Music and Brain Today

International Journal of Social Science and Humanity, Vol. 3, No. 5, September 2013 Music and Brain Today Mladen Milicevic and Loyola Marymount Abstract—The most recent research in neuroscience shows II. SIGNAL PROCESSING that the human brain “deconstructs” music patterns and then takes the elements of that “deconstruction” in order to store First, sound signals have to be separated by pitch. them in the brain’s multiple memory locations. The retrieval of Following that, speech and music more likely have to move memory from these multiple neural circuits is required in into separate processing circuits. The speech circuits will order to reconstruct in our mind the representation of those analyze the signal in terms of individual phonemes—the music patterns. The smoothness of this process is heavily consonants and the vowels, which are the ingredients of a dependent on repeated use of the same neural circuits for the given language’s phonetic system. The music circuits will similar, if not the same purposes. Increased smoothness also increases the emotional reward system and we have a deconstruct the signal and independently dissect pitch, pleasurable listening experience. This smoothness can also be timbre, contour and rhythm. These neuronal circuits link defined in terms of fulfilled expectations of what might happen. their output to the regions of the frontal lobe, which are in One of the reasons why the human brain searches for the “business” of putting it all together and making sense of previously identified and processed patterns is that such it. This is where the structural analysis takes place in an patterns can be very quickly reconstructed from the data attempt to determine if there is any structural arrangement to stored in the brain's long-term memory. Then that reconstruction can be compared with similar incoming the temporal patterning of the incoming information. The information, giving it the most pragmatic interpretation that frontal lobe circuits will then pass the information to fits the situation at hand. So the function of memory is to hippocampus processing areas in the interior temporal lobe ignore irrelevant details, while preserving the gist. This could in order to examine the brain’s memory storage, which may be “good” or “bad” music but it can more importantly be help in making sense of this auditory information. The related to the survival of the species in terms of “friend or foe.” neural circuits will try to determine if the brain has processed this (or a similar) particular sonic pattern before. Index Terms—Music, brain, cognition, processing. This “before” may be 3-5-10 years ago, or it may be one minute ago. If it is something from a “distant past,” there I. INTRODUCTION will be more than likely some kind of meaningful interpretation attached to it. If it is from the “near past,” the What do we scientifically know today about how the brain will try to figure out if the pattern may be an element human brain processes music? We do know much more than of a larger arrangement of events whose meanings are we did fifty years ago, but this is still just the beginning, and emerging right now as the brain processes these events. we have a long way to go. Let’s start with a quote from Addressing the past experiences we have to also consider Steven Pinker: the way our brain handles its long-term memory. These The major faculties of the mind, with their feats no robot memories are not stored in the brain photographically as can duplicate, show the handiwork of selection. This does intact individual events; and there are no warehouses of not mean that every aspect of the mind is adaptive. From audiotapes, albums or pictures. This is completely unlike low- level features like the sluggishness and noisiness of computer-based memory, which deals with exact neurons, to momentous activities like art, music, religion, reproductions. There has been significant disagreement and dreams, we should expect to find activities of the mind whether human memory is relational or absolute. If our that are not adaptations in the biologists’ sense. But it does memory system stores information about relations between mean that our understanding of how the mind works would events and ideas, rather than all details about the events be woefully incomplete or downright wrong unless it themselves, this would be considered a constructivist view. meshes up with our understanding of how the mind It implies that, in the absence of sensory details, the human evolved[1]. brain will construct a representation of reality based on the As we go inside the human brain and try to figure out available information. The constructivists would argue that what is actually going on in respect to music processing, we in order to make sense from the vast sonic events that enter always find out that what shaped the brain’s organization is its auditory cortex, the brain has to become a master of best understood in evolutionary terms.Perhaps the best way simplification. This process is unlike filtering unwanted to start may be by following what happens when any sound information, because such a mechanism would be enters the human ear. I will not talk about the mechanics of tremendously complicated and utterly inefficient. In how the sound wave energy gets transformed into a actuality, the brain searches for familiar devices and bioelectrical signal, but rather what the human brain does patterns[2]. It latches on to things that are in some respect when the “information” gets to the auditory cortex. already known, disregarding most of the unfamiliar information. The reason that the human (but also animal) Manuscript received April 16, 2013; revised June 24, 2013. brain is doing this lies in the fact that previously processed Mladen Milicevicis with the Loyola Marymount University Los Angeles, and already interpreted information can be very quickly USA (e-mail: [email protected]). DOI: 10.7763/IJSSH.2013.V3.281 453 International Journal of Social Science and Humanity, Vol. 3, No. 5, September 2013 reconstructed from the data stored in the brain's long-term your car. memory. Then that reconstruction can be efficiently So our memories, as exact, recorded, fixed images of the processed and compared with similar incoming information, past, are an illusion. We believe we are stable, but this is one giving it the most pragmatic interpretation that fits the of the built-in illusions of the mental system. We believe we situation at hand. So the function of memory is to ignore remember specific events, surely. Yet we don’t. We make irrelevant details, while preserving the gist. On the other them up on the fly. We change our minds all the time, from hand the record-keeping theory argues that memory is like a our estimate of the odds on a bet, to how we view our future. tape recorder which preserves all or most of human And we are unaware that the mind is doing this [3]. experiences accurately, and with almost absolute fidelity. This is very unlikely because of the inherent speed- inefficiency of memory retrieval if this would be the case, as III. MUSICAL EXPECTATIONS I mentioned earlier. One of the main principles of being intelligent is to be However, the third, hybrid approach of the previously able to have expectations and anticipate what may happen in mentioned theories is a multiple-trace memory model, the future. So, when listening to a piece of music there are which seems to make the most sense by proposing that certain expectations, which the human brain has. Violating every experience is potentially encoded in the brain’s these musical expectations would be a formation of a memory. It is not encoded in a single particular place in the musical event, which is in conflict with what might be brain, (record-keeping theory) but rather scattered in groups logically anticipated. This works along the same lines as of neurons each holding specific part of the information when the human brain operates with everyday situations about a particular memory. For example the information extrapolating common elements to multiple situations and about the structure of the organization of sonic events may constructing a framework within which to operate with them; be stored in one place, while the information about the this framework is known as schema. This information may timbre may be stored at another place, then the information allow some aspects of a future signal to be anticipated as it about under what emotional circumstances these sonic happens when we hear the first line of a familiar song. The events were originally “stored” may yet be stored in another brain’s ability to extrapolate forwards on the basis of past place. Thus, when these neuronal groups get tuned to experience is one form of that ability that we call specific values and configured in a precise way, this may “intelligence”; it can dramatically enhance an organism’s cause memory to be recovered and repeated in the chances of survival. consciousness of our minds. The main obstacle to recalling We constantly judge by comparison, and our judgment of every previous sonic experience (and for that matter any any item depends upon what we are comparing it to at that experience) does not lie in the fact that it was not moment[4]. memorized, but rather in the fact that it needs a very specific Our musical expectations for the Western music, among “trigger” to activate the memory retrieval process. So, some other things, are based on our knowledge of the musical musical “triggers” may have nothing to do with music but scales that are commonly used.

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