Hearing the music, honing the mind?

In addition to last weeks entry, a citation from a recent article in Scientific American:

"Music produces profound and lasting changes in the brain. Schools should add classes, not cut them." 

See full article.

Kan luisteren de hersenen beïnvloeden? [Dutch]

This week a video entry with a clip of the Dutch tv program Vrije Geluiden: Last Sunday prof. Erik Scherder (Free University Amsterdam) explained some recent research (by, e.g., Hyde et al., 2009) on the influence of music performance and music listening on brain plasticity.

The full episode can be viewed here (N.B. no subtitles).

Hyde, K., Lerch, J., Norton, A., Forgeard, M., Winner, E., Evans, A., & Schlaug, G. (2009). Musical Training Shapes Structural Brain Development Journal of Neuroscience, 29 (10), 3019-3025 DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.5118-08.2009

What's new on music and the brain?

The Mariani Foundation for Paediatric Neurology just announced The Neurosciences and Music - IV: Learning and Memory, to be held in Edinburgh (Scotland, UK) from 9th to 12th June 2011. The conference is conceived as a continuation of the previous meetings on the relation between Music and the Neurosciences in which our Foundation participated: "The Biological Foundations of Music" (New York, 2000), "The Neurosciences and Music - I , Mutual interactions and implications of developmental functions" (Venice, 2002), "The Neurosciences and Music - II, From perception to performance" (Leipzig, 2005) and "The Neurosciences and Music - III, Disorders and plasticity". These conferences have been highly successful and have generated enormous excitement, both among established and new researchers. By providing the opportunity to present new results and exchange information, the meetings have contributed substantially to the growth of new research and collaborations in the neuroscience of music and to its visibility within the broader scientific community.

The central theme of Music and Neurosciences IV will be Learning and Memory. The conference programme will also be divided into 4 subthemes: "Infants and Children", "Adults: musicians and non musicians", "Disabilities and aging-related issues" and "Therapy and Rehabilitation". The conference will include Keynote Lectures, Symposia, Poster Sessions and a Workshop on child-oriented research design and new data acquisition and analysis techniques, to be held in the afternoon on 9th June. The conference will be of interest not only to neuroscientists, psychologists and students but also to clinical neurologists, clinical psychologists, therapists, music performers and educators as well as musicologists.

Edinburgh has been selected as a most appropriate setting because of the IMHSD - Institute for Music in Human and Social Development, established in 2005, which brings together music research, theory and practice from a wide range of disciplines, with an emphasis on learning and rehabilitation. The selected dates are immediately prior to the "Edinburgh International Film Festival" (EIFF), so delegates will have the opportunity to stay on in Edinburgh to attend this event. The EIFF was one of the world's first international film festivals, born alongside the Edinburgh International Festival in 1947, and places a longstanding emphasis upon new talent, discovery and innovation.

Are we ‘illiterate listeners’? [Part 1]

"French babies cry differently as compared to German babies. This was the conclusion from a study that was published a year ago in Current Biology (see earlier entry). Three day old German babies cry in a downward fashion, their French contemporaries showed an increasing swelling of the cry and stop abruptly.

It was a surprising observation, especially in the light of the general belief that in crying the pitch should always drop as a physiological consequence of the respiratory cycle. Apparently, babies of just a few days old can control both the dynamics and the intonation contour of their crying. Why would they do this?

The researchers interpreted it as the first steps in the development of language. In spoken French the mean intonation contour is rising (dropping at the very end of an utterance), in German the mean intonation typically exhibits a falling contour. This combined with the fact that the human auditory system is already functional in the last trimester of pregnancy made the researchers conclude that these babies picked up the intonation contours of their native language in these last months and consequently imitated them in their crying.

This observation is also surprising since the literature suggests that children only get interested in their native language roughly between six and eighteen months, when they start to imitate it in their babbling. Is it indeed the case, as stressed by these researchers (and the recent literature citing it; e.g. Elk & Hunnius, 2010), that this is unique evidence for a much earlier sensitivity to language than commonly thought? Or is there another interpretation possible?

Although the empirical results are clear, this interpretation is a typical example of what one could call a ‘language bias’: an understandable enthusiasm of linguists to interpret a range of phenomena in the real world as ‘linguistic’. One can, however, easily make the argument that this early sensitivity to intonation contour is a not a linguistic skill but a musical one.

