Musical brains

 

http://neurosciencenews.com/jazz-musician-brain-language-circuitry-776/

2014

comment: ...more than Pinker's auditory cheesecake, music I suppose is at least a stratified, complex dessert or meal transmitting more information more universally (intrinsically) than more abstracted and culturally influenced/derived narrative methods like words - even sharing some of the same pathways. At some point not so far ahead, emerging neuroscience theory will have to include plural and parallel representations in emergent behavior - even though there remains variably influenced hierarchies in the path to expression, - and take into more account the oddness and determination of time, contexts, entropy and the usually counterintuitive sticky aspect of information.

The Musical Brain: Novel Study of Jazz Players Shows Common Brain Circuitry Processes Both Music and Language

Researchers scanned brains while musicians “traded fours”.

The brains of jazz musicians engrossed in spontaneous, improvisational musical conversation showed robust activation of brain areas traditionally associated with spoken language and syntax, which are used to interpret the structure of phrases and sentences. But this musical conversation shut down brain areas linked to semantics — those that process the meaning of spoken language, according to results of a study by Johns Hopkins researchers.

The study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to track the brain activity of jazz musicians in the act of “trading fours,” a process in which musicians participate in spontaneous back and forth instrumental exchanges, usually four bars in duration. The musicians introduce new melodies in response to each other’s musical ideas, elaborating and modifying them over the course of a performance. (read more at the link above)