biology

Neuroscience of music

Neuroscience of music is a biology topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Neuroscience of music rather than just read about it. In short: The neuroscience of music is the scientific study of brain-based mechanisms involved in the cognitive processes underlying music. These behaviours include music listening, perceiving, performing, composing, reading, writing, and other related activities.

Key takeaways

Neuroscience of music belongs to biology; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Neuroscience of music to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Neuroscience of music from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The neuroscience of music is the scientific study of brain-based mechanisms involved in the cognitive processes underlying music. These behaviours include music listening, perceiving, performing, composing, reading, writing, and other related activities. It also is increasingly concerned with the brain basis for musical aesthetics and musical emotion. Scientists working in this field may have training in cognitive neuroscience, neurology, neuroanatomy, psychology, music theory, computer science, and other relevant fields. The cognitive neuroscience of music represents a significant branch of music psychology, and is distinguished from related fields such as cognitive musicology in its reliance on direct observations of the brain and use of brain imaging techniques like functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and positron emission tomography (PET).

Elements of music

Pitch

Sounds consist of waves of air molecules that vibrate at different frequencies. These waves travel to the basilar membrane in the cochlea of the inner ear. Different frequencies of sound will cause vibrations in different locations of the basilar membrane. We are able to hear different pitches because each sound wave with a unique frequency is correlated to a different location along the basilar membrane. This spatial arrangement of sounds and their respective frequencies being processed in the basilar membrane is known as tonotopy. When the hair cells on the basilar membrane move back and forth due to the vibrating sound waves, they release neurotransmitters and cause action potentials to occur down the auditory nerve. The auditory nerve then leads to several layers of synapses at numerous clusters of neurons, or nuclei, in the auditory brainstem. These nuclei are also tonotopically organized, and the process of achieving this tonotopy after the cochlea is not yet well understood. This tonotopy is in general maintained up to primary auditory cortex in mammals. A widely postulated mechanism for pitch processing in the early central auditory system is the phase-locking and mode-locking of action potentials to frequencies in a stimulus. Phase-locking to stimulus frequencies has been shown in the auditory nerve, the cochlear nucleus, the inferior colliculus, and the auditory thalamus. By phase- and mode-locking in this way, the auditory brainstem is known to preserve a good deal of the temporal and low-passed frequency information from the original sound; this is evident by measuring the auditory brainstem response using EEG. This temporal preservation is one way to argue directly for the temporal theory of pitch perception, and to argue indirectly against the place theory of pitch perception.

The right secondary auditory cortex has finer pitch resolution than the left. Hyde, Peretz and Zatorre (2008) used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in their study to test the involvement of right and left auditory cortical regions in the frequency processing of melodic sequences. As well as finding superior pitch resolution in the right secondary auditory cortex, specific areas found to be involved were the planum temporale (PT) in the secondary auditory cortex, and the primary auditory cortex in the medial section of Heschl's gyrus (HG). Many neuroimaging studies have found evidence of the importance of right secondary auditory regions in aspects of musical pitch processing, such as melody. Many of these studies such as one by Patterson, Uppenkamp, Johnsrude and Griffiths (2002) also find evidence of a hierarchy of pitch processing. Patterson et al. (2002) used spectrally matched sounds which produced: no pitch, fixed pitch or melody in an fMRI study and found that all conditions activated HG and PT. Sounds with pitch activated more of these regions than sounds without. When a melody was produced activation spread to the superior temporal gyrus (STG) and planum polare (PP). These results support the existence of a pitch processing hierarchy.

Absolute pitch

Absolute pitch (AP) is defined as the ability to identify the pitch of a musical tone or to produce a musical tone at a given pitch without the use of an external reference pitch. Neuroscientific research has not discovered a distinct activation pattern common for possessors of AP. Zatorre, Perry, Beckett, Westbury and Evans (1998) examined the neural foundations of AP using functional and structural brain imaging techniques. Positron emission tomography (PET) was utilized to measure cerebral blood flow (CBF) in musicians possessing AP and musicians lacking AP. When presented with musical tones, similar patterns of increased CBF in auditory cortical areas emerged in both groups. AP possessors and non-AP subjects demonstrated similar patterns of left dorsolateral frontal activity when they performed relative pitch judgments. However, in non-AP subjects activation in the right inferior frontal cortex was present whereas AP possessors showed no such activity. This finding suggests that musicians with AP do not need access to working memory devices for such tasks. These findings imply that there is no specific regional activation pattern unique to AP. Rather, the availability of specific processing mechanisms and task demands determine the recruited neural areas.

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Neuroscience of music: The primary auditory cortex is one of the main areas associated with superior pitch resolution. — The primary auditory cortex is one of the main areas associated with superior pitch resolution.

Neuroscience of music: Professional pianists show less cortical activation for complex finger movement tasks due to structural differences in the brain. — Professional pianists show less cortical activation for complex finger movement tasks due to structural differences in the brain.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Neuroscience of music

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Neuroscience of music claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In biology, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Neuroscience of music before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Neuroscience of music ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Neuroscience of music

In research: Neuroscience of music appears in biology research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Neuroscience of music in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Neuroscience of music is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Cognitive musicology, Cognitive neuroscience, Music cognition, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Neuroscience of music outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Neuroscience of music in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Neuroscience of music means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Neuroscience of music out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Neuroscience of music in simple terms?

Why does Neuroscience of music matter?

Because it connects several biology ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Neuroscience of music?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Neuroscience of music.