Abstract
As we pass through life we interact with and experience music in many ways. Sometimes we pay attention to it; other times we do not. Often we move along with music, not only as performers but also as engaged listeners who tap their feet, bob their heads, or simply follow the music with their minds. Perhaps for most, music intertwines itself with our life narratives. Hearing songs from our past often evokes vivid memories and strong emotions (Sloboda and O’Neill 2001, Juslin and Laukka 2004, Janata et al. 2007). Given the many ways in which we experience music, and the central role it plays in cultures around the world, one is drawn to the questions of why music engages the human brain so strongly and how it is that the brain enables these various forms of musical experience? Part of answering these questions depends on understanding what constellations of brain areas might allow music to interact so profoundly with the self. In other words, what are the brain areas that allow music to move us or to evoke such strong memories?
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Blood AJ, Zatorre RJ, Bermudez P, Evans AC (1999) Emotional responses to pleasant and unpleasant music correlate with activity in paralimbic brain regions. Nat Neurosci 2(4), 382–387
Blood AJ, Zatorre RJ (2001) Intensely pleasurable responses to music correlate with activity in brain regions implicated in reward and emotion. PNAS 98(20), 11818–11823
Brown S, Martinez MJ, Parsons LM (2004) Passive music listening spontaneously engages limbic and paralimbic systems. Neuroreport 15(13), 2033–2037
Burgess PW, Simons JS, Dumontheil I, Gilbert SJ (2005) The gateway hypothesis of rostral prefrontal cortex (area 10) function. In: Duncan J, McLeod P, Phillips L (eds.) Measuring the Mind: Speed, Control and Age, pp. 251–246. Oxford, Oxford University Press
Cabeza R, Nyberg L (2000) Imaging cognition II: an empirical review of 275 PET and fMRI studies. J Cogn Neurosci 12(1), 1–47
Chen JL, Zatorre RJ, Penhune VB (2006) Interactions between auditory and dorsal premotor cortex during synchronization to musical rhythms. NeuroImage 32(4), 1771–1781
Cuddy LL, Duffin J (2005) Music, memory, and Alzheimer’s disease: is music recognition spared in dementia, and how can it be assessed? Med Hypotheses 64(2), 229–235
Fiebach CJ, Schubotz RI (2006) Dynamic anticipatory processing of hierarchical sequential events: a common role for Broca’s area and ventral premotor cortex across domains? Cortex 42(4), 499–502
Fox MD, Snyder AZ, Vincent JL, Corbetta M, Van Essen DC, Raichle ME (2005) The human brain is intrinsical ly organized into dynamic, anticorrelated functional networks. Proc Acad Sci USA 102(27), 9673–9678
Fuster JM (2000) Executive frontal functions. Exp Brain Res 133(1), 66–70
Fuster JM (2004) Upper processing stages of the perception-action cycle. Trends Cogn Sci 8(4), 143–145
Gaab N, Gaser C, Zaehle T, Jancke L, Schlaug G (2003) Functional anatomy of pitch memory — an fMRI study with sparse temporal sampling. Neuroimage 19(4), 1417–1426
Gilbert SJ, Spengler S, Simon JS, Steele JD, Lawrie SM, Frith CD, et al. (2006) Functional specialization within rostral prefrontal cortex (Area 10): a meta-analysis. J Cogn Neurosci 18(6), 932–948
Gilboa A (2004) Autobiographical and episodic memory — one and the same? Evidence from prefrontal activation in neuroimaging studies. Neuropsychologia 42(10), 1336–1349
Grahn JA, Brett M (2007) Rhythm and beat perception in motor areas of the brain. J Cogn Neurosci 19(5), 893–906
Halpern AR, Zatorre RJ (1999) When that tune runs through your head: a PET investigation of auditory imagery for familiar melodies. Cerebral Cortex 9(7), 697–704
Janata P (2005) Brain networks that track musical structure. Ann NY Acad Sci 1060(1), 111–124
Janata P (2007-2008) Navigating tonal space. In: Hewlett WB, Selfridge-Field E, Correia E (eds.) Tonal Theory for the Digital Age. Computing in Musicology, pp. 39–50. Stanford, Center for Computer Assisted Research in the Humanities
Janata P (submitted) The neural architecture of music-evoked autobiographical memories
Janata P, Grafton ST (2003) Swinging in the brain: shared neural substrates for behaviors related to sequencing and music. Nat Neurosci 6(7), 682–687
Janata P, Tomic ST, Rakowski SK (2007) Characterisation of music-evoked autobiographical memories. Memory 15(8), 845–860
Janata P, Tillmann B, Bharucha JJ (2002a) Listening to polyphonic music recruits domain-general attention and working memory circuits. Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci 2(2), 121–140
Janata P, Birk JL, Van Horn JD, Leman M, Tillmann B, Bharucha JJ (2002b) The cortical topography of tonal structures underlying Western music. Science 298(5601), 2167–2170
Juslin PN, Laukka P (2004) Expression, perception, and induction of musical emotions: a review and a questionnaire study of everyday listening. J New Music Res 33(3), 217–238
Koechlin E, Ody C, Kouneiher F (2003) The architecture of cognitive control in the human prefrontal cortex. Science 302, 1181–1185
Koelsch S (2005) Neural substrates of processing syntax and semantics in music. Curr Opin Neurobiol 15(2), 207–212
