Great question! Neuroscientists claim that music activates brain areas which engage both emotional reactions (Peretz 2002, Koelsch 2010) and cognitive systems (Sloboda 2004, Krumhansl 2002, Ball 2010). But we must not forget that the dilemma emotion vs cognition is questionable as neuroscientists believe that emotion is cognitively based and cognition has emotive elements.

Dear May,

Excellent point. I agree there is no dilemma emotions vs. cognition. Emotions are inseparable mechanisms of cognition. Conceptual knowledge without emotional motivations are empty and meaningless.

Thank you Leonid

According to Aristotle (Politics 1340a11) music induces emotions through imitation: as music is a kind of motion, it may imitate the "moves" of the soul. In other words, the music imitates the basic features of emotional behaviors and thoughts. The communicative theory of emotions adopts, in general, the Aristotelian conception but stresses that this is applied only to "basic" emotions –those of joy, sadness, anger and fear– as music fails to provoke feelings of love or hate or other more complex emotions (Johnson-Laird & Oatley 2000).

May,

I would add that in Problems, Aristotle among unsolved problems alongside existence of God and finitemess of the world wrote : "How music being just sounds reminds states of soul?" So Aristotelian question was deeper than to note that music "moves in time."

Darwin wrote that music is "the greatest mystery".

In 2008 Nature published a series of reviews by most recognized authorities. Music remained a mystery.

To "explain" music as imitation would be a step back before J. Mattheson 1739 "Doctrine of imitation." And even 2400 years back before Aristotle asked his question. Just to note that music "moves in time" is not a deep explanation. The question is why sounds have such a power over us, and how animal cries evolved into Bach and Lady Gaga?

Of course there is no easy answer, but an excellent discussion of these issues can be found here:

Honing, H., & Ploeger, A. (2012). Cognition and the evolution of music: Pitfalls and prospects. Topics in Cognitive Science, 4(4), 513-524.

Jon

I do not have access to the suggested article (Honing & Ploeger 2012). Could you provide some help?

Leonid and Jon

My main point and concern is not to explain music exclusively as imitation. There are so many challenging definitions of music: metaphysical, philosophical, others which emphasize the experiential dimension to the phenomenon of music, some which highlight its cathartic and redemptive role. There are definitions that focus on aesthetic pleasure and others which emphasize the cognitive dimension. But, in every case, I think that mimesis provides a basis which we cannot ignore.

It was Plato who first claimed that every art is a mimetic act, a kind of representation, and he manifested his contempt for the arts of sensory imitation, as inferior knowledge of absolute truth (Sophist 235d-236c and Republic 603a 605a). He considered imitation as a key component of music and dance (Laws 798d), while he used other terms regarding painting, sculpture, and poetry. Specifically, Plato perceived musical tunes as representations of moods and characters (as it is discussed by Aristotle in Politics 1340a38).

(I'll be back as soon as possible... )

May,

You are right about Plato. We should remember, he was the first one who attempted to understand the mind. Already Aristotle critiqued him as well as his theory of art. Aristotle's theory of the mind was much better.

Try here:

http://cf.hum.uva.nl/mmm/papers/honing-ploeger-2012-earlyview.pdf

Hi all,

when we get out of bed, there is no reason to search for meaning, because we know exactly (more or less) what we have to do. We are not aware how much meaning in our lives is granted by just following routines. This saves us from wasting energy on learning each day how to dress, make coffee etc. Music reminds us, that our mental engine which searches for meaning, is running at all. Music primes all kinds of thoughts by more or less vague allusions, leaving some space to be filled by imagination. So, music mirrors our mind in a way that makes us wonder, but making ourselves wonder is essentially what keeps us going. Perhaps music also helps us in some way to expand our language or expand the ways we use words to convey meaning. Think of the opening of almost any symphony. It is hard to resist the thought that the music is not talking to the person sitting beside us, but instead it "talks" specifically to ourselves. It is not saying anything, and yet it demands our full attention, because "it" wants to be understood (and if we think we fail, it can even evoke anger as if "it" was a person talking rubbish to us - or missing the point). And we play the game, until we finally get distracted and the mind wanders off and on during listening.

