Music and Consciousness

1
Music and Consciousness

• The astounding influence ofmusic on cognition

Eleanore Park Alex Kawas Stephen Frost Matthias
Havenaar
2
Ties to ASCs

• Shift state, alter mindset
• Used to accompany, induce ASCs
• Religion/shamanism/mysticism
• Drug use
• Meditation
• Sleep

3
What is Music?

• Distinguishing aspects
• Tonal organization psychoacoustics
• Beat rhythm
• Affect
• Birdsong?
• Jackhammer?
• Country?

4
Basic Structure

• Hierarchy
• Major and minor beats
• Essential ornamental notes
• Defeasible principles of organization
• Interaction between types and levels
• Auditory scene analysis stream segregation

5
Processing music

• Utilizes broad cognitive capacities
• Gestalt grouping proximity, good continuation
• And specialized ones
• Differential lateralization in processing
• Analysis of tonal space pitches, intervals,
  chords, keys

6
Affect in music

• Music theory
• There are degrees of tension and attraction
  within a melodyat any point 1
• Rising pitch increased tension
• Large interval shifts more tension than small
  shifts
• Attraction related to resolution during melodic
  progression
• Conscious and unconscious expectation latter
  unrelated to memory

1. Jackendoff, p. 24
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Why does music move us?

• Aesthetics Admiring beauty, virtuosity
• Memory Nostalgic familiarity
• Entrainment direct effect on rhythms within the
  body (heartbeat, brainwaves) visceral and motor
  rhythmicity

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Why does music move us?

• Musical posture and gesture ascription of
  affect and animatism
• Listening to dark music doesnt make us feel
  dark, but in the presence of a dark entity
• We have empathy or attunement with the affect
• Dancing conversion to physical posture and
  gesture
• Framing level to invest, or detach

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The Impact of Music on the Brain Experience
10
Neural Basis for Coupling Music to Emotion
Attention

• PET studies showed increased CBF in the ventral
  striatum, midbrain, amygdala, orbitofrontal
  cortex, and ventral medial prefrontal cortex
  (Limb, 2006)
• EEG studies have shown a significant power
  increase in the low-alpha band range in bilateral
  frontal networks, indicating increased neuronal
  synchronization and attention (Thaut, 2005).
• Music acts on waking arousal control systems
  based on norepinephrine (NE) and serotonin
  (Panksepp, 1986).

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Music elicits responses similar to sex and drug
intake

• Music can lead to musical chills and euphoric
  experience
• Music activates reward related brain areas
• These areas are similar to reward / emotion and
  limbic arousal processes similar to thoses
  activated by drug intake and sex.
• NAc, Insula, OFC, ACC (Blood, 2001)
• Increased DA secretion due to listening to music.
• Music is your XTC! Remember Volkow? Is music
  addictive?

?
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Music and Brain Lateralization

• Right hemisphere is involved in processing of
  melody (prosody)
• Left hemisphere is involved in processing rhythm
  and musical analysis. Also activates frontal
  motor areas
• Is the left hemisphere involved in making you
  want to shake your body?

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Is music capable of inducing an altered state?

• Is used for induction of hypnosis/ trancelike
  states
• Music can drive listeners into states of
  patriotic fervor or religious frenzy
• Is there a reason why we sing in church?
• Does music induce religious experiences?

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What is music therapy?

• Systematic intervention process that uses music
  experiences to achieve therapeutic goals
• Music as an ASC changes in emotion, motivation,
  motor functions to help a variety of patient
  populations
• Passive and active interactions with music
• Song writing, listening to music, discussion of
  song lyrics, performing, etc.
• No previous experience with music or music talent
  is necessary

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Music Therapy patient populations

• Goals
• Obtain symptom control, reduce clinical
  disability, improve quality of life
• Vary with each patients condition
• Geriatric care
• Patients undergoing cardiac surgery
• Parkinsons disease
• Rehabilitation
• Alzheimer's- silent brain
• Schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, Tourettes

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Active music therapy

• Voice exercises, rhythmic and free body movements
• Combining motor and emotional responses
• Rhythmic and melodic components
• Combining stimulation of different sensory
  pathways

