Music Listening, Music Therapy, Phenomenology and Neuroscience

Appendix 3.02 Survey of The Neurosciences a

nd Music I

I

Conference 2005

From Perception to Performance

Part I. Ethology/Evolution: Do Animals have Music or Something El

se?

5 papers

Title, Category

Aim

Mus. Material, Cultural Ref.

Technology & Procedure

Main focus of interest

Conclusion

1. McDermott & Hauser
   (6-16)
   Origins of Music Perception
   Cat. 2: Consonance / dissonance
   Cat
   . 3: Complex sounds
   2. Merker (17

-28)

Conformal Motive in Birdsong

Cat. 6: Animal sounds

3. Fitch (29

-49)

Music Evolution

Cat. 6: Animal sounds

4P. Langner (50-52)

Neuronal Mechanisms of Pitch and Harmony

Cat. 1: Pitch

Cat. 2: Harmony

Testing whether

human

musical preferences

for

consonances and non-disturbing s

ounds

exist in

nonhuman primates

To highlight the uniqueness of human culture by contrasting ritual and instrumental (goal

• 
  

oriented) behavior.

Emphasize vocal learning as an enabling device for ritual culture

Providing an empirical basis for research on the evolution of music making in humans

Explanation for pitch perception and the preference of the hearing system for harmonic relationships

1) Dis

sonant

versus con

• 
  

sonant two

-note chords of

synthesized complex tones with ten harmonics

.

2) Aversive ”screeching” sound versus white noise CR: Western

/ Neutral

Discussion of voc

al learning

in humans and birds

.

Songs of whales, seals, parrots, hummingbirds, and songbirds

CR:

---

Human and animal sound production. Discussion of music and language: simi

• 
  

larities and differences, design features.

Sound production in birds, whales, dolphins, seals.

Ape drumming.

CR:

---

No musical material

CR:

---

. a)

Humans

, b) Tamarin

monkeys can trigger two kinds of sound by

choosing their position in experiment areas. Time

spent

on each side is measured

Review of ritual human culture and of vocal learning, which is

restricted to humans,

whales, seals

, and birds, not

shared by apes

Review of vocal learning in birds, cetaceans (whales and dolphins), pinnipeds (seals and sea lions), hominids. Clapping and drumming in apes

Review of theory and anatomical details

suggesting

an explanation of the brain’s extraction of periodicy pi

tch

Comparing

human acoustic

preferences with preferences of monkeys

Stages of imitation of ”conformal motive” in vocal output:

1) Subsong, babbling

2) Practicing pattern production 3) High

-fidelity

replication

Phylogeny of musical abilities. Possible adaptive functions of music in evolution

Temporal processing of periodic acoustic signals in brain stem and inferior colliculus. Anatomy of ventrolateral lemniscus

The studies suggest that simple acoustic preferen

ces

that are pronounced i

n

humans are not shared by primate relatives. Additional cross

-cultural research is

needed

We broke with the apes by

adding ritual culture to instrumental (practically oriented) culture.

Suggestion: The

”conformal

motive”

seem

s to play

a

profound role i

n ritual culture

Arguments for the evolutionary significance of song and motherese in childcare. Ape drumming:

potential homologue of instrumental music

Suggestion: The recognition of musical harmony, or consonance, is an intrinsic property of our

brains

P: indicates a short poster pape

r, e.g. 4P