Zark's

How Our Brain Responds to Music

The Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital released a thoughtful Why we buy music today.

After some reflection, the results are not too surprising.  In the experiment, the researchers quantified the musical tastes of the subjects using Pandora or other music suggestion algorithms.  Then based upon the individual's music preferences, the researchers played previously unpublished music selections during a brain MRI scan.

What they discovered is that one activity center in the brain determines whether the individual will like that selection or purchase it. The greater the activity in the nucleus accumbens, the more the individual likes the selection.  The surprising thing though, is the activity by the auditory cortex.  This portion of the brain is trained and tuned by music we have heard in the past, which partially explains the differences in musical tastes.  The more the subject liked the selection, the greater the communication between the nucleus accumbens and the auditory cortex.

The memory and training of the auditory cortex suggests we like music because it 'resonates' with us, or it meets our expectations of music.  The study also confirms the powerful stimulus of music upon the human brain.

 

 

 

The 10,000 Hour Rule

Image Credit: U.S. Army

You have read it on the internet, so it has to be true, doesn't it? 

It takes 10,000 hours of practice to master a skill.  Why Gladwell's 10,000 hour rule is wrong argues it also takes talent.  But read on - maybe not.

Psychologist Anders Ericsson of Florida State University with colleagues studied the practice habits and resulting prowess of violinists and pianoists.  The child protagonists had generally clocked the 10,000 hour milestone by age 20, whereas the ordinary amateurs had only 2,000 hours. 

Writer Malcom Gladwell extends this result to sports and computer programming in his book, Outliers.  He also emphasizes that the 10,000 hours must be structured and personally competitive.  In other words, your practice must be elevating your game, not maintaining it.

Mmm.  We are all different.  Bass fishing and the 10,000 hour rule explains it works for their sport. 

On his faculty website, Anders Ericsson distributes, The Danger of Delegating Education to Journalists: Why the APS Observer Needs Peer Review When Summarizing New Scientific Developments.  The professor explains he never coined the 10,000 hour rule - that was invented by Malcom Gladwell.  Instead, Ericsson tells that in their violinist study, 10,000 hours was the average of the best.  But the very best musicians had considerably less than 10,000 hours of practice. 

He also notes that 10,000 hours is not a milestone when suddenly you can audition for American Idol.  Proficiency or excellence is a gradual improvement.  A few thousand hours of practice makes one much better than one less disciplined.  Professor Ericsson emphasizes the concept of deliberate practice.  One of his papers is titled, "Deliberate practice spells success." 

Wikipedia describes deliberate practice as the activity of breaking down the skill required to be world-class into skill chunks and then improving those skill chunks in daily practice. 

So what do I think?  Life experience has brushed me against people that were truly talented in something.  Rarely though did they push themselves to get better.  As the grains of time accumulated, the separation between them and others that pushed themselves narrowed and eventually they were slightly better than ordinary.  Maybe there is more to the phrase, "All men are created equal" than we choose to admit.

 

Multilingual Kids May Have Lifelong Advantage

Illustration of axon and dendrites with neuronal synapse highlighted
Image Credit: National Institute of Mental Health

Bilingual Effects in the Brain tells that children that grow up learning to speak two languages have more difficulty in learning English words and grammar than those who speak only English.  But the study shows these bilingual children are better at multitasking and also better at focusing in the midst of noise.

Scientists already knew that musicians have attention and memory advantages.  (Mmm.   How many musicians did they study?)  Okay, Cognitive neuroscience of music reminds us the brain structures of musicians and non-musicians are different.  Wikipedia tells there are differences in the gray matter volume in the motor, auditory, and visual-spatial brain regions.  One study in paticular showed that musicans required fewer neurons to perform finger movements.  Although still an area of research, scientists suspect the differences are due to long-term rehearsal of musical skills. 

But back to multilingualism.  About 20 percent of the nation's children speak a language other than English at home.  Specific tests show that bilingual teens have more auditory brainstem processing that assists them in focusing in a noisy environment.  It had been suggested that multilingualism might open up the brain to be nuanced by multiple sounds.  Instead, it appears that multiple languages better enable the brain to discern information from noise.

Mmm. Coming up tomorrow - a book review of Paul Krugman's End This Depression Now.  I learned a lot from reading the text and hope to share some it.

 

Characteristics of Music Aptitude

Wikipedia helpfully explains that music aptitude is the ability to intuitively learn or appreciate music.  We generally consider music talent consisting of tonal memory, time discrimination, and pitch discrimination. 

Tonal memory is the ability to recall or reproduce a previously played note.  Absolute pitch is the ability to name a note without comparing it to other references. 

