MUS240 MUSIC STUDIES - TEACHING PERSPECTIVES 2

MUS240 Music Studies - Teaching Perspectives 2



MUS240 Music Studies - Teaching Perspectives 2

Assessment 1

Music and Brain

All aspects of intellectual and aesthetic life are generated by the human brain—a 1000-cubic-cm, 1.5-kg organ composed of billions of information processing units (nerve cells, or neurons) that make trillions of connections with one another. This massive neural network mediates conscious and subconscious experience through three basic information processing systems: (1) modality-specific systems (auditory, visual, tactile, motor, olfactory, gustatory, vestibular), which operate at the interface between the self and the external world; (2) multimodal systems, which integrate information across modalities (e.g., auditory-motor integration when we dance); and (3) supramodal systems, which can transcend sensory and motor processing at the interface between the self and the external world to generate ideas, desires, emotions, memories, foresight, and our will to act and think. Supramodal systems also exert "top-down" influences on the "bottom-up" processing of sensory stimuli by the modality-specific system and the multimodal system (Abbeduto, 1988, pp.1460-1472).

Brain functions can be understood in terms of three fundamental disciplines of neuroscience: neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, and neurochemistry. Neuroanatomy is concerned with the size, shape, and organization of the brain and its cellular elements. Neurophysiology is concerned with electrical, magnetic, and metabolic aspects of brain function. Neurochemistry is concerned with the effects of chemicals (neurotransmitters and hormones) on brain function. Amusia or dysmusia refers to a disorder of music perception, performance, or cognition.

Most neuroscientific studies of music processing have focused on the functional role of the cerebral cortex because its neurons are known to play a critical role in conscious experience, cognition, perception, and motor functions; many of its gross anatomical subdivisions are readily identifiable on brain scans; and damage caused by neurological diseases and surgical treatment often leads to relative, specific mental effects without overwhelming disability or death (unlike brainstem damage). The cortex in the left and right hemispheres is folded into four major subdivisions: the frontal, temporal, parietal, and occipital lobes [see ill.]. The folds of gray and white matter within each lobe are called gyri; the spaces between them, sulci. More than 20 gyri populate each hemisphere. The size and shape of the hemispheres and regions of interest within them can be analyzed using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). There is neuroanatomical evidence that size and shape of regions within the cerebral cortex and corpus callosum (the mass of 200 million axons interconnecting the two hemispheres) can be influenced by musical experience (Abbeduto, 2001, pp.45-55).

The sound waves we consciously perceive as music cease to exist in the form of acoustical energy once they penetrate the inner ear. Music takes shape through the concerted activity of neuron ensembles at multiple stations within the (modality-specific) auditory PNS and CNS: organ of Corti in the cochlea (PNS) to spiral ganglion and auditory nerve (PNS) to cochlear nucleus (brainstem) to superior olivary complex (brainstem) to nuclei of the lateral lemniscus (brainstem) to inferior colliculus (brainstem) to auditory thalamus (brainstem) to auditory cortex (cerebral ...