Lukas Volz

Lukas Volz is a neurologist and head of the Network Plasticity Lab at the University of Cologne, where he investigates neural plasticity and the reorganization of human brain networks using neurostimulation and neuroimaging. Lukas undertook graduate studies at the Ruhr-University in Germany and was a postdoctoral scholar at the Max-Planck-Institute for Neurological Research and UC Santa Barbara.

Lukas Volz, on how attention is not monolithic but emergent, from distinct processes and physiology

The relationship between meditation—focused breathing—and wellness is well documented but the recent ‘mindfulness turn’ has seen a wider public interested in sharpening their attention. Musicians have a place in this conversation and by treating sound as an object (rather than commodity) we might further mold our capacity to listen and be present.

Lukas Volz, on audible paths towards mindfulness

Grand River

Aimée Portiolia is a Dutch-Italian composer and sound designer who records and performs as Grand River. Influenced by classical minimal music, her debut album Crescente was released in 2017 on Spazio Disponibile and her sophomore album Blink A Few Times To Clear Your Eyes was released on Editions Mego in 2020.

Richard Chartier

Richard Chartier is a Los Angeles-based artist and composer. His works explore the inter-relationships between the spatial nature of sound, silence, focus, perception, and the act of listening itself. Chartier has released music on labels including Room40, Editions Mego, and his own imprint LINE. Beyond composition, he has collaborated on installations with artists including Evelina Domnitch & Dmitry Gelfand, and Linn Meyers.

Aimée Portiolia’s “De Partage” and Richard Chartier’s “Recomposure” are two of the “mindful sonic experiences” offered by Soundworks, a new sound meditation app “without the bells and whistles—or gongs.” The software features daily sound meditations, deep listening courses, educational modules on sound, auditory cognition and the brain—all created in collaboration with artists and grounded in neuroscience.

Aimée Portiolia, on how it is difficult to be your own guinea pig

Richard Chartier, on the intended effects of his music on listeners

At the Network Plasticity Lab, Lukas Volz and team work at the intersection of cognitive neuroscience and clinical neurology, with the stated goal to advance our mechanistic understanding of neural information processing in the human brain. To achieve this goal, they design and perform experiments in neurological patients and healthy volunteers, using a multimodal combination of advanced non-invasive methods including functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), diffusion MRI (dMRI), and electroencephalography (EEG). The lab’s published research spans post-stroke cerebral reorganisation, brain stimulation, decision making, learning, and consciousness. “Our quest to advance mechanism-based clinical applications is complemented by furthering our understanding of human consciousness from a neural perspective,” state the researchers.

Lukas Volz, on the subjective experience we call reality

The mindfulness conversation entered brain-bending territory when the neuroscientist Dr. Lukas Volz pointed out that our brains construct an internal model of the world that constantly predicts what will happen next—which means that what we experience in any given moment is not what is actually happening around us. Rather, our brains constantly create their own subjective illusion of reality, which then effectively becomes our reality. How can we gain access to this internal model and improve it, so that we can in turn improve our lives? Dr. Volz suggests that sound is a way in—and that music, with its repetitive patterns and rhythms, might in fact tickle the internal model’s predictive mechanism. I found this unexpected relationship between perception, sound, and time fascinating. It lends a measure of scientific rigor to the promises of mindfulness, of course, but it also explains the primal appeal of music, more generally.