Musical Aptitude Relates to Reading Ability suggests that music ability is correlated to verbal memory and literacy in childhood.  The study found that poor readers do not have strong neural responses to rhythmic sounds in contrast to good readers.  Additionally, they discovered that being able to remember a sequence of numbers was correlated to melody and rhythm.

Other studies have shown that for children under the age of nine, music aptitude is a product of innate talent and early music environment.  After age nine, musical environment no longer contributes to music aptitude.

Depressed? Make Some Music

Amy Downing shows off her guitar at her home Feb. 26.
Image Credit:Rick Emert, Fort Carson Mountaineer.

I must confess, there is more anecdotal data about music therapy than hard science.  Then, how you feel isn't hard science, is it?

Making Music Proves to Be Powerful Antidepressant tells that a Finnish study revealed music therapy effective for roughly 25 percent of patients suffering depression.  This contrasts with a previous study which concluded only one success in seven to sixteen people.

Music Improves Brain Function explains there is a correlation between early childhood music training and enhanced motor and auditory skills.  Detailed brain measurements show that different musical instruments rewire the brain differently.  Vocals and keyboard musicians have different neural pathways.  Passive listening does not appear to produce the same types of changes in attention and memory.

Music on the Brain tells that babies at the age of four months in the womb will squirm or turn away if they hear discordant notes.  Curiously, there is no single 'music center' in the brain.  Instead, the right side of the brain detects pitch, melody, and harmony.  The left side detects changes in frequency and intensity.  But both sides are required to fully perceive rhythm.  (You can't distinguish between 3:4 or 4:4 time without both sides.) The front of the brain also participates in perceiving the melody.

We appear to come into the world wired for music.  What is your song?

Childhood Music Lessons Endure Throughout Life

Christian recording artist Jamie Grace shares some of her music.
Photo Credit: Kevin Stabinsky (USAG Fort McPherson)

No doubt that it is has been edited several times, Wikipedia defines music as an artform that uses sound as a medium.  There are attributes such as pitch, rhythm, dynamics, and timbre, but little agreement on what is best or even pleasing.

Although we may not agree on the music we want to hear, almost everyone is touched by music.  The  right music is able to sail effortlessly into our very soul.  Medical personnel are becoming more convinced of the healing qualities of music, and it is increasingly used for patients unable to communicate.

Childhood music lessons may provide lifelong boost in brain functioning explains a recent study has focused on the childhood music training of a group of senior citizens.  As you might expect, those senior adults who had musical activity as children, exhibited higher cognitive skills than those that had none.  The cognitive skills had direct correlation with the number of years of musical training, even though some of the seniors had not played a musical instrument in years.

Those that continued to play music did not appear to have better cognitive skills than those that had dropped playing later in life.  Hence, it appears that the early childhood music lessons are not really forgotten by the brain, and those lessons are not music but instead, increased connectivity and processing speed.  The ability to read ahead in a music score, and the faster mind/body coordination required to play an instrument apparently results from physical changes in the brain. 

Those physical changes provide a parallelism that is beneficial later in life when mental acuity naturally declines.  Much remains speculation, because the study shows a correlation between cognitive ability and musical training.  It does not indicate a cause and effect. 

Parents - push those music lessons!

Music Therapy for Congresswoman Giffords

I have blogged before about learning to play the piano, having eschewed the keyboard in my younger years.  Undoubtedly the most difficult thing for me was to play with both hands.  It is a knack or skill similar to riding a bicycle - all of a sudden it happens.  The next most difficult skill is reading ahead in the score, preparing my fingers to be in the right place so that I can play the notes without stopping.

It sounds strange, but the reason I decided to learn the piano was that I spent so much time listening to music, it seemed a better occupation of time to actually play a musical instrument instead of always listening to someone else play.  A friend who decided to learn the guitar came to an independent and similar conclusion.

Tom Wolfe, of The Right Stuff, has written that music is a window into the soul.  Perhaps we should not be surprised that  Music 'flips switch' for shot congresswoman.  Family members attribute Gabrielle Giffords' astonishing recovery to music therapy.  She started with "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" and first mouthed the words as a therapist played a guitar.  She has progressed in her recovery to more complex music pieces.  Her mother tells the congresswoman enjoys sing-alongs with laughter and clapping.

Giffords hitting all the right recovery notes, her mom says, explains that singing is a standard technique for brain injury patients who have difficulty in composing speech.  The first words are always the hardest, but rehabilitation frequently takes years.  The Houston Chron article adds that we are accustomed to large improvements from drugs or surgery, but that rehabilitation is a very slow and labor-intensive process.  The docs caution that Giffords still has some significant hurdles to overcom.

