Robert Zatorre, in the journal Nature, surveys the importance of music in neuroscience, an area of research that is yet underdeveloped. Music allows us to study various aspects of neuroscience, including motor-skills, memory, and emotion, and processing music (listening to or making) requires a mixture of almost all cognitive functions. Certain neurological functions associated with music are unique to music, and others overlap with those in involved in other domains. For example, there is much evidence that speech processing mostly happens in the left hemisphere. And often musical function is intact even if the left hemisphere is severely damaged. Lesions and magnetic recording studies have shown that a certain region of the auditory cortex in the right hemisphere is much more specialized in pitch details than its counterpart in the left hemisphere.
Some lesions of auditory cortical regions result in a problem called amusia, which is a highly selective dysfunction in perceiving and interpreting music. Though they have no issues with speaking words or understanding/recognizing speech and everyday sounds, they cannot pick out wrong notes in music or recognize a familiar melody. The fine-grained pitch processing that is damaged in amusia and is essential and characteristic of music perception, helps in determining specifics of the brain on music and the brain on other functions.
Even in development, music is a large indicator of the plasticity of the brain. Music perception starts very early on, and babies are able to sort out and create rules for the musical sounds they hear. But obviously there are largely varying degrees of abilities and affinities for music throughout individuals. Years of training actually can change underlying structures of the nervous system, as evidenced through studies showing greater tissue density and enlargement of motor and auditory structures in musicians. The way that mechanism of music in the brain are so intricately woven but also changed contributes to the plasticity of the brain, and the importance of the environment’s effect on the brain.
This post was so interesting! I wonder if there is an impairment of perceiving and interpreting music, is there a lesion "impairment" that enhances music ability? Also, it seems as the brain plays a large part in music ability, then where does talent factor in? Does talent even exist, or can everyone perfect their skills in music?
ReplyDeleteThis reminds me of "This is Your Brain on Music" by Daniel Levitin, a great book about all the elusive science on the neuroscience/music connection. I am curious about the right-brained source of music ability and how it relates to other abilities (or disabilities) present in the right brain. Which specific lesioned regions contribute to amusia? It sounds like a condition well worth studying for the light that it could shine on the nature of the brain-music link. Lastly, I would like to understand the mechanism by which babies interpret music (with which they are presumably born) and also how the process of training affects other abilities (as has been so often reported in developmental studies).
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