Music and the mind
Music can have an overwhelmingly strong hold on the human mind, dramatically swaying our emotions and evoking memories. How come? The new issue of Scientific American Mind surveys recent research on music and the mind. For example, the power of music may come from its influence on regions of the brain responsible for language, feelings, movement, and other unrelated systems. It could also be an important vehicle for emotional communication and connection from which societies emerge. The article looks at studies supporting such theories. From SciAm Mind:
The musical tongue may also transcend more fundamental communication barriers. In studies conducted over the past decade, cognitive psychologist Pam Heaton of Goldsmiths, University of London, and her research team played music for both autistic and nonautistic children, comparing those with similar language skills, and asked the kids to match the music to emotions. In the initial studies, the kids simply chose between happy and sad. In later studies, Heaton and her colleagues introduced a range of complex emotions, such as triumph, contentment and anger, and found that the kids’ ability to recognize these feelings in music did not depend on their diagnosis. Autistic and typical children with similar verbal skills performed equally well, indicating that music can reliably convey feelings even in people whose ability to pick up emotion-laden social cues, such as facial expressions or tone of voice, is severely compromised."Why Music Moves Us"
Recently, in a clever experiment, acoustics scientist Roberto Bresin and his co-workers at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm garnered quantitative support for the idea that music is a universal language. Instead of asking volunteers to make subjective judgments about a piece of music, scientists asked them to manipulate the song—in particular, its tempo, volume and phrasing—to maximize a given emotion. For a happy song, for instance, a participant was supposed to manipulate these variables by adjusting sliders so that the song sounded as cheerful as possible; then as sad as possible; then scary, peaceful and neutral.
The researchers found that the participants—expert musicians and, in another study, seven-year-old children—all landed on the same tempo for each song to bring out its intended emotion, be it happiness, sadness, fear or tranquility. These findings, which Bresin reported at the 2008 Neuromusic III conference in Montreal, bolster the idea that music contains information that elicits a specific emotional response in the brain regardless of personality, taste or training. As such, music may constitute a unique form of communication.
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I've come to think of music as the mathematics of emotion, and these studies seem to support that. It would be very interesting to do some studies with folks from a variety of different cultures.
This reminds me of Neal Stephenson's Anathem, which hints at something very much like both the post and YRI's comment.
I just finished Oliver Sacks Musicophilia.
I suggest it to all those who still believe music perception is only related to hearing and audible experiences. It is not.
And if we read news about things like
35 thousands years old flute (http://sopekmir.blogspot.com/2009/06/35-thousands-years-of-music.html)
we no longer think of music as an "entertainment"
Oliver Sacks had a very good interview about Musicophilia on the Colbert Report a couple of weeks ago. Fascinating stuff; they were discussing whether music or language came first in the human timeline, or if they developed simultaneously.
Many years ago I sat thru a sermon about how rock n' roll is the devil's music, reminiscent of primitive jungle drums and voodoo and such. I can only credit that red-neck putz for getting me thinking:
Healthy, young people want some fast action, as in sports and adventure- things that make the heart beat real fast- boobidy boobidy boobidy.
Old people are more inclined toward peaceful, gentle melodies to relax to, often bearing the scars of fast action gone wrong.
We grew in momma's womb listening to the rhythm of her heart, even feeling her pulse throbbing. I suspect that that's why we are so fond of rhythm, and why young people (and me) like it fast and rockin'.
Some birds have a broad range of sounds they can make, like we do, but seem to lack rhythm. Maybe because they don't get rhythm in an egg.
it disturbs me to think that something which has such a powerful effect on the mind has been corporatized, cookie-cuttered, distilled into the junk is listened to by so many millions of "fans" across the country.
this study should be used as a strong argument against all of the strict copyright laws and other legal devices used to keep music in the same form which characterizes processed food.
our misunderstanding persists in your first paragraph:
"regions of the brain responsible for language, feelings, movement, and other unrelated systems"
apparently they ARE related, and we can experience that relationship in music.
from the post - "... music can reliably convey feelings even in people whose ability to pick up emotion-laden social cues, such as facial expressions or tone of voice, is severely compromised."
