This Is Your Brain on Music

Takeaway #1: You could not take away music without changing the course of history, since it’s part of our evolution

There’s a small minority of scientists that argues that music only serves hedonic purposes – it’s simply a byproduct of language and is only a pastime for us to feel pleasure. But that would mean that if you eliminated all music from the world right now, life would just go on as if nothing happened.

Can you imagine that? I know I can’t. And I think you probably couldn’t either.

If so, then you’ll likely find yourself on the majority side of scientists, who believe that music played a key role in our evolution and has paved the way for our human ancestors to develop speech.

Music and speaking are quite similar, so it’s possible that by practicing singing and making sounds, our ancestors could have developed the skills needed to later articulate words.

Additionally, Darwin believed that music was a way of finding a mate for two reasons:

• Singing and dancing requires you to be physically and mentally (and therefore sexually) healthy.
• If you have time to sing and dance, your food and shelter are likely taken care of, which makes you a safe bet in terms of survival.

Looking at how musicians are idolized today and many are considered the sex symbols of their generation, I’d say Mr. Darwin’s argument is pretty sound, what do you think?

Takeaway # 2: Music is all about expectations and how well you can predict what’s to come

How much you like a song depends primarily on one thing: how well you can predict what comes next. Great musicians play with your brain and expectations in the way that they get you to expect something, and then surprise you, before taking you back to comfortable terrain.

A great song surprises you, but not too much. It balances the familiar with the unknown, and therefore creates the perfect mix of comfort and excitement.

For example, many people sitting through a wedding service at a church will tear up only when “Here Comes The Bride” starts playing, because then they know what’s to come. Another classic move is to suddenly drop the music, for example in Jazz, and having the singer “prompt” the band at certain points.

There’s also something called the deceptive cadence, which is when a song repeats certain patterns over and over again, until you expect it to do nothing else and then, at the last chance it gets, an unexpected rhythm break or unfamiliar chord catches you off guard.

However, it’s important as a composer to not overdo this, because it’ll wear the listener out. For example, the song “Over The Rainbow” does a great job by ripping the listener out of his comfort zone with the chorus part “some-WHERE”, but then brings you back nicely with the rest of it.

Takeaway #3: Each song you hear leaves an imprint in your brain, which is used for future reference.

Memory is an incredible complicated thing, but music seems to have somehow cracked the code – songs are really easy for us to remember. While many areas of the brain light up simultaneously during music, such as your subcortical structures, auditory cortices, the hippocampus and others, something unique happens the very first time you hear any song: a certain set of neurons fires together, and a unique, abstract, generalized imprint is created.

This can then be called upon any future time you hear this song or a part of it. That’s why when studies looked at the brain waves of people when they listened to songs and compared them to when they were just imagining the song in their head, the patterns were indistinguishable.

The resulting model is called multiple trace theory and it suggests that our brains store both more abstract (like the overall combination of instruments, rhythm and melody), as well as more specific information (like the slang words in the lyrics) of the songs.

That’s how you can remember a childhood event from decades ago when you hear an old song or where you first listened to a song by your favorite artist.