This is certainly too subjective and philosophical to make any tangible point. All I want to say is that the power of music may simply be to make our minds move.

Jon,

I agree, Honing& Ploeger significantly expanded my question about usefulness of music. Still this paper does not answer the question about fundamental cognitive function of music. Beat is a basic biological function: heart beat, walking, flying, breathing, sex - why do we need musical beat? Properties of music, which we share with birds, do not seem to convincingly explain evolution of music to Palestrina, Bach, and Lady Gaga. (And why Lady Gaga after Bach?).

I have suggested that the fundamental cognitive function of music is to help overcoming cognitive dissonance and to hold contradictory knowledge. This is necessary for the entire human cultural evolution. And it has a potential to explain musical evolution to Bach and Lady Gaga. Several experiments have tentatively supported this hypothesis. Still many questions remain open: what are musical emotions? How many musical emotions exist? How to measure them? A big claim requires an extensive experimental support.

An interesting theory. Myself I am more of the mind that music, like many other refined cognitive capacities, are simply emergent properties of the mind. Although he doesn't mention music, McClelland (2010) explains it better than I can:

http://psych.stanford.edu/~jlm/papers/McClelland10TOPiCSEmergence.pdf

As for the development of musical style, I similarly suspect that it is largely arbitrary, given a starting point of hierarchical structures to organise the percept. Ultimately, however, I think these sorts of questions are unlikely to have an easy answer, as it is difficult to draw causal attributions in the absence of a controlled experiment on the development of musical systems in human culture.

Music may help to resolve cognitive dissonance, and is especially good at manipulating mood and arousal, but I am sceptical that there is something special about music that makes it the ideal stimulus for such functions. To me, these are side benefits. Regarding emotions, I'm not an expert in this area, but I see them more as a continuum rather than discrete and categorical entities to be isolated and measured individually.

Music is the interaction of at least two different grid systems, in either of which it is possible to describe congruence or incongruence - reinforce or disturb. These patterns interact, with a certain sense of "pull" towards congruence. These interactions across different complex grid systems are nevertheless not difficult to grasp, and the sense of conflict and resolution is simply reminiscent of the way in which we also characterise the ebb and flow, push and pull, of everyday tasks, challenges, emotions and social interactions.

Pitch and harmony have a scientific basis in the harmonic series. What this means is that any one note, although perceived as a single item, is actually a whole collection of sounds that arise at regular intervals above the sounded note that we hear (termed the fundamental) When we hear two notes together, their upper partials interact with one another - some reinforce, some disagree, and some disappear according to timbre. We also notice the congruences or dissonances between two melody notes one after the other. As more notes are added, the possibilities for different levesl of interplay, or diffferent 'flavours' or consonance and dissonance multiply. One note may move towards a congruent position relative to another note at the same time as a third note moves away. Notes may move in similar directions, in parallel petterns, but by agreeing with each others motion, may still come to rest in an unresolved position. The possible 'routes' of four notes from consonance to dissonance and back again are the story of harmony.

Rhythm is a basic property of life; the heartbeat and the walking gait are the two regular rhythms that accompany us even in utero. There are evident evolutionary advantages of coordinated movements for lare group working tasks; we are very sensitive to how exactly coincident any two sounds are. Any repeating pulse is perceived as a "rhythm" and quickly becomes a temporal grid that functions in a similar cognitive way as the harmonic series. Any disturbance to the rhythm is tolerated if directly mathematiclly related, and presents a sense of argument, conflict, or counterpoint if it is not. The ways in which rhythms interlock, interact and coincide quickly establish a grid of regular expectation, which may in turn hold an entire conversation with the sense of harmonic tension and resolution. Rhythm is also inherently hierarchical, functioning well as 'boxes-within-boxes' - in this sense it may be evocative of spatial persepctive and our sense of symmetry.

Dear Jon,

You are right, this question is difficult to answer, otherwise Aristotle and Darwin would not call it the greatest mystery.

I only write here about science. Science does have a way to distinguish a valid theory from "I think so." The basis of the scientific method is in theoretical predictions that can be experimentally verified. Equations of the theory of relativity cannot be observed under control circumstances or otherwise. But they lead to predictions that have been observed. Same is true about the idea that music helps resolving cognitive dissonance - it has made predictions that have been experimentally verified.