I'm glad someone noticed and documented this.
They hinted at it in the article, but didn't go into the depth I would have liked to see about cross-cultural reactions to music. Those accustomed to most western music think of minor keys as being "sad", and yet Spanish and Arabic music are often dominated by minor keys and do not invoke "sadness". Also, what of music based on different intervals? We have the 12-step octave, but other cultures have different intervals, and so the scales sound much different. How are those perceived across cultures?
#9 is on the right track. What about Indian Ragas that are written for certain times of day? Does the existence of these prove that we can tell time by music?
There have been a bunch of books and studies by scientists put out in the last few years that completely neglect the findings of the last several decades in ethnomusicology. When these scientists think of music, they are generally thinking of European art music, and perhaps modern western popular music - a tiny part of humankind's musical history.
Their ignorance about the very subject they are trying to study, and the existing literature on that subject, is astounding.
Here is the completely backwards approach to the same topic:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327154.500-eavesdropping-on-the-music-of-the-brain.html
A prof at Trinity College designed software to convert MRI data into ambient music as a means to detect patterns that weren't visible obvious.
Perhaps these two studies could be combined, creating music generated by the brain listening to music.
Troofseeker: how do you account for the fact that only humans among all mammals seem to be able to hear and accurately follow rhythm in music? Sacks himself mentions that you can't teach a dog how to dance to music. And yet dogs, like all placental mammals, ostensibly hear their mother's heartbeat in the womb.
On the other hand, there's that famous parrot making the internet rounds that, at least according to a study, seems capable of hearing and following a beat, even as a recording is sped up or slowed down (you can see it here: http://www.sciencefriday.com/videos/watch/10216 ). That parrot, however, was confined to an egg during it's fetal development.
I'd be curious to see a study similar to the one in the OP that followed through a bit more exhaustively in it's claim of music being a "universal language". Tempo is just one part of music. There are certainly important, fundamental aspects of music that are culturally based. Certainly the western interpretation of harmony is one, regardless of the fact that most people in the world have been exposed to it now. Before the early Renaissance, for example, the third interval (do-mi is one) was considered dissonant, whereas today it is the cornerstone of harmony, defining for us the "happy" major and "sad" minor chords. This would ostensibly NOT have been the interpretation 1000 years ago.
I guess this is old news. Why else would Russia ban the instrumental Finlandia because it was considered "subversive".
Now that I think of it, I could use an emotional boost. I am going to listen to it now.
@9 and 10: The article did mention cross-cultural musical language. When Western classical music was played for an African tribe entirely unfamiliar with Western music, they still agreed on the emotional effect.
Never mind affecting memory, I'm able to memorize way more if something is in song form. I once memorized Psalm 110 in Latin as a 15-minute-long choral piece. (I don't speak Latin!)
Music is also my drug of choice when my ADD gets the better of me. My dad used it too before he went on Adderall. It's like it scratches an itch that can be reached no other way.
#8, I pounced on the same item:
Music can reliably convey feelings even in people whose ability to pick up emotion-laden social cues, such as facial expressions or tone of voice, is severely compromised.
That's just astonishing, revelatory.
I wonder if anybody has ever thought of trying to communicate with autistic children by singing instead of speaking.
@14: I wonder about that anecdote. An African tribe entirely unfamiliar with Western music would likely be first and foremost reacting to unfamiliar noise coming from a box. If they were familiar with recording technology, they were also familiar with Western music, as this is largely what was on those early cylinders and discs.
Of course there are generalizable qualities in music - high volumes, fast tempi, upper register pitches all suggest excitement - but many qualities seem to be culture-specific.
I wonder about that anecdote.
The peer reviewed application of science makes anecdote into data. You wonder about the data, or wish to debase it - not clear which.
@MDH:
"The peer reviewed application of science makes anecdote into data."
I can't tell if you are being sarcastic, but in my experience, peer review is no guarantee for the veracity of the data presented - at best it guards against the use of faulty methodologies.