Most linguists see the use of rhythm, dynamics, and intonation as an aid for making infants familiar with the words and sentence structures of the language of the culture in which they will be raised. Words and word divisions are emphasized through exaggerated intonation contours and varied rhythmic intervals, thereby facilitating the process of learning a specific language. These aspects are referred to as prosody, but they are actually the basic building blocks of music. Only much later in the development of a child will this ‘musical prosody’ be used, for instance in the marking, and consequently the recognition of word boundaries. But these early signs of musical skill are — and I like to stress this – not of a linguistic nature. It is the preverbal and preliterate stage of our musical listening in development."

Fragment from inaugural address De ongeletterde luisteraar (Honing, 2010).



Honing, H. (2010). De ongeletterde luisteraar. Over muziekcognitie, muzikaliteit en methodologie. Amsterdam: Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW).

Mampe, B., Friederici, A., Christophe, A., & Wermke, K. (2009). Newborns' Cry Melody Is Shaped by Their Native Language Current Biology DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2009.09.064

 Elk, M. van & Hunnius, S. (2010) Het babybrein, over de ontwikkeling van de hersenen bij baby's. Amsterdam: Bert Bakker.

A 2006 recording of Glenn Gould? (Part 2)

A video follow-up of an earlier entry on Glenn Gould.

.

Is music cognition?

Many studies on the evolution of music concern the question of what defines music. Can birdsong, the song structure of humpback whales, a Thai elephant orchestra, or the interlocking duets of Gibbons be considered music?

The answer is of course a simple ‘yes’. A definition of music can easily be stretched to include all types of sound, noises and even plain silence. As such it makes the discussion of what is and what is not music one of the most noticeable pitfalls in the study of music and evolution. An alternative is to separate between the notions of ‘music’ and ‘musicality’, with musicality as a natural, spontaneously developing trait based on and constrained by our cognitive system, and music as a social and cultural construct based on that very musicality.

Of course this definition of musicality is still too general to be useful. The challenge is to define what precisely makes up this trait we call musicality. What are the cognitive mechanisms that are essential to perceive, make and appreciate music? Only when we have identified these fundamental mechanisms are we in a position to see how these might have evolved. In other words, the study of the evolution of music cognition is conditional on a characterization of the basic mechanisms that make up musicality.

Furthermore, it is important to separate between the biological (or genetic) and cognitive (or functional) aspects that might contribute to musicality. While it is common to assume that there is a mapping between specific genotypes and specific cognitive traits, more and more studies show that genetically distantly related species can show similar cognitive skills; skills that more genetically closely related species fail to show. For example, more and more studies show that humans and certain bird species share their musicality up to a certain level, whereas humans and chimpanzees do not.

de Waal, F., & Ferrari, P. (2010). Towards a bottom-up perspective on animal and human cognition Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 14 (5), 201-207 DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2010.03.003

Honing, H., & Ploeger, A. (submitted). Cognition and the evolution of music: pitfalls and prospects. Topics in Cognitive Science (TopiCS).

.

Geeft het hoofd de geest? [Dutch]

Aardig promotiefilmpje met de titel 'Cognitie: het hoofd dat de geest geeft' over cognitieonderzoek, gemaakt in het kader van het bètacanon initiatief...

What's new on music and the brain?

The North-American Library of Congress organized an interesting series on Music and the Brain with lectures, conversations and symposia about the explosion of new research at the intersection of cognitive neuroscience and music. The podcasts can be accessed via their website.

Muziek maakt slimmer? [Dutch]

Net zoals in de jaren negentig in de VS blijft het idee dat muziek slimmer maakt opduiken in de - op zich zeer te prijzen - lobby om muziek te promoten in het onderwijs. Zo ook het recente Nederlandse initiatief Muziek Telt. 
Het is echter nogal een zwaktebod om het belang van muziek aan te willen tonen door te benadrukken dat muziek een andere menselijke kwaliteit positief beïnvloedt. En wel een kwaliteit die we kennelijk belangrijker vinden. In dit geval: intelligentie. Het bevestigt in wezen het idee van muziek als tweederangs activiteit (nog los van het feit dat er geen enkele evidentie is dat muziek inderdaad slimmer maakt; het zgn. ‘Mozart-effect’) [zie eerdere blogs] Ik ondersteun het initiatief van harte, maar daag de initiatiefnemers uit om vooral het intrinsieke belang van muziek voor het voetlicht te brengen.

Is iedereen muzikaal? [Dutch]

Vanaf begin september is er elke maandag op Radio 4 een rubriek over muziekcognitie. Elke week wordt een antwoord gegeven op een actuele vraag. Voor de aflevering van week 38 - Zijn musici seksueel aantrekkelijk? - zie uitzending gemist.