How The Brain Respond To Music
Published on Nov 22, 2015
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PRESENTATION OUTLINE
There isn't a single music center of the brain, in large part because listening to even very simple music combines a bunch of distinct neurological processes. Let's first look at the more strictly mechanical aspects of listening to music. As you might be able to guess from its name, the auditory cortex is an important part of processing the sound of music. Part of the temporal lobe, the auditory cortex takes in information from the ear and assesses the pitch and volume of the sound.
Other parts of the brain deal with different aspects of music. Rhythm, for instance, is only connected in a relatively minor way to the auditory cortex.
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Study shows different brains have similar responses to music
BY BRUCE GOLDMAN
"We spend a lot of time listening to music — often in groups, and often in conjunction with synchronized movement and dance," said Vinod Menon, PhD, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and the study's senior author. "Here, we've shown for the first time that despite our individual differences in musical experiences and preferences, classical music elicits a highly consistent pattern of activity across individuals in several brain structures including those involved in movement planning, memory and attention."
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To make sure it was music, not language, that study participants' brains would be processing, Menon's group used music that had no lyrics. Also excluded was anything participants had heard before, in order to eliminate the confounding effects of having some participants who had heard the musical selection before while others were hearing it for the first time. Using obscure pieces of music also avoided tripping off memories, such as where participants were the first time they heard the selection.
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Menon's group recruited 17 right-handed participants (nine men and eight women) between the ages of 19 and 27 with little or no musical training and no previous knowledge of Boyce's works. (Conventional maps of brain anatomy are based on studies of right-handed people. Left-handed people's brains tend to deviate from that map.)
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