# Music Neuroscience



## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

_This is an initial smattering of papers from different fields of study which I'll update over the next few days to include more._

I was a little slower posting this than I thought I would be, but better late than never. Here, for your pleasure, is a bibliography of interesting studies on the science of music (arranged, within groups, in chronological order). I have taken "neuroscience" in this instance to be a catch-all term, as there are many different sub-fields covered, such as evolutionary musicology, cognitive musicology, biomusicology, anthropological and linguistic studies _etc._ Nevertheless, at the heart of all these is how music works in the mind.

Most of you are unlikely to have institutional access to these papers, and one-off fees tend to be extortionate, so if it doesn't contravene your journal publishing ethics, feel free to send me a PM and I may be able to get you a copy (alternatively, you may find the dedicated reddit page for article requests helpful).

I think it may also be good to keep this thread as a general base for music neuroscience discussion. If you come across anything interesting, chat about it here, or if you just want an article reference to be added to the list, let me know!

*Universals*


Stephen Brown and Joseph Jordania, 'Universals in the World's Musics' in _Psychology of Music_ (2011), 1-20.

*Evolution*


Steven Pinker, _How the Mind Works_ (Penguin, 1997) - there is a chapter devoted to the arts.
David Huron, 'Is Music and Evolutionary Adaptation?' for the _Society for Music Perception and Cognition Conference_ (1999).
Michael S. Benninger, 'The Human Voice: Evolution and Performance' in _Music and Medicine_ 2 (2010), 104-108.

*Tonality*


Helen Daynes, 'Listeners' perceptual and emotional responses to tonal and atonal music' in _Psychology of Music_ (2010), 1-35.
Loui, Wessel, and Kam, 'Humans Rapidly Learn Grammatical Structure in a New Musical Scale' in _Music Perception_ 27 (2010), 377-388.
Mohn, Argstatter, and Wilker, 'Perception of Six Basic Emotions in Music' in _Psychology of Music_ 39 (2011), 503-517.

*Emotions*


Phipps, Carroll, and Tsiantoulas, 'Music as a Therapeutic Intervention on an Inpatient Neuroscience Unit' in _Complementary Therapies in Clinical Practice_ 16 (2010), 138-42.
Suvi Saarikallio, 'Music as emotional self-regulation throughout adulthood' in _Psychology of Music_ 39 (2011), 307-327.
Punkanen, Eerola, and Erkkila, 'Biased Emotional Preferences in Depression: decreased liking of angry and energetic music by depressed patients' in _Music and Medicine_ 3 (2011), 114-120.

*Music and Language*


Sylvain Moreno, 'Can Music Influence Language and Cognition?' in _Contemporary Music Review_ 28 (2009), 329-345.
Curtis and Bharucha, 'The minor third communicates sadness in speech, mirroring its use in music' in _Emotion_ 10 (2010), 335-348.
Nan, Sun, and Peretz, 'Congenital Amusia in Speakers of a Tone Language: association with lexical tone agnosia' in _Brain: a journal of neurology_ 133 (2010), 2635-42.
Sammler, Koelsch, and Friederici, 'Are left fronto-temporal brain areas a prerequisite for normal music-syntactic processing?' in _Cortex_ 47 (2011), 659-673.

*Brain Plasticity*


Wan, and Schlaug, 'Music Making as a Tool for Promoting Brain Plasticity across the Life Span' in _The Neuroscientist_ 16 (2010), 566-577.
Hill, Gust, Bitz, and Kammer, 'Associations between music education, intelligence, and spelling ability in elementary school' in _Advances in Cognitive Psychology_ 7 (2011).

*Music Therapy and Medicine*


Phipps, Carroll, and Tsiantoulas, 'Music as a Therapeutic Intervention on an Inpatient Neuroscience Unit' in _Complementary Therapies in Clinical Practice_ 16 (2010), 138-42.
Chan, Wong, and Thayala, 'The effectiveness of music listening in reducing depressive symptoms in adults: a systematic review' in _Complementary Therapies in Medicine_ 19 (2011), 332-348.
Frank M. Diaz, 'Mindfulness, attention, and flow during music listening: an empirical investigation' in _Psychology of Music_ (2011), 1-17.
Punkanen, Eerola, and Erkkila, 'Biased Emotional Preferences in Depression: decreased liking of angry and energetic music by depressed patients' in _Music and Medicine_ 3 (2011), 114-120.

*'Miscellaneous'*


Dunn, Ruyter, and Bouwhuis, 'Toward a better understanding of the relation between music preference, listening behaviour, and personality' in _Psychology of Music_ (2011), 1-18.
Williamson, Jilka, Fry, Finkel, Mullensiefen, and Stewart, 'How do 'earworms' start? Classifying the everyday circumstances of involuntary musical imagery' in _Psychology of Music_ (2011), 1-26.


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## LavenderSugar (Mar 5, 2012)

Have you read all of these? I think I would be interested in a few but don't know where to start lol. I will PM you, thanks.


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

I've read the majority of the ones listed here, though some are still in my "to-read" folder. It is daunting to know where to start - especially once you start reading bibliographies within the articles and are soon interested in literally hundreds more pieces.


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## Webernite (Sep 4, 2010)

Polednice, when your tutor asks you why you haven't read the necessary quotient of Chaucer for this week, telling him that you were reading thousands of neuroscience papers instead isn't going to make him be nice.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

To lift and paraphrase a quote from the artist Barnett Newman, 
"Music Neuroscience is to me what Ornithology probably is to birds."


