Hi Richard,

Well, let me go to a bit different direction, by means of general suggestions that could relate brain, frequencies, amplitudes, musics, emotions and the limbic system. It seems to me that could be related to memory issues. The suggestions that follow wore given to me by Gary Mazzaferro:

Regulation of spike timing in visual cortical circuits:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2868969/

And this overviews: Neuronal synchrony measures

http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Neuronal_synchrony_measures

And this on phase coupling:

http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Pulse_coupled_oscillators

It seems that neuron synchronicity creates a adaptive, bandpass frequency resonance filter that represents information as a set of, not for better term, sounds. Information features are recorded by neuron and reassembled in a acoustic fabric mediated by network various filters. Thinking about it, one fundamental sense at the cellular level is mechanical pressure. Now we can talk about music's biological connection to emotion.

The auditory cortex and audio sensing has a range of frequencies close to the typical operating range of neuron firing rates. The auditory cortex is wired directly to the limbic system. Tinnitus (ringing in the ears) is a response by the limbic system.

Well, I hope that can serve...

Sincerely,

Velina.

Hi Velina!

Gosh! Thank you, Velina, for these - you were right in guessing I had not considered those directions. I'm really looking forward to absorbing the articles and whatever ideas might come to me in consequence. I'll feed any back to you, of course!

Best wishes for now,

Richard

Dear Richard

From various stories that are circulating since old, I should think auditory perceptios received during intra-uterine period play an important part creates auditory images and affects auditory neural development. Shouls you not look into that direction too. Of course part of this will be inheritancy. We have noticed that Music runs in the family

Narayanan

Dear Naranayan,

Many thanks indeed! Yes, over the months since posting my question, I've explored research into this aspect extensively. From such in utero research we know that the auditory system is among the very first sensory systems to emerge and its receptivity to audible environmental stimuli permits considerable maturation of processes implicated in discriminating of auditory properties and representing specific, contextually co-presented combinations in long-term associative memory. The maturation process entails not only perceptual learning and formation of concrete, context-specific cognitive representations, but also the emergence of categorization of similarly constituted representations at a superordinate level of cognitive functioning and encoding. This is in marked contrast to the in utero development of the visual system, which is dependent on learning to adapt its components in response to auto-generated signals rather than environmentally originating stimuli.

However, vividness, i.e. experienced intensity,  of mental imagery appears to depend not on the richness of detail encoded in concrete cognitive representations of phenomena, but on the output of modulatory brainstem nuclei that set levels of electrical activation in early sensory cortices engaged in planning and executing tasks pursuing particular common goals, and such levels appear to be linked with internal states of motivation. The establishing of projections between brainstem modulatory nuclei and early auditory cortex must surely be a product of in utero maturation, but their characteristic potency - i.e., the degree of electrical activation they produce - for each individual may remain unset until the course of a critcal period in childhood development, involving co-ordinated fine tuning of both modulatory nuclei and cortex to classes of stimuli properties that elicit strongly motivated, and often rewarded, responses to them. My guess, then, is that individual differences in characteristic level of imagery vividness is more likely to be attributable to childhood critical periods than by in utero development and learning.

What are your own thoughts about this?

Kind regards,

Richard.

Dear Richard

My area is Biolinguistics and my work involes how to establish  that there is a Faculty of Language, a virtual organ (see my RG details) in the Brain, Since music involves speech, I am sure that here too the Faculty of Language is involved. In fact, in Hindu mythology, the Goddess of Learnig, Sarasvathi, is also the Goddess of Music!

As with any Human faculty, (or with many disease) music also will be influenced by three factors

1. Inherited, 2. Intra-Uterine/Congenital 3. Post natal.

As with speech and Language, exposure to music during childhood must also be important. Part of inherited effect may be that the child is exposed earlier. And, however much a Human being has a well developed Faculty of Language, he/she will never speak unless exposed to speech! It must be so with music too?

As regards Auditory image, it might be impossible to say exactly which stimulus results in an image that can be recalled.

There is a famous Lullaby in Malayalam, written 300 or more years ago. When ever I hear it, I don't know why, I remember my mother. May be she must have sung it to me who was her firstborn, but I don't remember her singing to me actually! This must be what you mean by auditory image, isn't it so?

Studying this is tough. May be you can find people who does have similar auditory images and study their cortical/neural/ activity by EEG, PET scan, etc., afeter exposing them to image recalling and non-recalling sounds.

Narayanan