Reflections on the Musical Mind: An Evolutionary Perspective - Hardcover

Schulkin, Jay

 
9780691157443: Reflections on the Musical Mind: An Evolutionary Perspective
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0691157448 ISBN 13: 9780691157443
Verlag: Princeton University Press, 2013

Inhaltsangabe

What's so special about music? We experience it internally, yet at the same time it is highly social. Music engages our cognitive/affective and sensory systems. We use music to communicate with one another--and even with other species--the things that we cannot express through language. Music is both ancient and ever evolving. Without music, our world is missing something essential.

In Reflections on the Musical Mind, Jay Schulkin offers a social and behavioral neuroscientific explanation of why music matters. His aim is not to provide a grand, unifying theory. Instead, the book guides the reader through the relevant scientific evidence that links neuroscience, music, and meaning. Schulkin considers how music evolved in humans and birds, how music is experienced in relation to aesthetics and mathematics, the role of memory in musical expression, the role of music in child and social development, and the embodied experience of music through dance. He concludes with reflections on music and well-being. Reflections on the Musical Mind is a unique and valuable tour through the current research on the neuroscience of music.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jay Schulkin is Research Professor in the Department of Neuroscience and member at the Center for the Brain Basis of Cognition, both at Georgetown University. He is the author of numerous books, including Roots of Social Sensibility and Neural Function, Bodily Sensibility: Intelligent Action, Cognitive Adaptation: A Pragmatist Perspective, and Adaptation and Well-Being: Social Allostasis.

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"The many aspects of music--its social, emotional, cognitive, somatic, and evaluative components--all have their analogs in activities of the human brain. So it makes sense for a neuroscientist, especially one well versed in music, to explain these connections. By taking an evolutionary perspective and asking the difficult why questions--Why do we have music? Why might it be beneficial for society? Why is music linked with dancing? Why do we respond emotionally to music?--Schulkin engages his reader in issues that have been debated for centuries but that now can be examined afresh."--from the foreword by Robert O. Gjerdingen

"With an evident love of music and exemplary cross-disciplinary knowledge, Schulkin delves into the sources of musical expression, its social functions of communication and bonding, and its central role in our quest for purpose. Investigating animal song, the neurochemical basis of musical experience, the way music unites us into groups, and the intimate tie of music and bodily motion, Schulkin ultimately sees music as a universal form of inquiry into human meaning."--Mark Johnson, University of Oregon

"Featuring authoritative, clear discussion of scientific data with aesthetic, philosophical, and personal perspectives,Reflections on the Musical Mind tackles music and its roles in human societies. Jay Schulkin melds considerations of aesthetics with cognition, and neurobiology with human nature to explore the cognitive systems involved in musical production and perception, and how music, movement, multiple senses, and emotion are intimately intertwined."--Iain Morley, author ofThe Prehistory of Music

"The affective neuroscience of music is a relatively new topic. This excellent, novel, and highly creative book brings it alive, with a diverse array of insights from philosophy, cognitive science, neuropsychology, and evolutionary biology. Schulkin clearly is a master when it comes to thinking about the brain and music."--Kent Berridge, University of Michigan

"Reflections on the Musical Mind discusses the relationships between music, the evolutionary psychology of music, and molecular, cognitive, and social neuroscience. Although one can take issue with some of the arguments presented, this book is a useful and entertaining survey of a wide range of neuroscience evidence related to music and the brain."--Peter Cariani, Harvard Medical School

Aus dem Klappentext

"The many aspects of music--its social, emotional, cognitive, somatic, and evaluative components--all have their analogs in activities of the human brain. So it makes sense for a neuroscientist, especially one well versed in music, to explain these connections. By taking an evolutionary perspective and asking the difficult why questions--Why do we have music? Why might it be beneficial for society? Why is music linked with dancing? Why do we respond emotionally to music?--Schulkin engages his reader in issues that have been debated for centuries but that now can be examined afresh."--from the foreword by Robert O. Gjerdingen

"With an evident love of music and exemplary cross-disciplinary knowledge, Schulkin delves into the sources of musical expression, its social functions of communication and bonding, and its central role in our quest for purpose. Investigating animal song, the neurochemical basis of musical experience, the way music unites us into groups, and the intimate tie of music and bodily motion, Schulkin ultimately sees music as a universal form of inquiry into human meaning."--Mark Johnson, University of Oregon

"Featuring authoritative, clear discussion of scientific data with aesthetic, philosophical, and personal perspectives,Reflections on the Musical Mind tackles music and its roles in human societies. Jay Schulkin melds considerations of aesthetics with cognition, and neurobiology with human nature to explore the cognitive systems involved in musical production and perception, and how music, movement, multiple senses, and emotion are intimately intertwined."--Iain Morley, author ofThe Prehistory of Music

"The affective neuroscience of music is a relatively new topic. This excellent, novel, and highly creative book brings it alive, with a diverse array of insights from philosophy, cognitive science, neuropsychology, and evolutionary biology. Schulkin clearly is a master when it comes to thinking about the brain and music."--Kent Berridge, University of Michigan

"Reflections on the Musical Mind discusses the relationships between music, the evolutionary psychology of music, and molecular, cognitive, and social neuroscience. Although one can take issue with some of the arguments presented, this book is a useful and entertaining survey of a wide range of neuroscience evidence related to music and the brain."--Peter Cariani, Harvard Medical School

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Reflections on the Musical Mind

AN EVOLUTIONARY PERSPECTIVE

By Jay Schulkin

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2013 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-15744-3

