What does a brain on music do?
By: Dr. Joan Ruddiman
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., once said, " … what music is, I don’t know. But it helps me so."
Daniel Levitin is uniquely qualified to respond to Vonnegut and so many others who have wondered about the nature of music and its power over our emotions. Mr. Levitin enjoyed a long career in the music industry that began when he was just a California kid playing in a garage band, an experience that led improbably to a Ph.D. in neuroscience.
Mr. Levitin’s name is as familiar to readers of music trade magazines like Grammy and Billboard as to those who read journals like NeuroImage and Child Neuropsychology. He is just the person to explain as much about the brain as music, which he does in the fascinating and easy to follow "This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession" (Dutton, 2006).
Mr. Levitin, a professor at McGill University in Montreal, is a methodical teacher. Chapter One titled "What Is Music?" may be the slowest go in the book but is well worth the effort as Mr. Levitin defines terms "from pitch to timbre." His Music 101 lessons are put to good use throughout the book as he explains how the brain processes music.
Even those who think they know nothing about music will discover their brains understand a whole lot. Mr. Levitin writes that the brain "is keeping track of how many times particular notes are sounded, where they appear in terms of strong versus weak beats, and how long they last."
Reactions to music are learned, again from exposure to music and not necessarily by direction, such as emotions stirred by major and minor keys. In our increasingly global world, musically sounds are mixed think the music produced by Sting creating more open patterns of sound.
The octave is the universal element of music. Mr. Levitin calls the octave "organized sound" and explains how it is the basis for all music. These eight note patterns are wonderfully complex. How the brain processes "pitch to timbre" explains far more about humans than just our connection to music.
As Mr. Levitin moves from being Dan the band guy to Dr. Levitin the neuroscientist, the book shifts from building a case for the universal nature of music to some of the mysteries of the universe, like where music is processed in the brain, why do we get a tune stuck in our head, and how do we store and retrieve music?
Howard Gardner posited decades ago with his multiple intelligence theory that musical intelligence is one aspect of a "highly differentiated organ."
Mr. Levitin’s work refines the understanding of how music, like language, is not processed in just one area of the brain. He offers some interesting new thoughts on the cerebellum the wild west of the brain that has yet to be fully explored. He writes that the cerebellum "appears to be involved with tracking the beat," and surprisingly "involved in musical emotions."
Mr. Levitin reveals much more that illuminates other curiosities about how the brain functions on music.
What about those tunes that play over and over in our heads, sometimes to real emotional distraction? They have been called "ear worms," which Mr. Levitin explains is a corruption of the German word "Ohrwurm" that means, "stuck song syndrome." (How about that for some cocktail chat?)
There is no cure yet, as scientists are not completely sure what causes what seem to be "neural circuits getting stuck on playback mode."
As to how we learn and remember music, Mr. Levitin spends a full chapter on how we "categorize" music that dives deeply into brain functions. In short, even the most musically un-inclined person recognizes tunes, recalls lyrics and is aware that music triggers memories.
As Mr. Levitin notes more than once, the brain does such marvels with ease. No one has invented a computer that can even begin to rival the brain’s capacity.
Evidence from this type of brain research and other fields, such as anthropology, indicates that music awareness is hard-wired into the human brain. Though not everyone can produce music, everyone does feel the pull of music on the mind and on his or her emotions. Affirming all the Kurt Vonneguts of the world, Mr. Levitin writes, "Music is clearly a means for improving peoples’ mood. Now we think we know why."
One aspect of music that impacts mood is what Mr. Levitin elaborates in a chapter titled "Anticipation." The brain is programmed to expect certain patterns. But what if those patterns are not what the brain has anticipated?
"The thrills, chills, and tears we experience from music are the result of having our expectations artfully manipulated by a skilled composer and musician who interpret that music." To keep "organized sound" fresh, musicians manipulate the expected structure that the brain anticipates.
As one example, Mr. Levitin cites the predictable downbeat in rock music. But as Randy Jackson of "American Idol" pointed out to him years ago, Sting, for instance, uses bass lines with undefined downbeats and often avoids the expected synchronism of the bass guitar and the bass drum.
Randy Jackson is an old pal of Mr. Levitin; they shared a recording studio in the 1980s. He remembers Mr. Jackson as "one of the top session bass players" who could spot the tricks which groups like The Police or Sting use that put their sound outside of the typical rock beat.
But, as Mr. Levitin explains, it all comes down to what is pleasing. If the beat or sound moves too far out of our anticipation comfort zone, we won’t like the music.
And the emotional response to music is not always just about what is written. What a performer seeks to create is music that "invites us into a sonic world that we don’t want to leave." The term to describe this is "groove," which is "that quality that moves the song forward."
"American Idol" makes this case weekly. The music as written may be wonderful, but the performance might not have "great groove."
This is a book you really don’t want to read with tunes playing in the background as Mr. Levitin teaches with reams of references to rock, classical, jazz and more. You may want to have the iPod handy to check in with the songs he refers to as he illustrates one point after another about music. Then ponder for a moment more what he says your brain is doing.
No one, it seems, is immune from the power of music over the mind.
Joan Ruddiman, Ed.D., is a teacher and friend of the Allentown Public Library.

