Music shapes the brain

[Veracohr]

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/healthscience/134595127_music13.html Study: Patterns of music help shape brain By Robert Lee Hotz Los Angeles Times NEW YORK — From Mozart to Miles Davis, the harmonies of Western music rewire the brain, creating patterns of neural activity at the confluence of emotion and memory that strengthen with each new melody, research made public yesterday shows. By monitoring the brains of people listening to classical scales and key progressions, scientists at Dartmouth College glimpsed the biology of the hit-making machinery of popular song. The research shows how the musical mind hears the flat notes in Flatt and Scruggs, the sharps of the Harmonicats and all five octaves in pop diva Mariah Carey's repertoire. The flash-dance of these brain circuits, which process the harmonic relationship of musical notes, is shaped by a human craving for melody that drives people to spend more every year on music than on prescription drugs. The circuits center in a brain region that responds equally to the musical patterns of Eminem's hip-hop and Bach's baroque fugues. "Music is not necessary for human survival, yet something inside us craves it," said Dartmouth music psychologist Petr Janata, who led the international research team. "Our minds have internalized the music." Whatever the reason, the impact on the individual brain is measurable. Among expert musicians, certain areas of the cortex are up to 5 percent larger than in people with little or no musical training, recent research shows. In musicians who started their training in early childhood, the neural bridge that links the brain's hemispheres, called the corpus callosum, is up to 15 percent larger. A professional musician's auditory cortex — the part of the brain associated with hearing — contains 130 percent more gray matter than that of nonmusicians. The new study, published today in Science, shows for the first time that the abstract knowledge about the harmonic relationships in music inscribes itself on the human cortex, guiding expectations of how musical notes should relate to one another as they are played. Through constant exposure, synapses are trained to respond like a series of tuning forks to the tones characteristic of Western music, several experts said. The pattern in the music literally becomes a pattern in the brain. "It shows this link between music theory and perception and brain function," said Frances Rauscher, an expert in music cognition at the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh. "No one had looked before." The Dartmouth group scanned eight people with a functional magnetic resonance imager, or fMRI, as they listened to an eight-minute melody specially composed to move continuously through all 24 major and minor musical keys. The volunteers, who each had about 12 years of musical training, performed several music-related tasks while they listened in the scanner. The fMRI scanner, which records changes in blood flow associated with mental processing, allowed scientists to watch this meandering of keys as the music traced a path across the surface of the cortex. Although music activated many parts of the brain, researchers discovered that everyone had only one area in common that tracked and processed melodies — the rostromedial prefontal cortex, located near the center of the forehead.

[phaeton]

Excellent! Thanks for pointing this out. I love it. :thu:

[Duhduh]

[quote]Originally posted by Veracohr: [b] ...drives people to spend more every year on music than on prescription drugs.[/b][/quote]This made me smile. :) [quote][b] "Music is not necessary for human survival"[/b][/quote]Maybe for this dude...

[Mark V]

from Veracohrs post [quote] "Our minds have internalized the music." [/quote]Yep,that explains why I've had my own radio station playing in my mind ever since I can remember having conscious thought..

[Duhduh]

[quote]Originally posted by markvincent: [b]from Veracohrs post [quote] "Our minds have internalized the music." [/quote]Yep,that explains why I've had my own radio station playing in my mind ever since I can remember having conscious thought..[/b][/quote]Wow! You too? Seriously...

[Jotown]

Very cool post. [quote]Among expert musicians, certain areas of the cortex are up to 5 percent larger than in people with little or no musical training, recent research shows. In musicians who started their training in early childhood, the neural bridge that links the brain's hemispheres, called the corpus callosum, is up to 15 percent larger. A professional musician's auditory cortex — the part of the brain associated with hearing — contains 130 percent more gray matter than that of nonmusicians. [/quote]Aha! So size does matter. :D