Week 8 ; Brain and Music Reading

Question 1

What evidence suggests our love for music appears to be innate

Answer 1

o Music is evidenced to be part of human life more than 30,000 years ago with bone flutes and percussive instruments
o Infants as young as 2 months will turn towards consant, or pleasant sounds and away fro dissonant ones
o The same kinds of pleasure centres light up in the brain when they are getting chilles listening to a symphony as when they eat choclate or take cocaine or have sex

Question 2

The ear and a sensory organ and it’s cells

Answer 2

o Has 3.5 k inner hair cells – the fewest sensory cells of any sensory organ
o Yet our mental response to music is remarkably adaptable

Question 3

Inner Songs;

Answer 3

o Historically, before neuroimaging, music and its effects were studied by looking at changes in musicians who experienced brain deficits ie by a stroke
 Eg. 1933 French composer Maurise Ravel showed signs of focal cerebral degeneration (a disorder where discrete areas of brain tissue atrophy). Whilst his conceptual abilities remained in tact, he could still hear and remember his old compositions and play scales but he could not write music . He could hear it in his head but not compose it
 Another case study also suggested that music and speech are independently processed. In this, Vissarion Sheablin and Russian Composer after a stroke lost his ability to write and talk in a speech context but was able to write music until he died

Suggests speech and music are processed with different regions of the brian

Question 4

Music vs Language

Answer 4

o Music and language both are a means of communicated and each has a syntas, a set of rule that govern the proper combination of elements (notes and words)
 Neuroimaging suggests the frontal lobe enables proper construction of syntax in music and speech but other part of the brain handle related aspects of language and music processing
 Whilst speech processing, involves hearing and linking frequencies to speech percepts music is more complicated. It consists of a sequence of tones and perception depends on grapsing the relation between sounds. – this considers frequencies and loudness

Question 5

 Contour

Answer 5

= the pattern of rising and falling pitches which is the basis for all melodies;

Question 6

David Diamond et al., studies with contour

Answer 6

o David Diamond and colleagues constructed melodies of different contours using the same 5 notes, then recorded cells in cats. They found that single cell responses varied with the contour. Responses depending on the location of a given tone within a melody; cells fire more vigourously when that tone is preceded by other tones than when it is first for example.
o Moreover cells reacted differently when a target tone was presented in an ascending or descending (or more complex) contour.
o This suggests that the pattern of a melody matters; processing in the auditory system is not like the simply relaying of sound in a telephone or stereo system

Question 7

Rhythm

Answer 7

= the relative lengths and spacing of notes
o Studies of rhytmn have conclusded one hemisphere is involvedmore than the other – but there is mixed evidence on which hemisphere this is
o Eg. The left temporal lobe seems to process briefer stimuli than the right temporal lobe

Question 8

Harmony

Answer 8

= the relation of two or more simultaneous tones
o Imaging studies of the cerebral cortex find greater activation in the auditory regions of the right temporal lobe when subjects are focussing on aspects of harmony

Question 9

Timbre

Answer 9

= the characteristic difference in sound between two instruments playing the same tone
o Timbre has also been assigned a right temporal lobe preference as patients whose temporal lobe has been removed show deficits in discriminating timbre if tissue from the right, but not the left, lemisphere is excised.
o Additionally, the right temporal lobe becomes active in normal subjects when they discriminate different timbres

Question 10

Brain responses to music also depend on the experiences and training of the listener

Answer 10

o Cell tuning (found in studies on contour) found that cell tuning may be altered during learning so that certain cells become extra sensitive to sounds that attract attention or are stored in memory
o Eg. Guinea pigs were shown certain tones and cells in A1 were recorded to identify which tones elicited the biggest response. Next, subjected were taught that a non-pereferred tone was important by making it a signal for a food schock. Then recorded the cells responses again and immediately after training and up to 2 months later, the neurons tuning preference had shifted from the original to the signal tone.
o Thus learning returned the brain so that more cells respond best to behaviourally significant sounds
o The retuning of A1 cells was remarkably durable, ebcoing stronger overtime without additional training and lasting for months
o Human studies (non-invasic imaging) have shown similar long term effects from learning

Question 11

 Where is your brain playing music when a song is in your head

Answer 11

o Many of the same areas in the temporal lobe that are active when listening to melodies activated when imagining music

Question 12

Musicisans and Musical Sensitivity

Answer 12

 25% more of left hemisphere auditory regions respond in musicians to a piano playing than in nonmusicians . This effect is specific to musical tones and doesn’t occur with similar non-musical tones

 This is greater when the onset of music lessons is a younger age
 Studies of children suggest hat early miscal experience may facilitate development.
o Eg. Study looked at brain responses to piano, biolin and pure tones in 4 and 5 yr olds. Youngsters who had received greater exposure to music in their homes showed enhanced brain sudatory activity, comparable to that of unexposed kids about three years older.

Question 13

A1 volume and Musicians

Answer 13

 A1 cortex of musicians is 130% larger than non-musicians. This volume increase is linked to musical training – may attribute for the greater response to music in musicians.
 Musicians brains devote more area towards motor control of fingers to play an instrument
 The anterior corpus callosum which contains brands that interconnect the two motor areas is larger in musicians than non-musicians. Likely useful to allow the use of both hands at once. This is greater the younger musical training began. Other studies show motor cortex representation and cerebellum volume is greater

Question 14

o Patient IR

Answer 14

 Lost her temporal lobes (bilaterally)
 Her intelligence and general memory were normal and she had no language difficulties
 But she couldn’t make sense or recognise any music whether it was known or new to her
 She couldn’t distinguish different melodies
 She had normal emotional reactions to different types of music
 This suggests the temporal lobe is needed to comprehend melody but not produce an emotional reaction which is subcortical and involving the frontal lobes

Question 15

PET Study on Emotion and Music

Answer 15

 PET conducted whilst participants listened to consonant or dissonant chord showed tha tidfferent localised brain regions were involved in the emotional reactions. Consonant chord activated the orbitofrontal area of the right hemisphere and a part below the corpus callosum. In contrast dissonant chord activated the right parahippocampal gyrus. Thus atleast 2 systems each dealing with a different type of emotion are at work when the brain processes emotions related to music.
 Later the same researchers scanned brains of musicians who experiences chills of euphoria when listening to music and found that music activated some of the reward systems stimulated by food, sex and drugs