Overcoming cognitive dissonances is fundamentally important for the entire human evolution. Otherwise knowledge cannot be accumulated. This big claim requires multiple experimental tests. Many experimental psychologists and cognitive scientists now conduct experiments verifying theoretical predictions. I welcome you to join us.

Best

Leonid

Hello. Not very easy to answer, I agree. As a singer professor I'm very interested about. An interesting book to reed on the subject : "This is Your Brain on Music" , Daniel Levitin, Dutton, a division of the Penguin Group, New York, 2006. (Also translated in french as "De la note au cerveau, l'influence de la musique sur le comportement". -éd. Héloïse d'Ormesson, 2010.

The attached essay (incomplete) addresses this very question.

Data On creativity

I think that you can find something there, on these article:

Theories of Musical Emotions and Music Origins

Aristotle listed the power of music among the unsolved problems (Aristotle, IV BCE/1995, p.1434). During the last two decades, the powers of music that previously seemed mysterious are receiving scientific foundations due to the research of scientists in several fields. Integration of this research in recent years provides evidence for the evolutionary origins and roles of music. This section provides a selection of views on the role of music in cognition from contemporary research. Current theories of musical emotions attempt to uncover this mystery by looking into its evolutionary origins. Justus and Hustler (2003) and McDermott and Houser (2003) review evidence for evolutionary origins of music. They emphasize that an unambiguous identification of genetic evolution as a source of music origins requires innateness, domain specificity for music, and uniqueness to humans (since no other animals make music in the sense humans do). The conclusions of both reviews are similar, i.e., “humans have an innate drive to make and enjoy music.” There is much suggestive evidence supporting a biological predisposition for music. Certain basic abilities for music are guided by innate constraints.

Nevertheless it is unclear that these constraints are uniquely human since they “show parallels in other domains.” It is likely that many musical abilities are not adaptations for music, but are based on more general-purpose mechanisms. There are “some intriguing clues about innate perceptual biases related to music, but probably not enough to seriously constrain evolutionary hypothesis.” “Available evidence suggests that the innate constraints in music are not specific to that domain, making it unclear, which domain(s) provided the relevant selection pressures.” “There is no compelling reason to argue categorically that music is a cognitive domain that has been shaped by natural selection.” In Nature’s series of essays on music McDermott (2008) writes: “Music is universal, a significant feature of every known culture, and yet does not serve an obvious, uncontroversial function”. Trainor (2008) argues that for higher cognitive functions, such as music, it is difficult to differentiate between adaptation and exaptation (structures originally evolved for other purposes and used today for music), since most such functions involve both “genes and experience.” Therefore the verdict on whether music is an evolutionary adaptation should be decided based on advantages for survival. Fitch (2004) comments that biological and cultural aspects of music are hopelessly entangled, and “the greatest value of an evolutionary perspective may be to provide a theoretical framework.”

In the search for evolutionary origins of music, emphasizes Huron (1999), it is necessary to look for complex multistage adaptations, built on prior adaptations, which might have evolved for several reasons. He discusses social reasons for music origins and lists several possible evolutionary advantages of music: mate selection, social cohesion, the coordination of group work, auditory development, developing auditory skills, refined motor coordination, conflict reduction, preserving stories of tribal origins. However, according to Huron, the list of possible uses of music by itself does not explain musical power over human psyche; does not explain why music and not some other, nonmusical activities have been used for these purposes. Cross (2008a,b), concentrates on evolutionary arguments specific to music. He integrates neuroscientific, cognitive, and ethnomusicological evidence and emphasizes that it is inadequate to consider music as “patterns of sounds” used by individuals for hedonic purposes. Music should be considered in the context of its uses in pre-cultural societies for social structuring, forming bonds, and group identities. According to Cross, evolution of music was based on already existing in animal world biological and genetic mechanisms. The power of language is in “its ability to present semantically decomposable propositions.” Language, because of its concreteness, on one hand enabled exchange of specific and complicated knowledge, but on the other hand could exacerbate oppositions between individual goals and transform an uncertain encounter into a conflict. Music is a communicative tool with opposite properties. It is directed at increasing a sense of ‘shared intentionality.’ Music’s major role is social, it serves as an ‘honest signal’ (that is it “reveals qualities of a signaler to a receiver”) with nonspecific goals. This property of music, “the indeterminacy of meaning or floating intentionality,” allows for individual interactions while maintaining different “goals and meanings” that may conflict. Thus music “promotes the alignment of participants’ sense of goals.”

