Scientific Understanding of Consciousness
Consciousness as an Emergent Property of Thalamocortical Activity

 Auditory Perception and Music

 

Auditory information processing in cochlear, reticular formation, and auditory cortex

Brain automatically fills in sound that is missing due to noise. [Gestalts]

 

Prosody of Speech

Rhythmic, melodic intonation in speech that contributes social and emotional elements of meaning to language is termed "prosody". (Miller; Human Frontal Lobes, 74)

 

Music Stimulates Emotional and Movement Responses

I'll state my hypothesis for how music reacts with the brain to cause us to enjoy music.

Neural Oscillations Resonate with Musical Excitation

I believe that music interacts with the oscillation and synchronizations of the neural network signals in the brain to produce resonances in the neural signal loops.  The oscillations, synchronizations and resonances cause the FAPs action patterns of movement to become active resulting in movements such as foot tapping and dance movements.

A most natural response of the human body to music is a synchronization of anatomical movements and other physiological/psychological functions with musical rhythms. (Daniel J. Schneck and Dorita S. Berger, The Music Effect, 120)

Auditory cues can capture one's attention.  Such attentativeness results in brain ways becoming synchronized with the binaural beat frequency.  This synchronized brain activity seems to establish a pleasing resonance that captures the entire range of human emotions. (Daniel J. Schneck and Dorita S. Berger, The Music Effect, 121)

 

Musical Resonance Stimulates Pleasure Pathway to Nucleus Accumbens

 The oscillations, synchronizations and resonances somehow excite the limbic system to release neurotransmitters such as dopamine which then interact with the nucleus accumbens and frontal cortex circuits such as the Papes circuit to produce a euphoria.

I am constantly on the lookout for reports of fMRI studies and other scientific investigations that would lend credence to these ideas.

National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) researchers discovered that synchronous firing of neurons in the brain followed a subject’s making a deliberate effort to pay attention to a particular sensory stimulus, while ignoring all other distractions.  Cerebral neurons excited by specific attributes conspicuously synchronize their activity and the gamma (40-90 Hz) range of the EEG, indicating extremely strong brain activity.

Certain musical instruments, particularly in the human voice, and certain musical compositions, evoke emotive states that includes a host of skin responses such as making the hair stand on end, producing shutters, and blanching the skin. (Damasio; Looking for Spinoza, 102)

Neural correlates of pleasurable states caused by listening to music capable of evoking chills and shivers down the spine. (Damasio; Looking for Spinoza, 103)

 

 

 

 

A good reference for the auditory system. (Purves, Neuroscience, 283)

 

 

Cochlear Nucleus chapter. (Shepherd; Synaptic Organization of the Brain, 121)

Drawing of the auditory periphery (diagram), external ear middle ear, inner ear; three middle ear ossicles: malleus, incus, stapes; inner ear: cochlea of the auditory system, semi circular canals of the vestibular system. (Squire; Fundamental Neuroscience, 700)

 

Science 5 January 2001: Vol. 291, pp. 54 - 56

BIOLOGY AND MUSIC: Music of the Hemispheres

Mark Jude Tramo

The author is in the Department of Neurology, Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA 02114-2696, USA.

Although the right hemisphere of the human brain has been traditionally viewed as the "musical hemisphere," there is evidence from patients with brain damage and from functional imaging studies that our perception of music emerges from the interplay of neural pathways in both the right and left hemispheres, some specific to music, others not. The right auditory cortex is crucial for perceiving pitch and some aspects of melody, harmony, timbre, and rhythm. Recent evidence from patients with epilepsy suggests that different regions of the auditory cortex (belt and parabelt) process different aspects of rhythm. The belt and parabelt areas in the right hemisphere discriminate local changes in note duration and separation, whereas grouping by meter involves mostly anterior parabelt areas in both hemispheres. When you tap out a rhythm with your finger, motor areas in the frontal cortex are, of course, active. But, they are also active when you are just listening and preparing to tap. The particular brain areas that are active in right-handed individuals preparing to tap depends on the type of rhythm: For metrical rhythms, which have beats that are evenly spaced at integer ratios (1:2, 1:3), left frontal cortex, left parietal cortex, and right cerebellum are active; for nonmetrical rhythms (1:2.5), which are harder to tap out, more of the cortex and cerebellum are involved, with a shift in frontal cortex activation to the right hemisphere.

There is no "music center" in the brain, no grossly identifiable brain structure that works solely during music cognition. All of the structures that participate in the processing of music contribute to other forms of cognition. For example, the left planum temporale, the pride of musicians with perfect pitch, is also involved in language processing. However, distinctive patterns of neural activity within the auditory cortex and unique connections between the auditory cortex and other areas of the brain may imbue specificity to the processing of music.