Lecture 5 - Music and The Brain Flashcards
What is the function of music according to Darwin, 1971
TO ATTRACT MATES
What is the function of music according to Huron, 2001
Social cohesion - connectedness
What is the function of music according to Mithen, 2005
Acts as a precursor for language - babies produce songs before words
What is the function of music according to Pinker, 1997 (opposite of Mithen)
Music evolves from the language part of the brain. Evolutionary byproduct - need language to survive but music is for enjoyment - AUDITORY CHEESECAKE
How does sound travel?
- Enters through the pinna (ear)
- Down the auditory canal to the ear drum and tympanic membrane, which responds to sound by VIBRATING
- Vibration pattern transmitted through the middle ear
- Enters inner ear and cochlea where sound energy translated to neural impulse
- In the cochlea, Basilar Membrane displaces auditory receptor cells and hair cells. As tiny hairs (cilia) are bent through movement, receptor cells fire
- Neural impulses generated by hair cells leave the cochlea along auditory canal
What is the middle ear?
Portion between ear drum and cochlea that contains 3 small bones.
What are cilia
Tiny hair cells
What happens to a pitch of LOW frequency when made louder
It gets lower
What happens to a pitch of HIGH frequency when made louder
It gets higher
What are pure tones?
- Sounds that consist of a single frequency
- Sinusoid waveform
- Simple and distinct sound
- Rarely occur as most sounds composed of multiple frequencies (complex waveforms)
What is an important role of the pinna and auditory canal?
Reflect sound waves and amplify certain sounds
- Important for detecting the location of a sound source
What does the middle ear do?
Converts airborne vibrations to liquid borne vibrations with minimal energy loss
What are the three small bones in the middle ear called?
Malleus, Incus and Stapes
Known as OSSICLES
What do the Malleus, Incus and Stapes do?
Transmit sound vibrations from the eardrum to the inner ear.
- Malleus is the outermost and largest ossicle - causes sound waves to vibrate and transfer to Incus
- Incus amplifies and transfers the vibrations to the Stapes
- Stapes is the innermost and smallest ossicle, connected to the oval window (membrane that separates middle ear from inner ear). Stapes transmits vibrations to the fluid-filled cochlea of the inner ear through movement against the oval window
TRANSFER OF VIBRATIONS TO THE INNER EAR
What is the missing fundamental phenomenon?
Perceive the fundamental frequency of a sound even when it is absent.
Can perceive the pitch of the missing fundamental - brain reinstates it.
What is Timbre?
The quality of sound - enables us to distinguish between instruments
What is the Cochlea?
Part of the inner ear that converts liquid borne vibrations into neural impulses
What is the Basilar Membrane?
A membrane in the cochlea that holds auditory receptors (hair cells)
What is Pitch?
How high or low a sound is
What is Loudness?
How intense a sound is
What is the fundamental frequency
Lowest frequency of a sound wave - DETERMINES THE PITCH
What synapses does sound travel through in the auditory pathway from the ear to the brain?
Auditory nerve
Cochlear nuclei in brainstem
Medial geniculate nucleus (in thalamus)
Primary auditory cortex
What is the core region?
Primary auditory cortex
Where is the primary auditory cortex located?
Temporal lobes
What are the secondary auditory cortical areas?
Belt and Parabelt regions
What and Where routes
What happens if there is damage to the sundry auditory regions?
Sound can be heard but problems identifying and locating sounds
How is the process of sound organised?
Tonotopic organisation
What is the expectancy generation?
When we listen to music we know what is coming next
We are attuned to violations of this - prefrontal areas activated
What is sensory feedback?
Information received from playing an instrument, causes musician to adjust their performance e.g make notes softer
What is the Cerebellum’s role in music?
Emotional response to music
What hemisphere is important for musical timings?
LEFT
What hemisphere is important for musical pitch?
RIGHT
What is the Modular Model of music perception - Peretz & Coltheart, 2003
Subdivisions for processing different modules (pitch, rhythm, timbre, melody) pitch organisation and temporal organisation - disorders of pitch can occur independently of disorders of rhythm.
Is music perception innate?
Peretz, 2006 = yes.
Infants have a natural preference for consonance (harmony, stability and agreement of music)
Notice changes to contour
At 3 days old can distinguish different rhythms
fMRI evidence that music perception is innate - brain activity in infants
1-3 day old new borns
Played excerpts of western tonal music and altered versions of the same excerpts
RH ACTIVATION IN PRIMARY AUDITORY CORTEX
What brain area does Atonal music activate? (no tonal key)
Left interior frontal cortex and limbic structures
Different ages of musical perception
- Newborns - perceive and remember pitch sequences and beat, sensitive to contour and prefer consonance
- 4-6 yrs - respond to tonal more than atonal music
- 7 yrs - sensitive to the rules of harmony
- 10 yrs - understand finer aspects of key structure
- 12 yrs - develop tastes and recognition of styles
What is the Mozart effect?
People perform better on tests of spatial abilities after listening to Mozart
- Forde et al 2001, origami study:
Higher performance when listening to Mozart
Arousal and mood is higher
Correlation of enjoyment and high performance
How does semantic dementia relate to music recognition?
Difficulty recognising familiar songs due to damage to right anterior temporal lobes
Herholtz et al 2012 - memory of familiar songs involves functional connectivity between prefrontal and right anterior temporal lobes
What is Congenital Amusia?
Poor music perception - dislike music
Problems with pitch perception
TONE DEAFNESS - affects 4% of pop.
Associated with RH abnormalities - right auditory and right inferior frontal gyrus
What ERP component is measured in music?
P600 - syntactic overlap between music and language
Monica case study - congenital amusia
Had a musical disability not explained by brain lesion, hearing loss, cognitive deficits or lack of environmental stimuli
Can detect a pitch change of 11 semitones if change is rising not falling
What can explain amusia?
Thinner white matter
Pitch change and amusia
Cannot tell the different between a semi tone and a quarter tone
What is the protolanguage hypothesis?
Music and language have a common origin - innate.
12 amusias worse at detecting emotion
Shows music and language share mechanisms that trigger emotions
What is the auditory cheesecake?
Language is evolutionary and came first - MUSIC IS FOR ENJOYMENT
What is the Shared Syntactic Integration Resource hypothesis? - Patel, 2003
Brain uses the same circuits to process grammar for music and language - processing language and music
FRONTAL BRAIN REGIONS
What is the Chills effect?
Music induces emotion
Physiological changes induced by music
Dopamine activated
How can music help Parkinson’s disease?
With music patients can lift feet higher, walk better and dance
Rhythm for the brain
What is the role of the Basal Ganglia in music?
Motor control - movement and beat perception
