Welcome back to the second installment of Music on the Brain - the musings, ramblings, and (hopefully) interesting insights of a budding cognitive neuroscientist and die-hard music lover. For years two of my primary interests in these arenas has been in improvisation and collaboration – areas yet to be deeply explored in a rigorous neuroscientific context. However, some great preliminary work on music performance and perception is being conducted by well-regarded researchers including Robert Zatorre at McGill University in Montreal. Dr. Zatorre and colleagues, along with the New York Academy of Sciences hosted a conference last year called ‘Songs of Experience: Music and the Brain’ and you can check out some info on that at their website here. Scientists and musicians alike have claimed that music is really a language unto itself, but one that some researchers believe is hard wired into the human brain, or at least rudimentary aspects of it. For example, most people can detect rhythm or tap their foot or finger along with the beat, just like any infant can make the vocal sounds that make up our spoken language. However, it’s with much more exposure, modeling by others, and practice that one can become proficient in that language – and I think that music is very similar.
Brain imaging studies of professional musicians show the parts of their brains responsible for language processing are also active when playing or listening to music.
Recently, findings were published from a study conducted at the Max Planck Institute on Human Development in Berlin, Germany investigating the neural underpinnings of musical collaboration. They hooked up 8 different pairs of guitarists with EEG electrodes to measure their brains’ electrical activity and then had the musicians play a piece of music. They found that when anticipating the beat and starting to play the tune, the EEG signals became synchronized. In other words, certain aspects of the electrical activity created in the two musicians’ brains was highly similar. This may simply reflect the engagement of similar preparatory mechanisms in the brain’s motor system that controls muscle movement.
This is among the first evidence of how it’s possible for musical collaboration to occur in our brains. Of course, it’s a teensy, tiny step in a much longer marathon, but if others can replicate these findings, it’s an interesting cross over between the fields of social and cognitive neuroscience.
Given the huge number of variables in the equation – all the different factors that can change a performance or the experience of seeing or hearing that performance – it’s no easy feat to recreate such conditions in experimental settings. Additionally, in science we like to control everything – not because we’re control freaks (although there are plenty of those in science) but because the only way to establish that what we’re attributing to one factor is really the result of that and not something else.
For example, let’s say we wanted to investigate how the screams and frenzied dance of a crowd changed musical performance – how do you measure the musical performance? In science we need to be as objective as possible and use tools or measurements that are reliable or don’t change because different people are doing the measuring. Within fields of research that have a lot of different elements, that’s really not an easy task. However, the research being conducted will help us better understand the intrinsic connection that humanity has with music and how it shapes our experience from both the underlying neural point of view for the individual musician or listener and from the social perspective concerning the interaction between the two.
In the weeks to come, I’ll be writing more about music, improvisation, collaboration, the brain, psychology, cognition, neuroimaging, and related topics. For now, though I’ll share a few things going on around Detroit and Michigan this weekend and into next week that are on my radar.
Friday:
Elvis Hitler brings his own brand of psychobilly rock to PJ’s Lager house
Saturday 6/6:
I’ll be in Ann Arbor at the Kerrytown Concert House to see Fareed Haque and the Flat Earth Ensemble perform an insane mix of western jazz and Indian/Pakistani (Punjabi to be more precise) music.
His different projects including Garaj Mahal, Fareed Haque Group, and duo performances in classical guitar music with Goran Ivanovic are all phenomenal. I have no idea what the turnout will be like, and I’ve never been to the Kerrytown Concert House before, but I’m hoping that this guitar virtuoso gets the turnout he truly deserves.
Also going on on Saturday 6/6:
Crosby Stills & Nash at Meadowbrook and Soulja Boy at Chene Park
Sunday 6/7:
Candye Kane at the Ark in A2
Tuesday 6/8:
Derek Trucks Band at the Royal Oak Music Theater (I’ll be there for MCB)
Hayes Carll at the Ark in A2
MOTB Festival of the Week:
Motor City Pride in Ferndale on Sunday June 7. With 2 stages of music, activities, and of course Dykes on Bikes, it’s a great excuse to get out in downtown Ferndale, whether you’re lesbian or gay, bisexual, transgendered, or even straight.
Downtown Ferndale is an excellent host location for Motor City Pride, with its easy access via major freeways and bus routes. Located in the area's wealthiest and most heavily populated county (Oakland), the city borders Wayne County and the city of Detroit to its south, with Macomb County to its east. All of our area's citizens can and do make downtown Ferndale their kick-off to Detroit's summer festival season on June's first Sunday every year!
A summer street festival has open-ended appeal. There's something truly energizing, exciting and empowering about holding Motor City Pride in a location where people work, shop and live. Holding a Pride event "on the streets" versus a contained arena solidifies the notion of LGBT people as active parts of the larger community. Additionally, it shows the strength, vitality and unity of our community within the collective fabric of Southeastern Michigan.
For more info on Motor City Pride check out their website here.
