PREFACE
Over the past decade there has been an explosion in research activities on music perception
and performance, and their correlates in the human brain. This sudden increase in scient-
ific work on music has been motivated in part by the idea that music offers a unique oppor-
tunity to better understand the organization of the human brain. The other major
motivation for exploring the neural substrates of musical activities is that they may shed
light on the functional origin and biological value of music. Like language, music exists in
all human societies. Like language, music is a complex, rule-governed activity, and appears
to be associated with a specific brain architecture. Moreover, sensitivity to musical struc-
ture develops early in life, without conscious effort, in the large majority of the population.
Music also appears to be specific to humans, although some investigators have begun to
examine its possible evolutionary origins in other species’.^1
Unlike most other high-level functions of the human brain—and unlike language—only
a minority of individuals become proficient performing musicians through explicit tutor-
ing. This particularity in the distribution of acquired skills confers to music a privileged
role in the study of brain plasticity. Another distinction from language is that a large vari-
ety of sensory-motor systems may be studied because of the many different ways of pro-
ducing music. These variable modes of auditory expression enable interesting comparisons
across systems.
Given both its similarities with language and its divergence from it, we believe that the
relationship between music and the brain is of central importance for the domain of cog-
nitive neuroscience. The fact that musical activities have generally been considered as an
exquisite product of human culture, and as such are often assumed to be merely a cultural
artifact, should not be taken as an impediment to achieving a scientific understanding of
its underlying basis. In fact, we would argue that the cultural overlay associated with music
confers upon it a key role for understanding the biology of human cognitive functions.
Indeed, the ubiquity of music, its developmental features, and its brain substrates raise the
question of the nature and the extent of its biological foundations, and how these interact
with culture.
In this context, it is remarkable to note that the study of music as a major brain function
has been relatively neglected. Neuropsychological questions related to musical abilities
have been of occasional interest to neurologists and psychologists since the last century
(e.g. Ref. 2 for pioneering work), but systematic, sustained investigations have been rare
until recently. Several developments—both theoretical and technological—have created a
profound change in the way in which music studies are perceived, thereby enabling us to
present this volume as a beginning to the scientific study of the neurobiology of music.
First, one should mention the development of cognitive psychology during the latter half
of the twentieth century; cognitive psychologists were among the first to recognize theZat-fm.qxd 6/5/03 11:16 PM Page v