103 lines
5.6 KiB
Plaintext
103 lines
5.6 KiB
Plaintext
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What Happens
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When Music
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Meets the Brain
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WALL STREET JOURNAL (J)
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Music is a window on the brain, scientists say. Few human activities exercise
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as many brain functions: Playing music demands motor skill, and listening to it
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stimulates both feelings and intellectual faculties. Scientists now use music
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to study sense perception, emotions, coordination, timing and the functions of
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each of the brain's hemispheres.
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The relationship between music and the brain is a fast-growing area of study.
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Last year, Frank Wilson, a Walnut Creek, Calif., neurologist, organized a
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conference on the subject, bringing together some 300 interested professionals.
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Several books on the subject have been published in recent years, and a new
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psychology journal called Music Perception was founded in 1983.
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Strokes and other brain disorders reveal much about brain functions, including
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music and language. In one recently reported case, a stroke knocked out only
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its victim's ability to name fruits and vegetables, suggesting that categories
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of words are organized in the same area of the brain. Similarly, strokes have
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shown that key musical abilities are organized in the right half of the brain,
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which is associated with emotions and the integration of complex details into
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wholes.
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Tedd Judd, a psychologist at the Pacific Medical Center in Seattle, tells of a
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composer who suffered a stroke on the right side of the brain and could still
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compose melodies. But he lost the ability to compose counterpoint, in which
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melodies are integrated according to complex rules.
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Strokes on the right side sometimes erase the ability to sing, even though the
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memory of song lyrics may be intact. People afflicted that way may speak in a
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monotone because they can no longer put melody into their voices, says Elliott
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Ross, a neurologist at the University of Texas medical school.
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But scientists now also realize that music isn't totally a right-brain
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function. At the University of California at Los Angeles, John Mazziotta, a
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researcher, found that in most people listening to simple melodies, the right
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side of the brain was activated; but those who visualized what they heard as
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notes on a page mainly used the left side.
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Music, long considered the language of emotions, is also an ideal stimulus for
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experiments on feelings. At Pennsylvania State University, a psychologist,
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Julian Thayer, plays different kinds of music from Bach to jazz while testing
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listeners for heart rates and other indicators of emotions. Among other things,
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his research suggests that just as a radio has separate controls for tone and
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volume, emotions involve independent levels of pleasantness and intensity.
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Brain researchers have been trying for years to understand how the brain
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handles sensory input, and music is important to their study of sound
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perception. Scientists believe that some elements of music -- like common pitch
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intervals -- have been shaped to reflect the structure of the human auditory
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system. For example, most people, even in different cultures, perceive tones
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separated by an octave as closely related. This may result from the channeling
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of nerve impulses caused by such tones to the same nerve cell in the brain,
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says Diana Deutsch, a psychologist at the University of California at San
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Diego.
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Tempo is another musical element that intrigues brain researchers. Most people
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can't both walk and chew gum at different tempos because the brain can
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apparently monitor only one internal metronome at a time, says George P. Moore,
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a researcher at the University of Southern California.
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Mr. Moore is also interested in the motor skills involved in playing a musical
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instrument, where muscle coordination and timing are crucial. Using sensors,
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including small needles inserted into musicians' hands, he has learned that
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performers use unconscious tricks to improve their sound. For example, Mr.
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Moore found that when playing trills on a violin, some players lighten finger
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pressure. Then, to compensate for the pitch distortion the lighter pressure
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would cause, they adjust their hand positions. "Musicians don't even know they
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do these things," he says, which suggests that they subliminally refer to
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detailed brain "maps" of their instruments to create the desired sound.
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Internal maps may guide listeners as well as players, which could explain the
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difficulty many people have learning to like unfamiliar music. There may even
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be music so alien that our brains aren't equipped to make sense of it. "Some
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avant-garde composers who base their music on new arbitrary ystems are
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interesting," says Roger Shepard, a Stanford University psychology professor.
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"But their music may never take hold with listeners because it doesn't mesh
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effectively with the deep cognitive structures of the mind."
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