Music Cognition and Music in the Brain

One of the first questions that should be asked is how do we mentally understand the sounds music produces each time we encounter them? Music cognition is defined as how we make sense of music. Cognitively we can realize individual notes and phrases and connect them internally. What if our emotional responses to music are entirely based on psychological perception? The brain can understand pattern recognition and in Gestalt Laws of cognitive organization, we learn that the brain sees the bigger picture. For example, a pianist might break down a concert piece into smaller parts to understand its entirety when performed. Some key terms within the Gestalt theory are figure-ground relationships, Laws of Pragnanz, proximity, similarity, common direction, simplicity, and closure. All of these terms are used with the Gestalt theory to explain how the human brain perceives experiences.

In This is Your Brain On Music by Daniel J. Levitin, music cognition is one of the main topics of discussion throughout the book. In chapter seven, Levitin asks how people reach the expert level in music? Musical experience can be through technical achievements, but what really shows talent? Levitin states, "A child with parents who are musicians is more likely to receive encouragement for her early musical learnings that a child in a nonmusical household" (Levitin pg. 200). Schemata is the concept of knowledge structures and how they will change as we learn from new experiences. Schema is how we perceive something we have learned that has affected our everyday experiences. In music, zibaldone is hundreds of stock musical phrases that can be collected within the brain for later use.

There are many things in everyday life that our brain does for us. The first phenomenon is called the cocktail party phenomenon. This occurs when you are having a conversation with one person in front of you and your focus is on their talking. The second thing our brain does for us is called the auditory stream segregation. This allows the listener to separate two or more sounds. From this concept, we have music fission which is when one sound appears and becomes two sounds, and music fusion which allows two sounds to converge into one. Musical memory is made up of declarative memory, procedural memory, audition, chunking, and mental rehearsal. Within musical memory, there is the concept of tonality. Tonality is the central factor in Western musical genres. Tonal hierarchies are organized into three levels. The first two levels are about specifying relationships in any given musical key. The third level discusses the mapped relationships between these musical keys. Lastly, music and language are linked between the sensory encoding of sound, the processing of melodic contours, and syntactic processing. A good acronym to remember for this music and language connection. 

Overlap!

Precision!

Emotion!

Repetition!

Attention!

The brain is the main system of control for our bodies. Our brains take in the world for us, keep us safe, and allow us to grow as individuals. On a biology and psychology level, the brain is made up of a cerebral cortex, gray matter, gyrification, and a right and left hemisphere. The hemispheres are made up of the occipital lobe(vision), the partial lobe(sensory), the temporal lobe (auditory), and the frontal lobe(long-term planning, movement control, and speech production). Within the brain, there are neurons which are the cells that receive and send messages to the body. On these neurons, the axons carry away the messages and the dendrites bring in the messages. All of these neurons are connected by synapses and these connections create a bigger picture for the brain to understand.

Music in the brain is divided up into two subsections. The first section is the contributions from ethnomusicology, ethnology, music psychology, and anthropology. The section studies the brain and how musical messages are creating neurons.  Brain damage and its effects of musical behaviors is another important topic of discussion. In Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks, chapter two discusses the phenomenon of musical seizures. At the beginning of the chapter Sacks writes about a man named Jon S. and how his Monday had started out perfectly normal until "he suddenly heard music, "classical, melodic, quite nice, soothing...vaguely familiar...It was a string instrument, a solo violin," He immediately thought where the hell is that music coming from?" [...] "Then," he says, "I went out." A colleague in the office who saw all this described Mr. S. as "slumped over, unresponsive," in the closet, though not convulsing" (Sacks pg. 19). This phenomenon is discussed throughout the rest of the chapter and at the end of the chapter was defined more as an overwhelming psychological experience rather than a seizure. In closing, psychologists and neurologists are still trying to expand their knowledge on why music affects the brain in such a powerful way.