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Active MT and Parkinsons Disease

• Bradykinesia,hypokinesia
• Postural and gait abnormalities
• External rhythmic cues acting as a timekeeper
• Variable improvements
• Motor improvements as a function of emotion?
• DA mesolimbic projections to ventro-striatum
  intraccumbens
• Integration of basal-ganglia loop and cortical
  regions
• Limbic systems motor systems

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Music therapy and effects on consciousness

• Improvements seem to be residual (Pacchetti et
  al.)
• ASCs generally relative
• Individual differences in normal state of
  consciousness
• Patients achieve different mental state and
  physical state
• Body and mind connection (Brain vs. Mind)

• Is music adaptive? What purpose might music serve
  on an individual and social level?

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Where Did Music Come From?

• Auditory Cheesecake hypothesis
• Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works (1997)
• Sexual Selection hypothesis
• Geoffrey Miller, Evolution of human music
  through sexual selection (2000)
• Social Bonding hypothesis
• Robin Dunbar, Language, Music and Laughter in
  Evolutionary Perspective (2004)
• Coalition Signaling hypothesis
• Hagen Bryant, Music and dance as a coalition
  signaling system (2003)

20
Auditory Cheesecake

• Cheesecake tastes good by taking advantage of
  existing structures
• The desire for cheesecake is an emergent
  phenomena of existing processes
• Music, too!

21
Sexual Selection

• Darwin Music as courtship display
• Miller Musical ability as indicator of fitness
• Jimi Hendrix

22
Social Bonding

• Sexual selection is insufficient
• Monkey grooming
• Grooming ceiling 50 monkeys
• Human grooming
• Dunbars number 150 humans
• Language allows larger grooming size
• Ramping up from 50 to 150
• Music, precursor to language

23
Coalition Signaling

• Sexual selection, social bonding insufficient,
  but important
• Music commonly performed in groups during war,
  politics with other groups
• Apes coordinate songs to advertise territory,
  pair bonds
• May also signal group identity
• Music signals other groups of cohesion
• We can kick your butt.

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Altered State Induction

• What about altered states?
• Mob behavior as altered statePersonal identity
  frame drop induces altered state
• Are musical groups mobs?
• Is musics role in the induction of altered
  states evolutionarily adaptive?
• Open question

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References

• Blood AJ, Zatorre RJ. Intensely pleasurable
  responses to music correlate with activity in
  brain regions implicated in reward and emotion.
  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
  of the United States of America (2001).
• Esch T, Guarna M, Bianchi E, Zhu W, Stefano GB.
  Commonalities in the central nervous system's
  involvement with complementary medical therapies
  limbic morphinergic processes. Medical science
  monitor International medical journal of
  experimental and clinical research (2004).
• Gold C, Rolvsjord R, Aaro LE, Aarre T, Tjemsland
  L, Stige B. Resource-oriented music therapy for
  psychiatric patients with low therapy motivation
  protocol for a randomised controlled trial
  NCT00137189. BMC psychiatry (2005).
• Hatem TP, Lira PI, Mattos SS. The therapeutic
  effects of music in children following cardiac
  surgery. Jornal de pediatria (2006).
• Jackendoff R, Lerdahl F. The capacity for music
  What is it, and what's special about it?
  Cognition (2005).

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References

• Jaynes J. Of poetry and music. The origin of
  consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral
  mind (2000, 1976).
• Myskja A. Can music therapy for patients with
  neurological disorders? Tidsskrift for den
  Norske laegeforening (2004).
• Pacchetti C, Mancini F, Aglieri R, Fundaro C,
  Martignoni E, Nappi G. Active music therapy in
  Parkinson's disease an integrative method for
  motor and emotional rehabilitation.
  Psychosomatic medicine. (2000)
• Pinker S. How the mind works (1997).
• Miller G. Evolution of human music through
  sexual selection. The origins of music (2000).
• Dunbar R. Language, music and laughter in
  evolutionary perspective. Evolution of
  communication systems A comparative approach
  (2004).
• Hagen Bryant. Music and dance as a coalition
  signaling system Human nature (2003).