What Does Music Look Like to Our Brain?

from http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/nature-brain-and-culture/201007/what-does-music-look-our-brain

by Mark Changizi

I believe that music sounds like people, moving. Yes, the idea may sound a bit crazy, but it's an old idea, much discussed in the 20th century, and going all the way back to the Greeks. There are lots of things going for the theory, including that it helps us explain...

(1) why our brains are so good at absorbing music (...because we evolved to possess human-movement-detecting auditory mechanisms),

(2) why music emotionally moves us (...because human movement is often expressive of the mover's mood or state), and

(3) why music gets us moving (...because we're a social species prone to social contagion).

And as I describe in detail in my upcoming book -- Harnessed: How Language and Music Mimicked Nature and Transformed Ape To Man -- music has the signature auditory patterns of human movement (something I hint at in this older piece of mine).

Here I'd like to describe a novel way of thinking about what the meaning of music might be. Rather than dwelling on the sound of music, I'd like to focus on the look of music. In particular, what does our brain think music looks like? Continue reading...