Reflections on the Musical Mind: An Evolutionary Perspective

273 Pages·2013·13.794 MB·English

by  Jay Schulkin, Robert O. Gjerdingen

Reflections on the Musical Mind

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Reflections on the Musical Mind
An Evolutionary Perspective
Jay Schulkin
𝄞
P r i n c e to n U n i v e rs i t y P r e s s
P r i n c e to n a n d O x f o r d
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Copyright © 2013 by Princeton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street,
Princeton, New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street,
Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TW
press.princeton.edu
All Rights Reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Schulkin, Jay.
Reflections on the musical mind : an evolutionary perspective / Jay Schulkin.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-691-15744-3 (hardcover)
1. Music—Psychological aspects. 2. Music—Origin. 3. Musical ability. I. Title.
ML3830.S247 2013
781'.11—dc23
2013003296
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available
This book has been composed in Sabon
Printed on acid-free paper.
Printed in the United States of America
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
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Contents
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Foreword vii
Preface xi
introduction 1
chapter 1 Music and the Brain 18
An Evolutionary Context
chapter 2 Bird Brains, Social Contact, and Song 37
chapter 3 Human Song 62
Dopamine, Syntax, and Morphology
chapter 4 Musical Expectations, Probability,
and Aesthetics 87
chapter 5 Musical Expression, Memory,
and the Brain 119
chapter 6 Development, Music, and Social Contact 140
chapter 7 Music and Dance 156
conclusion Music and Well-Being 172
Notes 179
References 201
Index 249
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FOREWORD
𝄞
When scientific breakthroughs lead to a new level of under-
standing, some of the scientists involved may, from their im-
proved vantage point, begin to see familiar things in a different
light. Music can be one of those familiar things. The tremendous
strides made in the nineteenth century in the study of waves and
vibration, for example, enabled the great physiologist Hermann
von Helmholtz (1821–1894) to see that the ear is constructed
like an extremely sensitive frequency analyzer, and that musical
consonance and dissonance could be linked to the interactions of
the many frequencies registered in the inner ear. Musicians found
Helmholtz’s research both fascinating and inspiring, and a whole
literature of music theory developed around it. The famous physi-
cist Ernst Mach (1838–1916), in thinking about those component
frequencies, realized that if two versions of the same tune started
on different pitches, one higher, one lower, it would be possible for
none of the component frequencies to match. This meant that the
two versions were the “same” not by virtue of common sensations
(those frequencies) but by virtue of some holistic quality recog-
nized by the mind—a Gestalt quality. His fresh insight inspired a
generation of psychologists working in the 1920s.
In the second half of the twentieth century, the science of mind
was transformed first by a cognitive revolution and then by a rev-
olution in neuroscience. Jay Schulkin, a researcher in behavioral
neuroscience, inherited the advances of the first of these revolu-
tions as a student and is today recognized as a distinguished partic-
ipant in the second. From the fresh perspective of this new science
Schulkin looks at music and sees a host of exciting connections be-
tween the laboratory and the concert stage, car radio, or iPod. The
many aspects of music—its social, emotional, cognitive, somatic,
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viii F OREWORD
and evaluative components—all have their analog in activities of
the human brain. So it makes sense for a neuroscientist, especially
one well versed in music, to explain these connections. While
Helmholtz detailed the gross anatomy of the ear, Schulkin helps
us to understand the fine structure of neurons in the brain and the
many special molecules that enable the transmission and modula-
tion of information conveyed from neuron to neuron. These mol-
ecules are facts of biology and come with their own traces in the
long evolutionary record of life on earth.
Jay Schulkin arrived for graduate study in philosophy at the
University of Pennsylvania two years before I arrived there for
graduate study in music history and theory. Though we never met
as students, our intellectual lives crossed in the person of a storied
professor, Leonard B. Meyer (1918–2007). Meyer was a famous
humanist, yet one with an abiding interest in science. His curios-
ity was infectious and knew no disciplinary bounds. When I first
entered Meyer’s office, issues of the journal Science were strewn
on the same table with a score of Arnold Schoenberg’s adventur-
ous Pierrot Lunaire. For Meyer, the love of inquiry and intellectual
exploration was something shared by great artists and great scien-
tists alike. He was sure that musical rhythms must be grounded in
our physical bodies and their movements, and he was convinced
that musical syntax was just another manifestation of how hu-
mans interpret the meaning of patterns of every kind. Schulkin is
able to show how these speculative ideas from a scholar of music
find concrete support in the realm of neuroscience. Meyer would
be justly proud.
Two recent books have brought the subject of music cognition
to a broad audience. The first of these, This is Your Brain on Music
by music psychologist Daniel Levitin (2006), provides an engag-
ing tour of the many phenomena involved in the act of listening
to music. In the second, Musicophilia (2007), the famous clinician
Oliver Sacks relates how changes in the brain can dramatically af-
fect a person’s musical abilities and enjoyments. Schulkin’s Reflec-
tions on the Musical Mind is for the person who has been intrigued
by those discussions and now wants something more, something
that can serve as a bridge between the core issues of music and
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FOREWORD ix
the thousands of scientific studies that each address some particu-
lar facet of how our brains engage with meaningful patterns of
sound. By taking “an evolutionary perspective” and asking the dif-
ficult “why” questions—Why do we have music? Why might it be
beneficial for society? Why is music linked with dancing? Why do
we respond emotionally to music?—Schulkin engages his reader
in issues that have been debated for centuries but that now can be
examined afresh.
Robert O. Gjerdingen
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