I’m taking a needed break from the madness of dissenting to refresh my neurons on a topic I’ve been interested in. I have ceased researching as I learned through my research that my premise was incorrect. That premise was music raises test scores in math and language, because music uses the entire brain when we process or perform it. Well, those scholars that have tested for this correlation either used a small sample size giving inappropriate results or they had an excellent sample size and there was absolutely zero data that supported the premise. I’m sorry NAMM (National Association of Music Merchants) but your premise is bad advertising.

My interest in music cognition or music and brain development was initially sparked by a CT scan I had done if my skull nearly 25 years ago that revealed a cyst in a sinus cavity that was the size of a walnut (no husk.) What caught my attention was not the cyst, but the right hemisphere of my brain in the image. It was considerably larger than my left hemisphere. Why? Not a clue. Was it my musical education? Some sort of developmental issue? Mental illness? Genetic Anomaly? Well my otolaryngologist suggested my musical education was responsible for the asymmetry of my brain. This sparked an interest in music cognition or whatever the science is called.

I follow Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Star Talk Vlog as I am able. He had a recent vlog entitled Scientists Discuss Music and the Origins of Language. Watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvtNElAmVqU This is a fascinating conversation regarding the evolution of our species and the use of music as a tool for communication and a tool for helping us understand how our brains are wired.

Keep in mind the information contained within this vlog about recent publications is based on hypotheses created from observable data, archeological findings, genome study, and peer reviewed study and discussion. There are lots of layers.

Anyway, there is archeological evidence (bone flutes) of music making 40-60 thousand years before the invention of written language. This suggests that there were other musical instruments as well. Bone flutes are the only ones to survive that length of time. A drum, singing, rock music (banging of rocks,) sticks, or maybe a string instrument made from plants or animals could have been made with the same technological advancements of the bone flutes, but decay rapidly. What was the purpose of the music? The academic suggestion based on genomic study is the passing on of information for survival. Examples: Where water is during the dry season. Where to find food in the wet season. Best fishing areas. Safe foods to eat. Unsafe foods to eat. Which tribes of humans to avoid. Those are all suggestions of how music was used in specificity based on how our brains process music genetically.

Essentially the labs of music cognition in Canada and around the globe found that neural structures that encode music are phylogenically older than the neural structures that encode speech. From a brain standpoint, we were singing or making music before we were creating speech. The transfer of knowledge over generations was passed through song. Examples mentioned in the podcast were the Iliad and the Odyssey, the bible, and even how we teach children in song before reading. “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes….“

Music has evolutionary value in essence suggests Tyson for the human species. We also sing by ourselves when other animals of the kingdom do not. We sing and create great variety of musics where animals have specific songs that do not change or have a specific genetic purpose. The lower animals have hardwired genetics for their songs, whereas humans have the ability to learn an infinite amount of music. We also have the emotional and neural-chemical interactions through the sharing of music between mother and child/fetus (in utero.) There is even a suggestion that music works as a pain analgesic.

The remaining of the vlog discussing music, memory, cognitive reserve, brain redundancies, and even learning an instrument later in life can stimulate neural plasticity or the growth of new neural pathways. They discuss how Alzheimer’s disease affected Tony Bennett and Glen Campbell and how despite large sections of their brains were offline due to the disease they were still able to play and sing unaffected.

This explains how we are able to recall feelings, moments in time, when confronted with a song we haven’t heard in ages. It also relates to smell and taste. These triggers are called retrieval cues as the memories are always there, they just need the right pathway for that memory to make it come forward vividly.

Music activates the whole brain, but there are people who suffer from amusia. Amusia is an issue where the brain does not process music. Amusia can be caused by brain injury, lesion, trauma, abuse, neglect, and an environment full of noise without anything musical in the brains early developmental stages. This does not affect intellectual development, speech, or emotional attachment. The state of amusia is best described as a short circuit for processing musical sounds.

Check out the vlog. Tyson is a great scientist, and compliments his guest Daniel Levitin on being able to differentiate the science and social sciences as a researcher. I have read a few articles by Levitin in my studies. He is an incredibly sensitive and enlightened scientist. Music cognition is gaining speed, as is neuroscience, and both fields can help our understanding of our species without being concerned with profit… and so it goes…