Music

Why is music so important to us? Why does it move us so deeply? Why do we spend a lot of money to buy it, hear it live and on instruments to play it? Why can some particular types of music lift our spirits and intellect, while other types leave us cold, disgusted or numb? And how can the same type of music have one effect on one culture or individual, while on another it has the direct opposite effect?

These are all interesting questions. Combining neuroscience with music research has unlocked some of the secrets of how the brain reacts and perceives music. Study of evolutionary history and psychology gives clues to how and why it developed in the first place.

Music appears to stimulate many separate portions of the brain all at once. Some neuroscience studies have shown that accomplished musicians have a much larger number of connections in the cerebullum. Rhythm appears to stimulate more primitive and ancient portions of the brain whereas melody and tonality tend to stimulate more cognitive portions of the brain.

In the musical performer even more areas are stimulated to account for the manual dexterity needed to play an instrument. Of course, the performer is also listening to the music being played as well as anticipating upcoming phrases at mostly a subconscious level. Improvisational music adds yet another generative dimension as music is being composed on the spot. So, the anticipation is of that which has not yet been conceived, perhaps other than a general target of where the current phrase is going or some kind of loose connection to what was recently played.

One theory of how music came to be proposes that it was a parasite on the development of language. From this perspective, language was an evolutionary adaptation and music shared some of the same characteristics of language development including the ability to vocalize complex sounds and variations. Another common characteristic between language and music is the creation of a mental framework that facilitates understanding of a particular culture's language or music. Foreign musical traditions are more difficult to understand beyond an intellectual level because of the lack of framework that is missing from early childhood development. Language is similar and broad exposure to language or music at an early age increases the likelihood of fluency in a broader range of either.

Hearing music can stimulate past memories long dormant or create new abstract destinations in the mind. Stimulation of past memories is intriguing from the perspective of how memories are stored. Oversimplified, memories are broken into many different bits throughout the brain's neural network. When a memory is stimulated, the memory is generated by an "immediate" construction of the memory in its entirety.

Using a computer analogy, suppose a memory consists of 100 bytes of data. This data is broken into 800 bits and "held" as neural energy in various parts of the brain. The memory stimulation results in the 800 bits being immediately reconstructed into the "original". The recollection must allowing for the usual time distortion. IOW every time a memory is recalled, it is changed to some degree. The act of recalling it changes it in some way. This is eerily similar to the way Quantum Physics shows that observation of a physical "event" changes that event - we create our Reality every nanosecond. But, I digress.

Music has always been a significant part of my life and will always continue to be so. There is so much more to say about the historical, neurological, psychological and spiritual realms. Maybe in future posts.

Check out the book, "This is your Brain on Music" by Daniel J. Levithin for much more detail.