Koelsch S, Gunter TC, v Cramon DY, Zysset S, Lohmann G, Friederici AD (2002) Bach speaks: a cortical “language-network” serves the processing of music. Neuroimage 17(2), 956–966
Langheim FJP, Callicott JH, Mattay VS, Duyn JH, Weinberger DR (2002) Cortical systems associated with covert music rehearsal. Neuroimage 16(4), 901–908
Lieberman MD (2007) Social cognitive neuroscience: a review of core processes. Ann Rev Psychol 58, 259–289
Maguire EA (2001) Neuroimaging studies of autobiographical event memory. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B-Biol Sci 356(1413), 1441–1451
Meister G, Krings T, Foltys H, Boroojerdi B, Muller M, Topper R, et al. (2004) Playing piano in the mind — an fMRI study on music imagery and performance in pianists. Cogn Brain Res 19(3), 219–228
Northoff G, Bermpohl F (2004) Cortical midline structures and the self. Trends Cogn Sci 8(3), 102–107
Northoff G, Heinzel A, Greek M, Bennpohl F, Dobrowolny H, Panksepp J (2006) Self-referential processing in our brain — a meta-analysis of imaging studies on the self. Neuroimage 31(1), 440–457
Panksepp J, Bernatzky G (2002) Emotional sounds and the brain: the neuro-affective foundations of musical appreciation. Behavioural Processes 60(2), 133–155
Parsons LM, Sergent J, Hodges DA, Fox PT (2005) The brain basis of piano performance. Neuropsychologia 43(2), 199–215
Patel AD (2003) Language, music, syntax and the brain. Nat Neurosci 6(7), 674–681
Penhune VB, Zattore RJ, Evans AC (1998) Cerebellar contributions to motor timing: a PET study of auditory and visual rhythm reproduction. J Cogn Neurosci 10(6), 752–765
Peretz I, Coltheart M (2003) Modularity of music processing. Nat Neurosci 6(7), 688–691
Peretz I, Zatorre RJ (2005) Brain organization for music processing. Annu Rev Psychol 56, 89–114
Plailly J, Tillmann B, Royet J-P (2007) The Feeling of Familiarity of Music and Odors: The Same Neural Signature? Cereb Cortex 17(11), 2650–2658
Platel H, Baron JC, Desgranges B, Bernard F, Eustache F (2003) Semantic and episodic memory of music are subserved by distinct neural networks. Neuroimage 20(1), 244–256
Preston SD, de Wall FBM (2002) Empathy: its ultimate and proximate bases. Behav Brain Sci 25(1), 1–20
Raichle ME, Gusnard DA (2005) Intrinsic brain activity sets the stage for expression of motivated behavior. J Comp Neurol 493(1), 167–176
Raichle ME, MacLeod AM, Snyder AZ, Powers WJ, Gusnard DA, Shulman GL (2001) A default mode of brain function. Proc Acad Sci USA 98(2), 676–682
Ridderinkhof KR, van den Wildenberg WPM, Segalowitz SJ, Carter CS (2004) Neurocognitive mechanisms of cognitive control: The role of prefrontal cortex in action selection, response inhibition, performance monitoring, and reward-based learning. Brain Cognition 56(2), 129–140
Rushworth MFS, Walton ME, Kennerley SW, Bannerman DM (2004) Action sets and decisions in the medial frontal cortex. Trends Cogn Sci 8(9), 410–417
Schmitz TW, Johnson SC (2007) Relevance to self: a brief review and framework of neural systems underlying appraisal. Neurosci Biobehav Rev 31(4), 585–596
Schön D, Anton JL, Roth M, Besson M (2002) An fMRI study of music sight-reading. Neuroreport 13(17), 2285–2289
Schubotz RI (2007) Prediction of external events with our motor system: towards a new framework. Trends Cogn Sci 11(5), 211–218
Sergent J, Zuck E, Terriah S, Macdonald B (1992) Distributed neural networkunderlying musical sight-reading and keyboard performance. Science 257(5066), 106–109
Sloboda JA, O’Neill SA (2001) Emotions in everyday listening to music. In: Juslin PN, Sloboda JA (eds.) Music and Emotion, pp. 415–429. Oxford, Oxford University Press
Svoboda E, McKinnon MC, Levine B (2006) The functional neuroanatomy of autobiographical memory: A meta-analysis. Neuropsychologia 44(12), 2189–2208
Thompson PM, Hayashi KM, de Zubicaray G, Janke AL, Rose SE, Semple J, et al. (2003) Dynamics of gray matter loss in Alzheimer’s disease. J Neurosci 23(3), 994–1005
Tillmann B, Janata P, Bharucha JJ (2003) Activation of the inferior frontal cortex in musical priming. Cognitive Brain Res 16, 145–161
Toiviainen P, Krumhansl CL (2003) Measuring and modeling real-time responses to music: the dynamics of tonality induction. Perception 32(6), 741–766
Ullen F, Forssberg H, Ehrsson HH (2003) Neural networks for the coordination of the hands in time. J Neurophysiol 89(2), 1126–1135
Wicker B, Ruby P, Royet JP, Fonlupt P (2003) A relation between rest and the self in the brain? Brain Res Rev 43(2), 224–230
Zatorre RJ, Evans AC, Meyer E (1994) Neural mechanisms underlying melodic perception and memory for pitch. J Neurosci 14(4), 1908–1919
Zatorre RJ, Halpern AR (2005) Mental concerts: musical imagery and auditory cortex. Neuron 47(1), 9–12
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2009 Springer-Verlag/Wien
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Janata, P. (2009). Music and the self. In: Haas, R., Brandes, V. (eds) Music that works. Springer, Vienna. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-211-75121-3_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-211-75121-3_8
Publisher Name: Springer, Vienna
Print ISBN: 978-3-211-75120-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-211-75121-3
eBook Packages: Behavioral ScienceBehavioral Science and Psychology (R0)