Music and Consciousness

1. Music and Consciousness The astounding influence ofmusic on cognition Eleanore Park Alex Kawas Stephen Frost Matthias Havenaar

2. Ties to ASCs • Shift state, alter mindset • Used to accompany, induce ASCs: • Religion/shamanism/mysticism • Drug use • Meditation • Sleep

3. What is Music? • Distinguishing aspects • Tonal organization; psychoacoustics • Beat & rhythm • Affect • Birdsong? • Jackhammer? • Country?

4. Basic Structure Hierarchy • Major and minor beats • Essential + ornamental notes • Defeasible principles of organization • Interaction between types and levels • Auditory “scene” analysis: stream segregation

5. Processing music • Utilizes broad cognitive capacities • Gestalt grouping: proximity, good continuation • And specialized ones • Differential lateralization in processing • Analysis of tonal space: pitches, intervals, chords, keys

6. Affect in music Music theory • There are “degrees of tension and attraction within a melody…at any point” 1 • Rising pitch: increased tension • Large interval shifts: more tension than small shifts • Attraction related to “resolution” during melodic progression • Conscious and unconscious expectation; latter unrelated to memory 1. Jackendoff, p. 24

7. Why does music move us? • Aesthetics: Admiring beauty, virtuosity • Memory: Nostalgic familiarity • Entrainment: direct effect on rhythms within the body (heartbeat, brainwaves); visceral and motor rhythmicity

8. Why does music move us? • “Musical posture” and “gesture”: ascription of affect and animatism • Listening to “dark” music doesn’t make us feel dark, but in the presence of a dark entity • We have empathy or attunement with the affect • Dancing: conversion to physical posture and gesture • Framing: level to invest, or detach

9. The Impact of Music on the Brain & Experience

10. Neural Basis for Coupling Music to Emotion & Attention • PET studies showed increased CBF in the ventral striatum, midbrain, amygdala, orbitofrontal cortex, and ventral medial prefrontal cortex (Limb, 2006) • EEG studies have shown a significant power increase in the low-alpha band range in bilateral frontal networks, indicating increased neuronal synchronization and attention (Thaut, 2005). • Music acts on waking arousal control systems based on norepinephrine (NE) and serotonin (Panksepp, 1986).

11. Music elicits responses similar to sex and drug intake • Music can lead to musical chills and euphoric experience • Music activates reward related brain areas • These area’s are similar to reward / emotion and limbic arousal processes similar to thoses activated by drug intake and sex. • NAc, Insula, OFC, ACC (Blood, 2001) • Increased DA secretion due to listening to music. • Music is your XTC! Remember Volkow? Is music addictive? ?

12. Music and Brain Lateralization • Right hemisphere is involved in processing of melody (prosody) • Left hemisphere is involved in processing rhythm and musical analysis. Also activates frontal motor areas • Is the left hemisphere involved in making you want to shake your body?

13. Is music capable of inducing an altered state? • Is used for induction of hypnosis/ trancelike states • Music can drive listeners into states of patriotic fervor or religious frenzy • Is there a reason why we sing in church? • Does music induce religious experiences?

14. What is music therapy? • Systematic intervention process that uses music experiences to achieve therapeutic goals • Music as an ASC: changes in emotion, motivation, motor functions to help a variety of patient populations • Passive and active interactions with music: • Song writing, listening to music, discussion of song lyrics, performing, etc. • No previous experience with music or music talent is necessary

15. Music Therapy patient populations • Goals: • Obtain symptom control, reduce clinical disability, improve quality of life • Vary with each patient’s condition: • Geriatric care • Patient’s undergoing cardiac surgery • Parkinson’s disease • Rehabilitation • Alzheimer's- “silent brain” • Schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, Tourette’s

16. Active music therapy • Voice exercises, rhythmic and free body movements • Combining motor and emotional responses • Rhythmic and melodic components • Combining stimulation of different sensory pathways

17. Active MT and Parkinson’s Disease • Bradykinesia,hypokinesia • Postural and gait abnormalities • External rhythmic cues acting as a timekeeper • Variable improvements • Motor improvements as a function of emotion? • DA mesolimbic projections to ventro-striatum intraccumbens • Integration of basal-ganglia loop and cortical regions • Limbic systems + motor systems

18. Music therapy and effects on consciousness • Improvements seem to be residual (Pacchetti et al.) • ASC’s generally relative • Individual differences in normal state of consciousness • Patients achieve different mental state and physical state • Body and mind connection (Brain vs. Mind) • Is music adaptive? What purpose might music serve on an individual and social level?

19. Where Did Music Come From? • Auditory Cheesecake hypothesis • Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works (1997) • Sexual Selection hypothesis • Geoffrey Miller, “Evolution of human music through sexual selection” (2000) • Social Bonding hypothesis • Robin Dunbar, “Language, Music and Laughter in Evolutionary Perspective” (2004) • Coalition Signaling hypothesis • Hagen & Bryant, “Music and dance as a coalition signaling system” (2003)

20. Auditory Cheesecake • Cheesecake tastes good by taking advantage of existing structures • The desire for cheesecake is an emergent phenomena of existing processes • Music, too!

21. Sexual Selection • Darwin: Music as courtship display • Miller: Musical ability as indicator of fitness • Jimi Hendrix

22. Social Bonding • Sexual selection is insufficient • Monkey grooming • Grooming ceiling: 50 monkeys • Human grooming • Dunbar’s number: 150 humans • Language allows larger grooming size • Ramping up from 50 to 150 • Music, precursor to language

23. Coalition Signaling • Sexual selection, social bonding insufficient, but important • Music commonly performed in groups during war, politics with other groups • Apes coordinate songs to advertise territory, pair bonds • May also signal group identity • Music signals other groups of cohesion • “We can kick your butt.”

24. Altered State Induction • What about altered states? • Mob behavior as altered state:Personal identity frame drop induces altered state • Are musical groups mobs? • Is music’s role in the induction of altered states evolutionarily adaptive? • Open question

25. References Blood AJ, Zatorre RJ. “Intensely pleasurable responses to music correlate with activity in brain regions implicated in reward and emotion.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (2001). Esch T, Guarna M, Bianchi E, Zhu W, Stefano GB. “Commonalities in the central nervous system's involvement with complementary medical therapies: limbic morphinergic processes.” Medical science monitor: International medical journal of experimental and clinical research (2004). Gold C, Rolvsjord R, Aaro LE, Aarre T, Tjemsland L, Stige B. “Resource-oriented music therapy for psychiatric patients with low therapy motivation: protocol for a randomised controlled trial [NCT00137189].” BMC psychiatry (2005). Hatem TP, Lira PI, Mattos SS. “The therapeutic effects of music in children following cardiac surgery.” Jornal de pediatria (2006). Jackendoff R, Lerdahl F. “The capacity for music: What is it, and what's special about it?” Cognition (2005).

26. References Jaynes J. “Of poetry and music.” The origin of consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind (2000, 1976). Myskja A. “Can music therapy for patients with neurological disorders?” Tidsskrift for den Norske laegeforening (2004). Pacchetti C, Mancini F, Aglieri R, Fundaro C, Martignoni E, Nappi G. “Active music therapy in Parkinson's disease: an integrative method for motor and emotional rehabilitation.” Psychosomatic medicine. (2000) Pinker S. How the mind works (1997). Miller G. “Evolution of human music through sexual selection.” The origins of music (2000). Dunbar R. “Language, music and laughter in evolutionary perspective.” Evolution of communication systems: A comparative approach (2004). Hagen & Bryant. “Music and dance as a coalition signaling system” Human nature (2003).