0.7 Music, biological evolution, and the brain  (Page 21/30)

Thus, music’s remarkable emotional power may arise via its ability to simultaneously engage multiple emotional mechanisms in our brains. While none of these mechanisms is unique to music, music may be unique in the way it temporally activates and coordinates these mechanisms. The result is a complex emotional experience that can differ from our ordinary day-to-day emotions. This might help explain reports of “music-specific” or “aesthetic” emotions (Zentner et al., 2008), which seem qualitatively distinct from basic emotions associated with survival, such as happiness, sadness, fear, or anger.

6.2 ritual efficacy

All human cultures have rituals, and music provides a very useful framework for certain types of rituals, independent of the emotional impact of the music per se . This is because music provides a structure that can easily be repeated on different occasions, and because musical behaviors are distinct from our ordinary communication. In modern culture, the group singing of “Happy Birthday” provides a familiar example. The performance and appreciation of this song is typically not concerned with the aesthetic or emotional qualities of the music. Rather, the song serves as a ritual that effectively means “we collectively recognize and celebrate your birthday.”

6.3 mnemonic efficacy

In addition to emotion and ritual, music often provides an important mnemonic device for storing long sequences of linguistic information, especially when written language is not available (Sloboda, 1985). In this regard, it is notable that music and song are part of most of the world’s ancient oral traditions, e.g., epics and religious chants from diverse civilizations (Rubin, 1995). In our own culture, a familiar example of the mnemonic efficacy of music is the alphabet song, a tune used by many children to learn the order of letters in the alphabet. One indication of music’s remarkable power to enter into human memory comes from clinical research with Alzheimer’s patients. Experiments with such patients indicate that memory of songs is retained in substantial detail, even in the face of significant loss of episodic memories concerning the patient’s own life (Cuddy and Duffin, 2005). The neural mechanisms behind music’s mnemonic efficacy are in need of systematic research.

7. a darwinian perspective on the biological study of music

Evolutionary discussions of music originate with Darwin, so it is fitting to end this essay with a comment on the relevance of Darwin’s thinking to the current proposal. TTM theory proposes that music is an invention that builds on a diverse range of brain functions and has the ability to shape those functions. Thus, TTM theory, unlike Darwin’s theory of music, is nonadaptationist. Yet it is thoroughly Darwinian in its focus on comparative biological research. As illustrated by section 3 (“Music as a human invention”), TTM theory grows from studies comparing music processing to brain processing in other domains (such as language) and studies comparing music processing to auditory processing in other species. TTM theory is thus committed to using Darwinian research methods to explore the neurobiological foundations of human music.