We almost take music and dance for granted. Although they are distinct, they have intimately linked: Music- an arrangement of sound over time- causes us all to move in space. We can track rhythm, pulse, and tempo without knowing it and then respond by moving in the right direction. Scientists have only recently been able to quantify the human response to music. This research program uses a variety of techniques, including those from perception and cognition, neurobiology, and neuroimaging. It also includes insights from animal studies and psychophysics.
One of the most interesting findings is that nonhuman animals such as California sea lions or rhesus monkeys can respond to music and “keep it up” — but not as well as humans. People are wired to respond to music. However, it is possible to damage those wires. A few cases have been reported where people were unable to sync their movements with audio cues. Damage or dysfunction in key brain areas, such as the basal Ganglia, which is responsible for voluntary motor function and procedural learning, may be the culprit.
McGill University in Montreal’s cognitive psychologist Daniel Levitin, who started his career as a musician, has written extensively on music science, including two books: This Is Your Brain on Musik: The Science of a Human Obsession (2006) and The World in Six Songs. How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature (2008). Justin London and Jessica A. Grahn co-authored the article ” Music Psychology: Rhythm and Movement.”
The knowable magazine talked with Levitin to discuss the rewards and challenges of studying music’s human response. This conversation was edited to be more concise and clear.
How did this interest you
For many years, I was a professional musician. To work as a musician and arranger of music, I actually had to drop out of college. Then, when I returned to college, I was driven and curious about the ways musicians make their music. Is it because some musicians are better than others? Why are some musicians more popular than others? This form of emotional communication is what’s the deal? At first, I didn’t know what academic department would answer those questions. I started in the music department, then moved to philosophy, where I took courses on aesthetics. I then went to sociology, where I studied group behavior in response to trends and movements. Psychology, particularly cognitive science, seemed to be the best option to answer these questions.
Can we know how far back music and dance have been in our evolutionary history
Contrary to cave paintings that left some evidence we can carbon-date or test, music doesn’t leave any trace. Until we had things like piano rolls and written notation, it didn’t. We have to draw inferences. Some inferences can be quite strong. Some of the oldest artifacts involving early humans we have discovered are bone flutes. Some of these are over 40,000 years old. Many also play the pentatonic scale. We have had the blues for over 40,000 years, not just music for 40,000. If you have ever experienced the blues, it can sometimes feel like you’ve had them for 40,000+ years.
Another piece of evidence is the depiction of pottery shards or cave paintings of people dancing. A third piece of evidence comes courtesy of hunter-gatherers and subsistence tribe groups, who have been cut off from technology or civilization, as well as Western influence. Cultural psychologists and anthropologists who visited them to learn more about their lives and see how they live have discovered that they are musical and dance-loving.
Steven Pinker, the psychologist, famously referred to music in his 1997 book How the Mind Works. He claimed that music could not have been an evolutionary adaptation because it offered no survival benefit; instead, he suggested that music was an accidental offshoot from the development of language. Your view seems quite different.
There is evidence that our brains have a music acquisition module similar to the one Noam Chomsky describes for language acquisition. Babies and infants can respond to music by simply being exposed to it. You don’t have to teach it to them. Most babies are able to tell if there is a melody out of tune or a chord that’s not in the right sequence by age three. This indicates that the brain has circuitry that can receive information or a stimulus from only one sensory channel, which is the auditory channel, and convert it to a motor output, which is a body movement.
>k_subscribe_ad<>/k_subscribe_ad<We are the only species capable of doing this. This indicates that evolutionary advantage was present. This could be due to the ability to coordinate one’s actions and those of others. Imagine you are building pyramids. You lift the stones and try to place them. Your eyes should not be distracted from work. Imagine if there was a song that you could use to help coordinate movements when lifting heavy objects or hunting. It could be an advantage to be able to work together using rhythmic movements.
Dance is another option: Music and dance are a part of almost every culture that we know. Some of these dances can last hours. Music-making, just like the peacock’s tail was a demonstration of sexual, physical, and mental competence — it was also a display of fitness.
Social bonding between mother and infant would be another advantage. All cultures have mothers who sing to their babies instinctively. This is a way for the infants to pay attention and learn about the mother’s voice.
The most fascinating is memory. Music has many cues that work together to reinforce rhythm, accent, structure, rhyme, and scale. These are all factors that make music a great medium for transmitting a message. Things like the Old Testament or the Iliad, or the Odyssey were passed down via music centuries before they were ever recorded. Oral traditions and traveling troubadours are great ways to preserve information.
Pinker and I disagree on how to interpret the evidence. But that’s science: We gather evidence, weigh it, and then the community comes up with a consensus or something similar.
It is interesting to note that even those without musical training can “keep the beat.” Does this simply come as a natural skill
It seems like it is hardwired. It happens because neurons sync with the beat of the music and because babies practice motor movements and view the results as a way to train their visual-motor system. Similar things happen when we “march into time” or do “jumping Jacks” exercises in a schoolyard. As I suggested, this is likely evolutionary adaptation. Success in synchronous group activities may have real survival benefits.