Music and the Human Brain

Human Brain
Image Credit: National Institute on Drug Abuse

Northwestern University's School of Communication has been studying the Neural Encoding of Music.  They have concluded that the brainstem is highly developed in musicians for processing sight and sound.  Curiously, in most people, the brainstem is a neural gateway and involuntary control.  (That doesn't mean it isn't important - but that typically we don't associate cognitive processing with the brainstem.) Musicians use the brainstem to pre-process auditory and visual stimulus, and this changes how subsequent cognitive processing is performed in these individuals.

Taking Music Seriously explains that music training increases neuroplasticity - the ability of the brain to adapt and change over a person's life and experiences.  It also teaches the brain how to recognize patterns.  We are all over-stimulated, and the human brain is not capable of processing every incoming stimulus.  Learning a musical instrument apparently teaches the brain how to select the most important and relevant stimulus at the moment.

Aside from these general neural processing enhancements, musicians are better able to process speech in noisy environments.  How Music Training Primes Nervous System and Boosts Learning adds that musicians are better able to associate sound patterns in new languages.  The researchers suggest as the 1960s taught the importance of physical exercise and education, we should have similar music training for life-long benefits.

Examining Beethoven

  Image Credit: The standard concert guide: a handbook of the standard symphonies, oratorios , George Putnam, 1912
A Google Digitized Book

Today most commentators write that Ludwig van Beethoven was an 18th century rock star.  That is not quite the true story.  While undoubtedly a public figure, he was born a commoner and 18th century Europe never let him escape it.  He was spurned in several marriage proposals because of his humble birth.  In a lawsuit for custody of his brother's son, he was kicked from the noble court system to the lesser common court system, where he lost.

Wiki tells that the German pianist and composer was born in December 1770 and after being recognized as a musical prodigy, he traveled to Vienna in hopes of becoming a student of Mozart.  That was thwarted by the immediate sickness of his mother and soon, her death.  He returned to Bonn to take care of the family because his father fell victim to alcoholism.  The aristocracy noted the performer and began to receive support for his music. 

He moved to Vienna and began earnest training as pianist and violinist.  His first major concert was in 1795.  Soon afterward, he began to lose his hearing.  By 1814 he was almost totally deaf.  With perseverance, he continued to compose and perform until his death in 1827.

Setting the pace can set the sound tells that Beethoven frequently detailed the tempo for his compositions.  He was apparently impressed with the newly invented metronome, even simulating it in his Symphony No. 8.  The California Chronicle article tells that his tempos on later works are so fast that they almost cannot be performed.  History also suggests that Beethoven himself did not perform the works this quickly, and even varied the tempo throughout the piece.

Beethoven unlikely to have died from lead exposure tells that skull fragments have not substantiated the speculation that he died from lead poisoning.  Prior to his death, many visitors cut lockets of his hair which have been saved through the centuries and later tested, showing a surprisingly high lead content.  Upon his death, medical examination showed he had a badly diseased liver.  The Science Daily article speculates the lead indications were from medical salves.

How Then Should We Live explains Beethoven bridged classical music and romanticism.  His last quartets established 20th century music.  Although we would not consider them modern, these were recognized by his peers as establishing a completely new music movement. 

Mozart !-> IQ++

 

Okay, the title is written in pseudo code.  Mozart's Music Does Not Make You Smarter, Study Finds expresses the same thought in English.

The Science Daily article explains in 1993, the Journal Nature published a report that college students had enhanced spatial task performance after exposure to Mozart's 1781 Sonata for Two Pianos.  This was called the 'Mozart Effect'. 

For a while, the public went wild with this finding, and a generation of children received one or two years of exposure to Mozart, which is probably not a bad thing.  Gradually, skepticism overcame the desire for Intelligence Potion #9.  Now University of Vienna researchers indicate there is no correlation with increased spatial performance and listening to Mozart.

Musical Beat Enhances Visual Comprehension explains the origin of music is unknown.  In other words, how did it all get started?  Charles Darwin speculated it became associated with courtship rituals.  A more recent theory is that humans developed it for promoting group identity and coordination. 

A new study suggests that music rhythm synchronizes your cognitive processing with visual imagery being received by your eyes.  In a test, students were able to more accurately remember faces when the beat of the music was synchronized with a new image.  The Miller-McCune article speculates that march music might actually provide an edge for a military force.  (I admit to a rush of adrenalin whenever I hear John Philip Sousa's Stars and Stripes Forever.)

Also, Music Helps People Remember New Info tells that Boston University discovered Alzheimer's Disease patients could remember new information when it was provided as music.  Speculation is that music processing requires wider brain participation than simple memory or cognitive functioning.  Perhaps music creates a more memorable event or memory for these patients.

Mmm. Everyone's favorite crotchety television journalist, is exposed in Andy Rooney Not in Tune With Bilboard and Artists.  The CBS 60 Minutes commentator admitted he doesn't know Lady Gaga or Justin Bieber.  Yeah - I'm a bit out of touch with the modern music scene, too.