Cross suggests that music evolved together with language rather than as its precursor. Evolution of language required a re-wiring of neural control over the vocal tract, and this control had to become more voluntary for language. At the same time a less voluntary control, originating in ancient emotional brain regions, had to be maintained for music to continue playing the role of ‘honest signal.’ Related differences in neural controls over the vocal tract between primates and humans were reviewed in Perlovsky (2005, 2006b, 2006e, 2007a, 2010a).

In hominid lineages juvenile periods lengthened. Juvenile animals, especially social primates, engage in play, which prepares them to adult lives. Play involves music-like features, thus proto-musical activity has ancient genetic roots (Cross & Morley 2008). Lengthening of juvenile periods was identified as possibly fundamental for proto-musical activity and for origin of music. Infant directed speech (IDS) has special musical (or proto-musical) qualities that are universal around the globe. This research was reviewed in Trehub (2003). She has demonstrated that IDS exhibits many similar features across different cultures. Young infants are sensitive to musical structures in human voice. Several researchers relate this sensitivity to the “coregulation of affect by parent and child” (Dissanayake, 2000), and consider IDS to be an important evolutionary mechanism of music origin. Yet, arguments presented later tell that IDS cannot be a full story of musical evolution.

Dissanayake (2008) considers music primarily as a behavioral and motivational capacity. Naturally evolving processes led to ritualization of music through formalization, repetition, exaggeration, and elaboration. Ritualization led to arousal and emotion shaping. She emphasizes that such proto-musical behavior has served as a basis for culture-specific inventions of ritual ceremonies for uniting groups as they united mother-infant pairs. She describes structural and functional resemblances between mother-infant interactions, ceremonial rituals, and adult courtship, and relates these to properties of music. All these, she proposes, suggest an evolved “amodal neural propensity in human species to respond—cognitively and emotionally—to dynamic temporal patterns produced by other humans in context of affiliation.” This is why, according to Dissanayake, proto-musical behavior produces such strong emotions, and activates brain areas involved in ancient mechanisms of reward and motivation, the same areas that are involved in satisfaction of most powerful instincts of hunger and sex.

According to Mithen (2007) Neanderthals possibly have had proto-musical ability. He argues that music and language have evolved by differentiation of early proto-human voice sounds “Hmmmm” undifferentiated proto-music-language. The development was facilitated by vertical posture and walking, which required sophisticated sensorimotor control, a sense of rhythm, and possibly ability for dancing. The differentiation of Hmmmm, he dates to after 50,000 BP. Further evolution toward music occurred for religious purposes, which he identifies with supernatural beings. Currently music is not needed, it has been replaced by language, it only exists as inertia, as a difficult to get rid off remnant of the primordial Hmmmm. An exception could be religious practice, where music is needed since we do not know how to communicate with gods. I disagree with dismissing Bach, Beethoven, or Shostakovich in this way; as well as with the implied characterization of religion, and discuss these doubts later. Mithen relates music to emotions due to its presence in original Hmmmm. Songs recombine language and music into original Hmmmm; however Mithen gives no fundamental reason or need for this recombination. While addressing language in details, Mithen (and other scientists as well) give no explanation for why human learn language by about age of five, but the corresponding mastery of cognition takes the rest of lifetime; steps toward explaining this are taken in Perlovsky (2004; 2006d; 2009a,b; 2010a) and summarized later.

Mithen’s view on religion contradicts the documented evidence for relatively late proliferation of supernatural beings in religious practice (Jaynes, 1976), and to mathematical and cognitive explanations for the role of religiously sublime in workings of the mind (Perlovsky, 2006a,d; Levine & Perlovsky, 2008a).

