# Scientists analyze the brain of jazz musicians



## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

Here's the article.



Abstract said:


> Interactive generative musical performance provides a suitable model for communication because, like natural linguistic discourse, it involves an exchange of ideas that is unpredictable, collaborative, and emergent. Here we show that interactive improvisation between two musicians is characterized by activation of perisylvian language areas linked to processing of syntactic elements in music, including inferior frontal gyrus and posterior superior temporal gyrus, and deactivation of angular gyrus and supramarginal gyrus, brain structures directly implicated in semantic processing of language. *These findings support the hypothesis that musical discourse engages language areas of the brain specialized for processing of syntax but in a manner that is not contingent upon semantic processing*. Therefore, we argue that neural regions for syntactic processing are not domain-specific for language but instead may be domain-general for communication.


So, in music, the brain basically looks for the consistency of a language, but in which there's no specific meaning behind the "words". In this sense, music is indeed "abstract".

I really like this, because is very similar to the way in which I appreciate music. Modern music, specially. The famous gestures and counter-gestures in music are indeed, and quite literally, syntactic elements. I think this may be useful for people trying to understand the music of Boulez, for example. Pay attention to the gestures and to the responses. It actually sounds like a dialogue, but in an abstract language.

But this doesn't mean that music is just this abstract thing. You can indeed appreciate at the pure aesthetic level the consistency of the language in the Boulez piece, for example. But, even when they don't have a semantic meaning, we tend to associate gestures with certain types of emotion. I guess this is so because when we are actually expressing these emotions we accompany them with these gestures. So, this opens the door for an emotional appreciation of music, even when the musical gestures are abstract things. But both types of appreciation are essential, I would say.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

aleazk said:


> Here's the article.
> 
> So, in music, the brain basically looks for the consistency of a language, but in which there's no specific meaning behind the "words". In this sense, music is indeed "abstract".
> 
> ...


Confirming what I've thought all along and keep saying, "Music has meaning, is very meaningful, but has nothing -- no where near directly, anyway --to do with the realms of words, or visual images (or any _direct correlative_ to maths.) It also confirms that attentive listening to any sort of music is some sort of "intellectual" activity. 

If they had bothered to ask me, or any number of others, I at least would have been happy to tell them that --and they could have turned over the funding money for that unnecessary research to me instead


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

--------------------------------- drat ---------------------------------


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

PetrB said:


> Confirming what I've thought all along and keep saying, "Music has meaning, is very meaningful, but has nothing -- no where near directly, anyway --to do with the realms of words or visual images. It also confirms that attentive listening to any sort of music is some sort of "intellectual" activity.


Indeed, I agree. All those other things (including the famed "emotions") may be more or less product of cultural associations. But I think they actually enrich the experience, and that music appreciation only can be understood as a combination of the two approaches.

Hey!, if they need to make a MRI to study you while listening to music, there's nothing more intellectual than that in my book!.



PetrB said:


> If they had bothered to ask me, or any number of others, I at least would have been happy to tell them that --and they could have turned over the funding money for that unnecessary research to me instead


It depends, do you have fancy apparatus with colorful screens and cool names including the words "atomic", "nuclear" and/or "magnetic"?.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

aleazk said:


> It depends, do you have fancy apparatus with colorful screens and cool names including the words "atomic", "nuclear" and/or "magnetic"?.


Last time I checked, I was still in my body, brain functioning, so yes to all the above terms in quotes, that is, if you add 'electric,' or I'd say "No go."


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

_PetrB_, in order to conform with the formula for Scientific Method, your conclusions (which are also mine) have to be tested multiple times, preferably with varying approaches, to be acceptable confirmation of a _theory_. The described approach is one way, but seeing as how the subject is music, another experiment must be conducted with prominent use of bells and whistles.

[We are in the midst of a scientific discussion here, so I did my best to create one long, complex, convoluted sentence with obscured meaning. Had to break it in the middle; my wind isn't what it used to be.]


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Long way to go for a thoroughly unsurprising conclusion, but points for execution.


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

Ukko said:


> [We are in the midst of a scientific discussion here, so I did my best to create one long, complex, convoluted sentence with obscured meaning. Had to break it in the middle; my wind isn't what it used to be.]


lol, that has nothing to do with science. In fact, in science you have quite the opposite. Maybe you were thinking in postmodern philosophy.



EdwardBast said:


> Long way to go for a thoroughly unsurprising conclusion, but points for execution.


Obvious conclusion?, perhaps. But it's nice to see it in that neurological framework, particularly the part about the semantic aspects.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

aleazk said:


> Obvious conclusion?, perhaps. But it's nice to see it in that neurological framework, particularly the part about the semantic aspects.


By the principle of parsimony alone, it makes sense that syntax in music and language would be processed in the same area; It is not a coincidence, I suspect, that we parse music in terms of phrases, sentences, rhyming cadences, and so on. And there are many who believe musical capacities are, in evolutionary terms, at least partially parasitic on language capacities.

The fact that semantic language centers don't come into play during the kind of performing tasks under investigation in this study has nothing to do with whether music has semantic content that is essential to composition and appreciation.


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

I have sometimes fantasized that music could literally develop into a language.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Ukko said:


> _PetrB_, in order to conform with the formula for Scientific Method, your conclusions (which are also mine) have to be tested multiple times, preferably with varying approaches, to be acceptable confirmation of a _theory_. The described approach is one way, but seeing as how the subject is music, another experiment must be conducted with prominent use of bells and whistles.
> 
> [We are in the midst of a scientific discussion here, so I did my best to create one long, complex, convoluted sentence with obscured meaning. Had to break it in the middle; my wind isn't what it used to be.]


Yeah, I know. For general public presentation, 95% more likely than not, within the science community, that percentile is often higher.

BUT: The U.S. government ran a research program on how to cook soybeans so they were edible. Some tens of thousands of dollars later, they came up with, soak them, then boil them... certain amount of time, yada-yada. Housewives around the country in the thousands wrote letters to the editors of many a paper when the results of that research were announced, each writing, essentially, "They could have just asked me," or "They could have looked in any number of cook books."


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

Hearing different styles of music can I'm sure stretch someone's pattern recognition in their hearing. And I assume the listener's mind must become attuned to the composer's who's style they are following.

The idea that music is just some light trivial 'cheesecake' is obviously something just made up to be controversial. It's better not to even mention someone's name when they come up with a remark clearly designed just to get their name mentioned more so that they can sell more books. It's better in fact to ignore such pointless sound bites.


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