I was browsing on facebook last night as usual, and all the “likes” and comments from this video drew my attention. Haven’t listened to much English romatic pops lately, I was startled by their sweet voice, and I said “Oh wow, they are good” (Sonia is more sweet I must admit)

Thinking again, all these sudden and random questions of music and cognitions continually stroke my head. Taking a distal approach, we hear the twins singing, and we appreciate their singing because it is vocally nice. Taking a proximal approach, we understand that the sound waves causes vibration on our ear drums, causing a particular pattern of vibrations of our Ossicles, next to our cochlear and then to our auditory nerve, finally to brain through our auditory pathway; here we sense. A highly complex cognitive circuit then kicks in (I mean really complex), and afterward we precept the music and elicit our own personal appreciation and emotional feelings.

The interesting part here is our extraordinary capability to distinguish the quality of music, and the ability to elicit the corresponding responses.  Does our brain simply ingrain specialized cells for music? Through life-span or through the entire mankind history? How does our brain distinguish between music and other natural sounds(ie water drops). Scientists shows that such ability seemed to be innate; a research in University of Toronto examined new born response to anomalous note; the infants repeatedly response to anomalous notes as a full range scale (ie, do re, mi, fa, sol, la ti, do) is play. In the contrary, the baby seems indifferent when it is played  when the scale is played through accordingly.

Relating back to the evolution perspective, how does this derived trait help mankind survived? Is music merely a positive reinforcement, such that a pleasure which has no true adaptive value? Or does music making makes help us survive and reproduce? A research in Japan demonstrates men’s testosterone levels dramatically decrease after playing half and hour of  music of all types (Hum, confounding because of boredom?), the researchers nevertheless conclude that music reduce sexual activity and relieve tension, thus boost people’s sense of solidarity. Taken a step back, the term adaptive trait is extremely hard to define and to be proven. Whether music is an adaptation in the evolutionary aspect remains controversy.

Even if music isn’t rooted from evolution, it is shown that music has amazing power to revive and to heal. The NY Abraham health center demonstrates this magical power of music extensively. I was sincerely surprised to see that stroke patients were not able to SPEAK, but to SING. How does those patients whose incapable to speak, sing? How does the perception of music works biologically, so far no one is able to provide a satisfying answer. In conclusion, we see that the cognitive process in music perception is rather complex, and most of it still remains in mystery, but it is safe to say that music runs deeper than speech – music is able to reach places where mere language cannot.

LOST? Its ok. That’s how I always feel after walking out from my cognitive neuroscience class

Memorti.