Music can teach us about our human roots and how the brain works. Music can be used as a therapy tool to stimulate specific brain circuits. Music and psychopathology can also be linked to musical creativity. This paper will provide a brief overview.
A perspective from evolutionary perspectives
Many attempts have been made to identify the behaviors that distinguish Homo sapiens from its closest living relatives. As ethnologists and anthropologists continue to observe similarities and not differences, they have rejected the claims of any attributed activities. These include tool-making, theory of mind, empathy, and other cognitive abilities. Our cognitive abilities have been more developed, closely linked to the evolution of our brain’s size and structure. Bipedalism, the use of fire, the development of effective working memory and our spoken language efficient communication have all emerged from these genetic-environmental adaptations over several million years.
Our ability to create and respond musically and dance to the beats of time are two universal features common to our world.
Our ancestors developed expressive language and emotional expression along the evolutionary path. Susanne Langer, the philosopher, noted that music is the most advanced form of this purely connotational semantic. Meaning in music was created before the meaning of words.
The mammalian middle ears were created from the jaw bones of older reptiles. They carry sound at specific frequencies. Although it is tuned to sound, the range of frequencies required for speech is greater than natural. The frequency band mothers use to sing to their babies (or so-called motherese, or child-directed speech), with exaggerated intonation, rhythm and intonation, is similar to what composers used in their melodies. The infant must have a similar period of brain development to be able to incorporate music.
The difference between Homo sapiens’ developed brains and those of great apes lies in the increased area dedicated to processing auditory information. In other primates, the size of the visual cortex is correlated well with brain size. However, it is smaller in Homo sapiens. However, there have been increases in brain size in other areas of the human brain, particularly in the temporal and dorsal areas related to the auditory receptions of speech. With the increase in cerebellum size and the connections between the prefrontal cortex and the areas of the premotor cortex and prefrontal cortex, the expansion of association and primary auditory cortices, as well as the larger cerebellum, signaled a shift towards an aesthetics that is based on sound and the ability to entrain to external rhythmic signals. Our ancestors used the voice as their first musical instrument. The ear is always open, and unlike vision, the eyes, or the gaze, sound cannot be easily obstructed. The rhythmic beats of the mother and infant’s bodies, the primitive rhythmic beating of sticks and wood, and the hand-clapping of proto-speaking ancestors and adolescents are all part of the infant’s rhythmic environment. Stated that voices became more flexible than the drum, and primitive songs became part of communal celebrations. These ideas are supported by Mithen’s work, who argued that music and spoken language evolved from a protolanguage, which was a must linguistic system that was created from primates’ calls.
Our language today is a protolanguage. Gestures, musicality, and flexibility drove it. This could have been possible due to the increased anatomical development of the brain and coordination of facial, pharyngeal, and laryngeal muscles. The bicameral brain became different concerning its functions. It was still bipartite, with two cerebral hemispheres cooperating in coordinating life and the environment.
Music is an experience.
One of the most important findings from brain studies on music listening is the importance of the right (non-dominant) side. Brain imaging studies have shown that cerebral damage can cause impairments in pitch, timbre, and rhythm appreciation. Additionally, the right hemisphere is more active when listening to music, related to emotional experiences, and even thinking about music activates this side of your brain. This does not mean that the brain is divided into a left-right duo. Indeed, traditional neurology has largely ignored the talents of non-dominant brain hemispheres, favoring the dominant (normally right) hemisphere. This is partly due to an emphasis on the dominant hemisphere in propositional language and a lack of interest in prosody (emotional intonations of speech) that give meaning to the expression.
It seems that music and emotion have been linked for a long time. Plato believed that music in different ways would provoke different emotions. As a general rule, most people would agree on the emotional meaning of any piece of music. Major chords can be perceived as cheerful, while minor chords can be seen to be sad. This is also affected by the tempo of movement in time. Slower music seems less joyful than slower rhythms. This is because even the word motion can be a part of emotion. We are also moving in dance, as the music moves us emotionally.
Musical theorists have tended to focus on the syntax and grammar of music rather than the emotional experiences that music can trigger. If music does anything, it evokes emotions and physiological reactions, which can now be measured. The ordinary listener may not be aware of the relationship between emotion and musical content. This is because ‘the real stimulus is not the progressive unfolding or the musical content but the subjective content in the listener’s head’ This phenomenological approach contradicts the current neuroscience techniques in this area. However, it is relevant to psychiatry and topics like compositional creativity.
Music is a language if it is not a language. Music is a rhythm of life. It has tensions, resolutions and diminuendos. Music with delays and silent interludes does not provide us with a logical language. Instead, Langer says it “reveals the nature and truth of feelings with details and truths that language cannot reach.”
This idea is difficult for philosophical minds, as there can be knowledge that does not require words. The problem of describing a language of feelings is an issue that pervades the entire area of neuroscience and philosophy research. It also highlights the futility of trying to classify emotions.
Music ability and psychiatric disorder
A large body of literature supports the association between creativity and psychopathology. These links appear to be different for different types of high achievement. Mood disorders are also over-represented. While many people are creative, they tend to have more cyclothymia than bipolarity. However, florid manic depressive illness is rare. It is worth looking at biographies of famous musicians for their brain-behavior associations. It is not easy to convert the biographies of famous musicians into DSM diagnoses. This is due to a lack of reliable medical records and autobiographical information. It is of great significance that so many classical composers have been diagnosed with mood disorders. Although studies have not been published, similar associations may exist in non-Western composers. None of these composers appears to have suffered from schizophrenia. These findings are important in understanding the brain’s structure and function and offer avenues of therapeutic investigation that will differ depending on the diagnosis.
Music therapy
Music is universal and prompts a response. This response is ingrained in our evolutionary development and can lead to significant changes in emotion and movement. According to the anatomical associations mentioned above, music should be considered one of the ways to stimulate the brain. Music is a non-invasive treatment that has received much attention but insufficient empirical research. Music’s cultural role in social learning and emotional well-being can partly explain its therapeutic value. Numerous studies have shown that rhythmic entrainment can help patients with stroke, Parkinson’s disease, cerebral palsy, and traumatic brain injuries. Research on people with memory disorders such as Alzheimer’s suggests that neuronal memories forged through music are more resistant to neurodegenerative influences and are deeply embedded. Individually randomized trials have shown that people with depression accept music therapy, associated with improved mood disorders. Music therapy has been shown to have psychotherapeutic benefits for patients with neuropsychiatric disorders such as autism spectrum disorders.
Evidence suggests that music can decrease seizure frequency, stop refractory status epilepticus and decrease electroencephalographic spike frequency in children with epilepsy in awake and sleep states. We know that many people with epilepsy have electroencephalographic abnormalities, and, in some people, these can be ‘normalized’ by music. In addition to the need for trials of musical interventions in epilepsy, we should also consider whether the results of sonification of an electroencephalogram, which directly reflects the time course of cerebral rhythms, may be used to entrain ‘normal’ brain rhythms in people with seizure disorders. Alteration of the electroencephalogram via biofeedback of different components of sonified electroencephalography, or modulation of the musical input to a stimulus that affects the emotional state of the patient and hence cerebral and limbic activity and cerebral rhythms, are therapeutic possibilities that are currently being investigated.
These data indicate that music therapy for patients with neuropsychiatric disorders is effective and cost-effective. To date, most of the work has been done using Western-style music, although Bach and Mozart have been popular choices for interventions. Shantala Hegde’s paper outlines the therapeutic potential of music from other musical genres. Music can be used to learn about ourselves and our brains. It can also be used as a therapy tool by stimulating and accessing specific cerebral circuits.