Scherpdenkers: Brankele Frank

Brankele Frank

Brankele Frank is a neurobiologist, writer, and speaker. She was born in Amsterdam in 1987 and studied in her hometown, Paris, and London. In 2025, Frank won the 26th edition of the TV program De slimste mens (The Smartest Person ). Frank grew up in a house full of music; her mother is concert pianist and renowned piano teacher Marjès Benoist. Tonight, Frank explores the relationship between music, stimuli, the brain, and emotions through personal experiences, neuroscientific insights, and music that is uniquely capable of stimulating—or conversely, de-stimulating. Take klezmer: a genre in which the clarinet can weep, laugh, and scream like a human voice. Why does this music touch us so deeply? And what does that say about how we listen to, feel, and give meaning to sound?

In a cheerful mood - how to strike a chord

Music moves us, strikes a chord, sets something in motion. But what exactly happens in our brains when we listen? How do sounds become emotions, and emotions physical sensations? And conversely: how does a musician manage to capture feeling, tension, or comfort in sound? Music can calm and disrupt, connect and release. It acts as a means of expression, a painkiller, or a stimulus bomb; it can whip us up, give us goosebumps, or carry us away into a pulsating trance. Sometimes it drowns out the world, sometimes it dampens it. What does music unleash in the human body, and why does this differ by person, moment, or mood?