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

To paraphrase Newman, "Music Neuroscience is to me almost what birds are to Ornithologists." That's why I and, I assume, others who participate in this thread, are here.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

mmsbls said:


> To paraphrase Newman, "Music Neuroscience is to me almost what birds are to Ornithologists." That's why I and, I assume, others who participate in this thread, are here.


You might want to get on with it then, instead of being distracted by one musician's notion of music Neuroscience.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

The question isn't whether birds appreciate ornithologists - but whether ornithologists appreciate birds. 

Polednice, what I'd appreciate is if you occasionally update us with some of the surprising or otherwise interesting ideas you read in such articles. Also, if it doesn't contravene your career promoting ethics, feel free to send me a PM and I may be able to deal with your tutor.


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## chee_zee (Aug 16, 2010)

http://cnmat.berkeley.edu/book/export/html/2740

found a free study, probably best fits into the tonality topic.


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

Oh bugger, I don't know if there's a time limit, but I can't edit my OP any more, so can't add new items. This thread will just get messy if I have to keep adding things in different posts...


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## chee_zee (Aug 16, 2010)

yea I noticed that in the past, I couldn't finish editing a list of spotify playlists yesterday and had to make a new post, and I haven't been able to go back and edit the posts of old compositions in the today's composers section. what gives mods? horrible thread clutter could be avoided.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

chee_zee said:


> yea I noticed that in the past, I couldn't finish editing a list of spotify playlists yesterday and had to make a new post, and I haven't been able to go back and edit the posts of old compositions in the today's composers section. what gives mods? horrible thread clutter could be avoided.


I think maybe the 'avoided situation' is response posts that make no sense _because the thread-originating post has been modified_.


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## chee_zee (Aug 16, 2010)

yes but what about responses not being able to be edited? the spotify list post in question was in a thread not started by me, I was merely adding my 2 pence to the discussion as a non-OP, and after less than a day I was unable to keep adding to my list so I had to do it all in Word and paste it in a post here.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

I think if you do it as a blog post you can edit it indefinitely.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

chee_zee said:


> yes but what about responses not being able to be edited? the spotify list post in question was in a thread not started by me, I was merely adding my 2 pence to the discussion as a non-OP, and after less than a day I was unable to keep adding to my list so I had to do it all in Word and paste it in a post here.


The same problem applies.


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

science said:


> I think if you do it as a blog post you can edit it indefinitely.


That's a good idea. I'll start a new thread and link to it seeing as I can't put the link in the OP here!


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## Lukecash12 (Sep 21, 2009)

Polednice said:


> _This is an initial smattering of papers from different fields of study which I'll update over the next few days to include more._
> 
> I was a little slower posting this than I thought I would be, but better late than never. Here, for your pleasure, is a bibliography of interesting studies on the science of music (arranged, within groups, in chronological order). I have taken "neuroscience" in this instance to be a catch-all term, as there are many different sub-fields covered, such as evolutionary musicology, cognitive musicology, biomusicology, anthropological and linguistic studies _etc._ Nevertheless, at the heart of all these is how music works in the mind.
> 
> ...


How about some quotations to peak the interest?


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## Guest (Mar 9, 2012)

I thought I had posted this extract already, but as that post never showed up....

Anyway, back when I was reading studies of the effects of music on the brain, I noticed some similarities between them. Between all the ones that I was reading, anyway.

Here's a quote from one of them. (Polednice, is this typical? It's typical of the ones I was reading at the time, or I wouldn't have preserved it, I suppose. But is it generally typical?)

"Nature Neuroscience 2, 382 - 387 (1999)
Emotional responses to pleasant and unpleasant music correlate with activity in paralimbic brain regions
Anne J. Blood, Robert J. Zatorre, Patrick Bermudez & Alan C. Evans

Neuropsychology/Cognitive Neuroscience Unit, Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University
Neural correlates of the often-powerful emotional responses to music are poorly understood. Here we used positron emission tomography to examine cerebral blood flow (CBF) changes related to affective responses to music. Ten volunteers were scanned while listening to six versions of a novel musical passage varying systematically in degree of dissonance. Reciprocal CBF covariations were observed in several distinct paralimbic and neocortical regions as a function of dissonance and of perceived pleasantness/unpleasantness. The findings suggest that music may recruit neural mechanisms similar to those previously associated with pleasant/unpleasant emotional states, but different from those underlying other components of music perception, and other emotions such as fear."


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

Lukecash12 said:


> How about some quotations to peak the interest?


Well, the area is so broad, which is why I posted the references in order for people to zone in on a topic they like. If people don't have the time (or knowledge) to read an article though, I'm quite happy for people to choose a title, and I'll lift the abstract and conclusion to use as a basis for discussion. 



some guy said:


> Here's a quote from one of them. (Polednice, is this typical? It's typical of the ones I was reading at the time, or I wouldn't have preserved it, I suppose. But is it generally typical?)
> 
> "Nature Neuroscience 2, 382 - 387 (1999)
> Emotional responses to pleasant and unpleasant music correlate with activity in paralimbic brain regions
> ...


I can't really say whether or not a study like that is typical, as there are many different areas of study and my focused reading has been more generally on acoustic 'mechanics' in the brain and overlap with language, rather than anything to do with emotion, which - to a comparative layman like me - seems like a very difficult topic to pin down given that "perceived pleasantness/unpleasantness" are going to be extremely difficult to define and measure reliably.


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## Guest (Mar 11, 2012)

OK. That's what I was suspecting, that that study (that type of study) was typical of what I was reading at the time (because that was the type of study that was being bruited about online a few years ago) but not typical of neuroscience studies generally.


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