Many studies reveal that musical communication, or the "mother tongue", is prevalent in all human cultures. Even newborn babies show an amazing ability to respond to different types of music, recognizing musical patterns in the human voice
Scientific American
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Since the dawn of civilization, all human societies in the entire world have been saturated with music. The attitude towards music seems to be innate; Already at the age of two months, babies are seen turning towards pleasant sounds. Many different areas of the brain respond to the perceptual and emotional aspects of music. The brain changes itself to increase the intensity of the response to musical sounds that have become important to the listener. Scientists studying the processing of music in the brain are laying the groundwork for understanding the deep reasons for music's power and importance to humans.
The babies understand music
Although many people think that their perception of music is poor, we are all musical to one degree or another. In fact, to find someone with a "musical mind" you only have to look at any baby. Even before they acquire language, babies show a marked ability to respond to music. Perhaps this is why parents and other adults instinctively communicate with babies through music.
All of them use a wide variety of pitches and musical phrases, which is commonly called "motherese". All cultures use mother tongue.
It seems that babies not only respond positively to such communication, but also improve their mothers' performance. In a study conducted by Laura Lee Blackwill and William P. Thompson while they were at York University in Toronto in 1999, mothers in North America and East India sang the same song in the presence and absence of their baby.
People who later listened to the recordings could determine with precision when the baby was present and when not. The research also shows that there are at least some cross-cultural musical cues. The listeners to the recordings could tell whether the baby was present or not even if the song was sung in a language they did not know.
How do you know that babies are aware of music even before they can speak? We use objective measures of behavior. For example, a baby is sitting on his mother's lap. To his left and right are two speakers and next to them are transparent plastic boxes. The boxes are usually dark, but when the pup turns his head towards a box, she rewards him by turning on a light and activating a toy doll, such as a dog or a monkey.
During the tests, a researcher operates the dolls in front of the baby to get his attention. A musical stimulus (which may be a single tone or a melody) is played repeatedly from one of the speakers. The researcher presses a hidden button that changes the stimulus at random times. If the baby notices the difference and turns towards the speaker, he is rewarded with the sight of the toy.
Such tests have shown that infants are just as good at distinguishing between two adjacent musical tones as adults. Babies also notice tempo changes, i.e. the speed of the music, and the rhythm. And they recognize a melody when it is played in a different scale. And for that matter, Sandra Traub of the University of Toronto recently discovered that two- to six-month-old babies prefer consonant sounds over dissonant ones.
But it seems that learning music begins even earlier: in the womb. Peter Hafer from Queen's University in Belfast (Ireland) found that two weeks before they were born, they recognized the difference between the theme music of the TV series "Neighbors", which their mothers heard every day for weeks, and a new song.
A complex brain response
When a person listens to music, several areas outside the auditory cortex are involved in the brain's response, including areas normally involved in other types of thinking. A person's previous visual, tactile and emotional experience affects where the brain processes music.
The outer ear and the middle ear transform the incoming sounds, which are air pressure waves, into fluid waves in the inner ear. A tiny bone, called the cochlea, is pushed into the cochlea (cochlea) and creates pressure of varying intensity on the fluid inside.
The oscillations in the basilar membrane of the cochlea cause the hair cells, the sensory receptors in the inner ear, to send electrical signals to the auditory nerve, which transmits them to the brain. The different hair cells are tuned to different oscillation frequencies.
The brain processes music both hierarchically and distributed. In the early stages of music perception, the primary auditory cortex is involved which is located within the total auditory cortex and receives input from the ear and the lower auditory system through the thalamus. The initial perception includes the pitch (its frequency) and its outline (the pattern of changes in pitch), which form the basis of the melody.
Repeated experience "retunes" the primary auditory cortex by increasing the sensitivity of more cells to important musical sounds and tones. The tuning through learning affects further processing in other areas, such as secondary auditory fields in the cerebral cortex and other areas called auditory association areas. It is possible that these areas process more complex musical patterns of harmony, melody and rhythm.
The mind knows - the senses
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