Contents

Foreword...................................................................vii
Preface....................................................................xi
INTRODUCTION...............................................................1
CHAPTER 1 Music and the Brain An Evolutionary Context.....................18
CHAPTER 2 Bird Brains, Social Contact, and Song............................37
CHAPTER 3 Human Song Dopamine, Syntax, and Morphology.....................62
CHAPTER 4 Musical Expectations, Probability, and Aesthetics................87
CHAPTER 5 Musical Expression, Memory, and the Brain........................119
CHAPTER 6 Development, Music, and Social Contact...........................140
CHAPTER 7 Music and Dance..................................................156
CONCLUSION Music and Well-Being............................................172
Notes......................................................................179
References.................................................................201
Index......................................................................249

CHAPTER 1

Music and the Brain

An Evolutionary Context


We are a species bound by evolution and diverse forms ofchange, both symbolic and social. Language and music areas much a part of our evolutionary development as the tool makingand the cognitive skills that we traditionally focus on when wethink about evolution.

As social animals, we are oriented toward sundry expressionsof our conspecifics that ground us in the social world, a world ofacceptance and rejection, approach and avoidance, that featuresobjects rich with significance and meaning. Music inherently procuresthe detection of intention and emotion, as well as whether toapproach or avoid.

Social behavior is a premium cognitive adaptation, reachinggreater depths in humans than in any other species. The orientationof the human child, for example, to a physical domain of objects,can appear quite similar in the performance of some tasks to thecommon chimpanzee or orangutan in the first few years of development.The understanding of objects in space, quantities, or drawinginferences is not that far apart. This is not so for problemsrequiring a vast array of social knowledge. What becomes quiteevident early on in ontogeny is the vastness of the social worldin which the human neonate is trying to gain a foothold for action.Music is social in nature; we inherently feel the social valueof reaching others through music or by moving others in songacross the broad social milieu.

In this chapter, I discuss how music fits into the evolution of ourcognitive capabilities, and how the auditory system, larynx, motorsystems, and cephalic expansion underlie the expression of musicand the evolution of social contact.


Cognitive Capabilities and Problem Solving

Theodosius Dobzhansky is often cited for his remarks regardinghow all things are linked to evolution. A biological perspective isthe cornerstone in understanding our capabilities, with our musicalability being just one of these, including our sense of space andtime, our ability to assess probabilities (the prediction of events),our numerosity, and, of course, our language abilities.

The specific adaptation for decoding facial responses, and themore general aptitudes such as applying numerical capabilities todiverse problems, pervade a biological understanding of cognitiveadaptation. Cognitive systems run the gamut across the nervoussystem. Cognition is not simply defined by a province of the neocorticaltissue, the most evolved tissue; cognitive systems are distributedacross neural systems that traverse the brain stem to theforebrain. As I have indicated, and will continue to note throughoutthis book, regions of the brain that underlie musical sensibilityand expression are also widely distributed.

Cognition rests at the heart of human understanding. Table 1.1,originally created by the evolutionary anthropologist Steven Mithen,highlights some of the core features of problem solving andhuman expression.

These are fairly diverse sets of cognitive predilections that underlieour evolution and figure into much of what we do. Cavepainting, tool making, and other skills, as well as our sense of enjoymentin what we do, are embedded in cognitive adaptation anda search to understand something about our surroundings: whatto expect, how to cope, how to transform, and so on. After all, ArtAs Experience, as Dewey understood, is in understanding, building,and representing affective content.

From simple tools to facile musical instruments, to elementarysymbols, all of these represent a small leap for humankind. Forexample, see the flutes depicted in figure 1.1. Diverse forms of artand probably music emerged in early Homo sapiens, and are evidentin remains that date back to at least 40,000 years ago.

Knowledge and a sense of aesthetics are entwined. They coalesceas heightened appraisals predominate in functional contexts; thenreprieves occur, long silences and meditative calms amidst thehustle and bustle of life. Reconsidering and musing take precedenceamid ephemeral moments of reflection and meditation; artifactstake shape and expand from narrow confines to extendedattraction from normal bodily expression. The body is expandedthrough meditation with a direction set in motion by an evolvingbrain.

One cognitive adaptation is the capacity for the basic discernmentof inanimate objects from animate objects. We have adaptedthis fundamental cognitive perception into a source of music, art,and religion. We represent animate objects, often giving them divine-likestatus, which infuses them with specific and transcendentalmeaning. This is part of a basic adaptation to discern useful objects.

Musical instruments ultimately derive from this expandedcognitive approach to objects. A key artifact is something that issometimes called a "sound tool" or "lithophone." The oldest dateback some 40,000 years ago from sites in Europe, Asia, and Africa.Sound tools are simple stones that resonate when struck, asshown figure 1.2.

While most of music is song, and song preceded musical instruments,the cognitive/motor cephalic capability for the inventionof tools is embedded in music and meaning, with social contactinherent in these events. After all, making objects, musical andotherwise, is a cephalic extension of the world beyond ourselves.The terrain changes, and we scaffold with the broadening array ofmusical meaning.

Representing objects, dividing kinds by naming and trackingthem, is also fundamental to human evolution. Cognitive capacitiescontinued to expand as we explored new terrains and survivedin them. Thus, representation is not something that removes us fromobjects. Instead, the cognitive expansion into art and the knowingprocess of reflection and meditation provides ways of coming tounderstand the objects that matter and mean something to us.


Time and Timing

Time is not a thing. Despite the fact that we know...

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Verlag
Princeton University Press
Erscheinungsdatum
2013
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0691157448
ISBN 13 
9780691157443
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
256
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