-
Should everyone be able to make music if we’re hardwired for it?
I thought I had finished writing this post when a fascinating new study appeared in my Inbox, and I simply had to incorporate it. Researchers at the University of Helsinki have discovered that, for several months after birth, infants can recognize a melody that they have heard in utero. In a study of 24 women…
-
Are we hardwired for music?
Music has usually been studied as a cultural product – specific to a certain time and place. We associate different kinds of music, tuning systems, qualities of the sound and kinds of instruments with different ethnic groups or different cultural societies. And we attribute different structural forms, harmonic systems and (again) instruments to various time…
-
What music triggers YOUR brain’s emotional center?
There is no question that music affects us emotionally. Most of us listen to music for at least some amount of time every day because it makes us feel good. When we go to a movie, we may or may not be aware of the soundtrack, but it is there to heighten the emotional impact…
-
Dance, sing, draw
A few years ago one of my students, who usually played with a great deal of musicality, found herself struggling with a Chopin Mazurka that just didn’t seem to “click.” All of the notes and rhythms were there, but it sounded stodgy – not at all like a dance. One day, I suggested that we…
-
Most complex cognitive activity
In my first post, I wrote that many neuroscientists believe that “making music is the most complex cognitive activity that a human being engages in.” Some readers wondered why, so let’s talk about it. After the research that’s been done in the past two or three decades, neuroscientists believe that the processing of music in…
-
Your brain on improv
While many brain scans of musicians have been done in the research lab, it is virtually impossible to scan the brain of a musician on stage during performance. But Charles Limb has come closer than anyone else to replicating an actual performance situation in the lab.