Juslin and Västfjäll (2008) analyze mechanisms of musical emotions. They discuss a number of neural mechanisms involved with emotions and different meanings implied for the word ‘emotion’. I would mention here just two of these. First, consider most often discussed basic emotions; we have specific words for these emotions: fear, sexual-love, jealousy, thirst… Mechanisms of these emotions are related to satisfaction or dissatisfaction of basic instinctual bodily needs such as survival, procreation, a need for water balance in the body… An ability of music to express basic emotions unambiguously is a separate field of study. Second, consider the complex or ‘musical’ emotions (sometimes called ‘continuous’), which we ‘hear’ in music and for which we do not necessarily have special words. Mechanisms and role of these emotions in the mind and cultural evolution are subjects of this paper.

Six different types of music, fulfilling six fundamental needs, and eliciting six basic emotions are considered by Levitin (2008). He suggests that music has originated from animal cries and it functions today essentially in the same way, communicating emotions. It is more difficult, he writes, “to fake sincerity in music than in spoken language.” The reason that music evolved this way as an ‘honest signal’ because it “simply” co-evolved with brains “precisely to preserve this property.” Given the fact that even as simple animals as birds can fake their cries (Lorenz, 1981) I have my doubts about this “simply;” further doubts arise as soon as we think about actors, singers, and poets, not only contemporary professionals, but also those existing in traditional societies (Meyer, Palmer, & Mazo, 1998) since time immemorial. This suggestion, it seems, has not been informed by views of Jung (1921) that some people better manipulate their emotions than their thoughts, or by the current psychological studies on emotional intellect (Mayer, Salovey, Caruso, 2008).

Mathematical modeling of the mechanisms of music perception and musical emotions was considered in (Purwins, Herrera, Grachten, Hazan, Marxer, & Serra, 2008a,b; Coutinho & Cangelosi, 2009). These modeling approaches can be used to obtain and verify predictions of various theories.

In the following sections we discuss mechanisms of music evolution from differentiation of original proto-music-language to its contemporary refined states. Discussions of mechanisms that evolved music from IDS to Bach and Beatles in previously proposed theories are lacking or unconvincing. Why do we need the virtual infinity of “musical emotions” that we hear in music (e.g. in classical Western music)? Dissanayake (2008) suggests that this path went through ceremonial ritualization, due to “a basic motivation to achieve some level of control over events…” However, she does not explain why this motivation is “basic” and where it came from; she does not discuss why humans have these motivation in principally different ways than animals. She continues: if “for five or even ten centuries… music has been emancipated from its two-million year history and its adaptive roots says more about the recency and aberrance of modernity…” Essentially Dissanayake does not to consider what modern people call music. Cross & Morley (2008) appropriately disagree: “…it would be impossible to remove music without removing many of the abilities of social cognition that are fundamental to being human.” They conclude that “there are further facets to the evolutionary story.” This paper discusses a novel hypothesis that clarifies some of these remaining “further facets” and suggests a fundamental role of musical emotions in cognition and evolution.

These article is from these site:

https://www.webmedcentral.com/article_view/1494

Yes indeed.Music seems to be the complement to the rational mind. Often functioning like a midwife to ideas that are still in embryonic form. No wonder that the word "music" traces its etymology back to the "muse". I say this in view of the many scientist/influential personalities who knew and appreciated music or even performed on the side. To name a few:

Richard Feynman (Physicist/bongo-player)

Oliver Sacks (Neurologist/Pianist)

Einstein (Physicist/Violinist)

Albert Schweitzer (Physician/Organist)

Alan Greenspan (Economist/saxophonist)

One way forward with the question is ask, "What happens if there is music deprivation?"

http://www.ishkbooks.com/music_function.pdf

best practice to find the origin of phenomenon is to observe the child and animals. i read somewhere that animals also get positively affected by music. whether child affected by music? do they like it? why we don't like noise and not much interested in sound but in music. may be some harmonized frequency waves are good for our body and so we like to hear. filthy things smell bad to us because it harmful and vice versa.

Learning a lot from these submissions.

Music has a melody is a Art & touching the tuning rhythm in the mind of every listeners who are enjoying all the pleasure which may also help them to carry out their action of the life in a very comfortable mode . With this sometime back ,I have my publication under the name '' Music '' which i submit herewith for your kind perusal & it is likely that this may also help our readers to view the music also in their joining line of course this is my personal opinion