What happens inside the brain when we listen to music? And why can a familiar rhythm or melody affect our memory, attention, emotions, and sense of connection? In this episode of Exploring Reality, Maybe, we sit down with Edward Large, PhD, Co-Founder and CEO of Oscillo Biosciences and Director of the Music Dynamics Laboratory at the University of Connecticut.

For more than three decades, Dr. Large has studied how the brain responds to music, focusing on neural rhythms, synchronization, and entrainment. He explains how the brain’s intrinsic rhythms can synchronize with musical rhythms and how this interaction may influence processes such as memory, attention, and cognition.

Dr. Large also discusses his work with Oscillo Biosciences and technologies such as SYNG Flow and SYNG Neuro, which combine personally meaningful music with synchronized light stimulation. He shares the early research behind these approaches and explores their potential applications in cognitive health, while emphasizing that the clinical research is still developing.

But the conversation goes beyond therapeutic possibilities. Dr. Large challenges the idea of the brain as simply a computer or information-processing machine, instead exploring the brain as a dynamic physical system shaped by resonance, rhythm, and nonlinear interactions. We discuss musical surprise, predictive models of cognition, and what unexpected changes in sound might reveal about how the brain constructs its experience of reality.

From the rhythmic abilities of Ronan the sea lion to research into Vedic chanting and group synchronization, Dr. Large invites us to consider whether rhythm and resonance could help explain not only music, but also connection, consciousness, and spiritual experience. Ultimately, this episode asks us to listen to music differently—and to consider what its rhythms might reveal about the remarkable dynamics of the human brain.