Looking for the origins of music in the brain

Music serves as a natural and non-invasive intervention for patients with severe neurological disorders to promote long-term memory, social interaction and communication. However, there is currently no plausible explanation of its neural basis for why and how music affects physical and psychosocial responses.

Origins of music perception in humans may have their foundation in animal communication calls, as evidenced here in non-human primates. Many speech sounds and animal vocalizations, for instance, contain components, commonly referred to as complex tones, which consist of a fundamental frequency (f0) and higher harmonics.

Using electrophysiological recording techniques to study the neuronal activities in the auditory cortex of awake monkeys, researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center's have shown neurons tuned to the fundamental frequencies and harmonic sounds, and such neural mechanisms of harmonic processing lay close to tonotopically organized auditory areas. They presented their findings at the 39th annual meeting Society of Neuroscience.

"The understanding of neural mechanism of 'innate' music features in non-human primates will facilitate an improved understanding of music perception in the human nervous system," explains Yuki Kikuchi, PhD, a research associate in the department of physiology and biophysics. "This will allow a neurobiological framework from which to understand the basis of the effectiveness of music therapeutic interventions."

Source: Georgetown University Medical Center (news : web)

   

• Tachyon8491 - Oct 20, 2009
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  It should be understood that ALL biophysically generated sounds contain a fundamental and harmonics - not just "many" as the article alleges. Tone is always complex and its partials are selectively amplified and reintegrated by physical (instrumental) or biophysical structure to result in the unique timbre (tone-colour) that we hear and recognise instruments by. Attempting to study "music perception" by neuronal stimulation is about the most naive, unscientific methodology I can possiblt imagine - it's really like poking around in the dark with a short stick... Music is an incredibly complex phenomenon, containing encoded intentionalities in acoustic forms that embody inter-component harmonic tendencies which strive towards resolutive consonance - a good understanding of melodic tendency, harmonic relationships and contrapuntal progression in the evolution of melodic thematic material is an absolute minimum beginning point. The phenomenology of music is a highly complex (contnd)
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• Tachyon8491 - Oct 20, 2009
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  ..psycho-cognitive and cognitive-emotional process that must occur in higher cortical associative and processing areas, and as such is much dependent also, on the psychoemotional maturity of the percipient. Trying to identify "music perception" by neuronal response is totally ridiculous. As a parallel, it is well-known that in the visual processing system there are neuron-groups that respond with high selectivity to horizontal, or, vertical elements and their intensity - this can be tested in the manner suggested in the article. However, the "perception of visual art" would meet the same problem...
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