Here are some of the highlights of concepts, theories, and ideas resonated with me
:I liked the extremely simple experiment used to answer question 1 - A tribe in the Cameroon, the Mafa tribe, is so utterly pristine, it has NO contact with the outside world in general or western music in particular, and yet, they correctly identified the predominant emotion of a piece of classical music played for them.
The brains of musicians are not merely functionally different from those of non-musicians (as detected by functional MRI -fMRI - scans), but are anatomically different - the thickness of the cortex in the temporal lobe (the auditory area, not surprisingly) and the adjacent motor cortex is much more than in non-musicians, and is noticed in both cerebral hemispheres. The corpus callosum, the thick bundle of nerves that connect the two halves is also thicker. Some areas of the frontal cortex are also different. What is also interesting in this example of neuroplasticity is that these may be trained to occur even in adulthood.
I also learnt that by and large, the music composed in a particular language has a recognizably similar cadence to the language itself - people with no training will identify a Debussy composition as 'french' and Elgar's as English, just using their knowledge of the spoken languages, leading the neuroscientist, Anirudh Patel to equate vowels to notes - the pattern of vowels used in the language and notes in compositions in that language are apparently similar. Makes me wonder if people would be able to identify in instrumental pieces, compositions in say tamizh, and hindi...
When the presenters looked at the evolution of music, they seemed to disregard the widely accepted theory that music is an adaptation of language skills - they cited evidence to support the idea that music and language are related, yet distinct capabilities. They claim that the Neanderthal man communicated in musical phrases, a system from which music and dance (which is a physical reaction of our bodies from times immemorial to music) evolved as one stream and language as another distinct stream. More recent fMRI evidence supports the theory by delineating the fact that areas of the brain that are activated by music are very different from that activated by language. In fact, the areas activated by music are more 'primitive' and related to the reward centers - dopaminergic area typically associated with addictive and risk-taking behaviors and basal instincts. They felt that music and the brain evolved together.
The practical application of this neurobiology is of course in the treatment of patients with chronic neurological conditions - using rhythm to 'teach' patients with Parkinson's and other gait disorders to walk, using music/singing to teach aphasic patients to 'talk' etc. I was also very interested in learning that even in very advanced dementia, recognition of music, and emotional response to music is preserved!
The narrators then presented evidence for the universality of music, from the vibrations of the string that holds matter together (the string theory) to the cosmic harmony/music (the vibrations of radio waves from the big bang - where even black holes emit sounds) - leading me to think of what we consider the cosmic sound - the praNava/OmkAra.
They finally came to 'Why music?' - Darwin (ever the evolutionary biologist) felt that it helped in reproductive survival - the more musical male was thought to have a degree of cognitive evolution and physical dexterity, that he became a sought after mate in human evolution. But, more and more researchers feel that the inherent synchronicity of music synchronizes us into societal wholes.
So, vive la musique!
Please navigate to the different links in the this page http://www.pbs.org/wnet/musicinstinct/ to hear these concepts fleshed out, and set forth in the narrators' words and not mine!
, unless there is a latent genius that just takes a while to surface!