Dr M S Anand –
Music occupies so much of our lives and could have in fact played an important role in the development of the species.
Music may have been an evolutionary adaptation, like spoken language that arose early in human history and helped the species survive.
From the tribal dances of Amazon to the frenetic raves of Amsterdam, every culture makes music an essential part of its rituals.
Interestingly, the oldest known musical instrument was a carved bone flute found in a cave in Slovenia. It dates back 40,000 years to a time when Europe and much of North America were mantled in ice and humans lived side by side with Neanderthals.
Music and Our Family
As children, my sister and I were made to listen to a few songs rendered by our paternal and maternal grandmothers recorded on a tape recorder (long before the easier, cheaper, and more versatile era landed on us) I distinctly remember the melodious voices of both our grandmothers.
As we grew up, my sister and I liked completely different styles and genres of music. Our singing and musical abilities, vocal dynamics, pitch, rhythm and tone were vastly different.
My mother, though not trained in classical music, had a mellifluous voice and hence could do justice to a semi-classical number. My father was the opposite with no singing talent.
Bulbul Tarang
Although I have never been trained any musical instrument, I learnt to play the ‘Bulbul Tarang’ (an Indian musical instrument) and the Synthesizer during my childhood.
I had no formal training.
I often wondered as to why such a vast range of singing and musical abilities reside within the same family.
Music and Brain
Dr VS Ramachandran, one of the greatest neuroscientists of our time, affectionately called ‘The Marco Polo of modern Neuroscience by none other than Richard Dawkins states in his book ‘The Tell-Tale Brain’ as follows:
“How can a three-pound mass of jelly that you can hold in your palm imagine angels, contemplate the meaning of infinity, and even question its own place in the cosmos?
“The human brain, it has been said, is the most complexly organised structure in the Universe and to appreciate this you just have to look at some numbers. The brain is made up of one hundred billion nerve cells or ‘neurons’ which is the basic structural and functional units of the nervous system. Each neuron makes about 1000 to 10,000 contacts with other neurons and these points of contact are called ‘synapses’ where exchange of information occurs.
Based on this information, someone has calculated that the number of possible permutations and combinations of brain activity, in other words the numbers of brain states, exceeds the number of elementary particles in the known Universe.”
Complex Structure
Music activates so many parts of our brain that it is impossible to say that we have a center for music the way we do for other tasks and subjects, such as language. When we hear a song, our frontal and temporal lobes begin processing the sounds, with different brain cells working to decipher things like rhythm, pitch and melody. Many researchers believe that most of this action happens in the right hemisphere, though others say reducing music to a right brained or left brained activity isn’t possible.
If the song has lyrics, then the parts of the brain that process language, Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas, kick into gear. Researchers have found that songs can activate our visual cortex, perhaps because our brain tries to construct a visual image of the changes in pitch and tone.
The two sides
The concept of ‘Right Brain’ and ‘Left Brain’ is interesting; the right side of the brain largely governs creative and intuitive thinking, while the left side looks after logic, mathematics, and rote learning. The two hemispheres are not like halves of a ball; they are physically separate and are joined only by one fibrous connection (called the Corpus Callosum) which allows communication between the two hemispheres and therefore helps balance our thinking and functioning.
Most people tend to use one side of the brain more than the other. Creative people are said to be ‘right-brained;’ they are usually artistic and intuitive but sometimes not ‘grounded’ in logic.
Logical, analytical types who are skilled in mathematics and data-keeping, and are perhaps not as creatively inclined, are said to be ‘left-brained.’
Cognitive Neuroscience
The cognitive neuroscience of music is the scientific study of brain-based mechanisms involved in the cognitive processes underlying music. These behaviours include music listening, performing, composing, reading, writing, and ancillary activities.
Pitch, melodic aspects of music, tone and rhythm of music are determined by the right auditory cortex and other brain structures.
Interestingly, when parts of auditory cortex are damaged, the ability to recognise once familiar melodies is lost. Musical difficulties occur while speech understanding remains intact.
Music and Genes
According to experts, it takes up to 10,000 hours to master the Violin, although most people believe that it is up to the aptitude and ability of the individual.
Is there a music gene?
A team of Finnish and American geneticists has found that that, for some people at least, music is in their genes. In what the researchers called the first study of its kind, they found specific regions of chromosomes that were connected to musical ability. The report appeared in the Journal of Medical Genetics.
The study also found that the musical DNA overlapped with a region associated with dyslexia (learning disorder related to speech and reading).That finding suggests that language and music have a common evolutionary background. You would of course need more than the right genes to make you a good musician!
Having understood the mechanisms related to complex brain structures, the genes involved in music and the connections between music, genes and the brain, putting two and two together, it now makes sense to me as a student of neuroscience.
I can now speculate that certain parts of the brain involved in rhythm , pitch, melody etc were probably well developed in certain members of our family who possibly had inherited a ‘music gene,’ while others had not done so!
Dr M S Anand (aka Anand Sastry) is Director, Area Mental Health Services and Clinical Head, Acute Adult Mental Health Services at Counties Manukau Health. He is also Facilitator of the ‘Mindfulness Workshop’ of Art of Living.\
Photo :
The late Dr M S Subbulakshmi (left) the late Bhimsen Joshi (right) have influenced the moods of millions across the world with their proficiency in Carnatic and Hindustani Music
