Your brain on music Review by Arjen Verhoeff

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Your brain on musicReview by Arjen Verhoeff

• European Triode Festival 2008, the Netherlands

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How to do a review?

• Her sustained appoggiatura was flawed by an
  inability to
• complete the roulade
• Or preferably
• Was the music performed in a way that moved the
  audience?

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Some structure in the review

• Why brains on music
• How the Brain is organised
• How the Mind interprets

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Why brains on music

• When you know how it works you can better enjoy
• listening to music (or not)
• Nurture of nature?
• Cultural

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Music and the interaction between brain and body
Effect on intelligence
Good for your hearth
Myth busters on the effect of low frequencies
More creative
Brain waves
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Brain, Mind or Culture?
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Sources for analysis

• Biography
• Modelling
• Oliver Sacks
• Levitin

self
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Oliver Sacks Tales of Music and the Brain

• Conductor Clive Wearing lost memory but not
  musical memory
• Salimah. Her shy personality was changed after
  she suffered a seizure. She suddenly had the
  desire to listen to music all the time
• Woody Geist. He suffers from Alzheimers disease,
  but he still performs in an a cappella singing
  group
• Leon Fleisher is a classical piano player who
  performed with one hand for many years because of
  a condition called dystonia which affected his
  right hand
• Kids with Williams Syndrome have difficulty
  paying attention, but they often possess a love
  for music

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About Levitin

• Daniel J. Levitin runs the Levitin Laboratory for
  
• Musical Perception, Cognition, and Expertise at
• McGill University, where he holds the Bell Chair
  in
• the Psychology of Electronic Communications.
• Before becoming a neuroscientist, he was a record
  
• producer with gold records to his credit and
• professional musician. He has published
  extensively
• in scientific journals and music trade magazines
  such
• as Grammy and Billboard.

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Basics of music

• Pitch psychological construct of a frequency and
  its relative position in a musical scale
• Rhythm refers to duration of a series of notes
  and their grouping
• Tempo speed or pace of a musical piece
• Contour overall shape of a melody
• Timbre a consequence of overtones to distinguish
  instruments
• Loudness psychological construct related to
  produced energy
• Reverberation perception of distance to a source
• How are these elements organised in our brain?

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Organisation of the brain, sideview (front in
left)
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Organisation of the brain, innerview (2)
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Ten different parts of the brain

• Motor Cortex movement, foottapping, dancing,
  playing music
• Cerebellum movement, etc, and emotional
  reactions to music
• Sensory Cortex tactile feedback from an
  instrument
• Auditory Cortex first stages of listening to
  sound, analysis overtones
• Prefrontal Cortex creation, violation and
  satisfaction of expectations
• Visual Cortex reading music, looking at
  performers movements
• Corpus Gallosum connects left and right
  hemispheres
• Hippocampus memory for music, musical
  experiences and context
• Nucleus Accumbens, Amygdala Emotional reactions
  to music

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The brain and music

• Why do we like the music we like?
• Is musical pleasure different from other kinds of
  pleasure?
• Are our musical preferences shaped before birth?
• How do we develop new tastes in music?
• What do PET scans and MRIs reveal about the
  brains response to music?

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How the Mind interacts with the Brain
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Higher order mechanisms of interpretation

• Meter information from rhythm and loudness
• Key hierarchy between tones in a musical piece
• Melody main theme
• Harmony relationship between pitches of
  different tones

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The mind machine

• Grouping principles like
• Anticipation
• Foottapping
• Catogorise and memorise music
• Learn to play music

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Expectations are based on repetition

• Chord progression, Style, Musical era
  repetition
• We recognise what we have heard before
• We stay interested in specific musical pieces
  because it keeps surprising in relation to what
  we expect
• Beethoven, Ninth Symphony (or in words Come
  and sing a
• song of joy for peace a gloria gloria) main
  thema scale

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Anticipation of expectations in chords and rhythm

• Chords
• Donald Fagan, Kamakiriad first one chord instead
  of blues progression
• Beatles, Yesterday main melodic phrase seven
  measures, instead of four
• Arita Franklin, Chain of Fools all in one chord
• Schonberg deprivation of expectation (on root or
  resolution to home)
• Rhythm
• CCR, Looking out my back door unexpected ending
  at full tempo
• Stevie Ray Vaughan, Pride and Joy music stops,
  singer continues
• The Police reggae and rock

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Foottapping with Buddy Holly (4/4 time in a bar)
CAPS downbeat, bold your foot hits the floor

• THATll be the day (rest) when
• YOU say good-bye-yes
• THATll be the day (rest) when
• YOU make me cry-hi you
• SAY you gonna leave (rest) you
• KNOW its a lie cause
• THATll be the day-ay
• AY when I die

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YOU say good-bye-yes

• Foottap occurs in the middle of a beat
• First say begins before you put your foot down
• At yes this repeats
• Syncopation a note anticipates a beat. The note
  is played earlier than the beat calls for
• Violate expectations with anticipation

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Normally a word on every downbeat, but (line 2,
4)

• pick up Well you
• line 1 GAVE me all your lovin and your
• line 2 (REST) tur-tle dovin (rest)
• line 3 ALL your hugs and kisses and your
• line 4 (REST) money too
• Holly is not giving what you would expect
  tension
• - Out of sync, in sync
• - Violation of expectation by delaying words

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Musical memory

• We can instantly name a color just by looking at
  it why cant we name a pitch just by listening?
• Most of us can identify sounds as we identify
  colors. Not by pitch, but by timbre a car horn,
  your mother in law, a guitar
• We can remember our pitch quite well (Happy
  birthday)
• Why do only a few people have an absolute pitch
  (they can name pitch as if it were colors)?

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Next book of Levitin

• THE WORLD IN SIX SONGS
• How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature
• The reviewer has no affiliation to the author
  whatsoever

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• What the review did learn me
• Music is about the interplay between recognition
  and surprise
• Who does not hear the music, get the impression
  the dancers are mad, internet proverb

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• Thank you for your attention