as I'm sure you're finding out isn't, it's not as easy as you think. No, no. There's a lot of moving parts and a lot going on. Yeah, no, it's such a learning process. I have a great editor, ADNS, my cousin who's a producer and a film professor, Jeff Hirschberg. So we've got two Hirschbergs on this and my daughter, so a third. So we call it Dear Mountain Pictures, which is Hirsch is deer and Berg is mountain. So, and the name of the movie, that's all a family affair or everything. What's it called? The name of the movie is Standing Up Against the Sky and yeah, I'll definitely let you and Buzz know what it's going out. Yeah. Please. Oh, let me ask real quick, is AI involved in any of this studies and advancements in using music with artists? That's a great question. You think that will have anything to help with? It's, I hope that, I think it will in sort of the healing process. It's already, you know, we're already seeing how AI is literally writing songs like in a minute. Yeah. It's going to do some pretty great things. I think it's going to do some scary things too. Of course, is putting people out of business artists, which is a little bizarre. Will it hopefully help with that prescription? I don't know. I think you're onto something, Lynn. That's pretty cool. I hope so. I always try to look at what the positives are and there's just so many. I mean, I'm thinking like blind people will see, people without appendages will walk. You know, just, I can't, you got to focus on the positives, right? Because the negatives are, there's just way too many of those. I know. That is really exciting. Dr. Ron Hirschberg, it is so amazing to meet you and chat with you about all of this stuff. Likewise. I'm honored to have had you on and keep doing what you're doing. And please come back and let us know when you've come up with exact prescriptions. I know. We all need it. Then we'll be in the next phase of everything. Good luck with everything at home base. And please tell the general we said hello. I will. I will. Absolutely. Thanks so much for having me on. Thank you.
