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Enhancing Participation in the Arts in the EU pp 99–113Cite as

Musical Rhythm Embedded in the Brain: Bridging Music, Neuroscience, and Empirical Aesthetics

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Abstract

Entrainment to music seems ubiquitous in human cultures. The impact of musical features on individuals has already been explored extensively in music theory, anthropology and psychology. In contrast, it is a relatively new field in neuroscience. Recently, a wave of neuroscience research has grown up exploring the interaction with music in both human and non-human brains, and in evolutionary terms. This chapter briefly reviews some of the biological evidence of music processing, particularly focusing on how the human brain interacts with musical rhythm. The neural entrainment to musical rhythm is proposed as a model particularly well-suited to address objectively, within an experimental set up, how biological rules shape music perception within a limited range of complexity. However, these limits are not fixed. Other aspects such as familiarity, culture, training and context continuously shape brain responses to rhythms and to music in general. Taken together, these studies propose answers to the question of how natural and cultural constraints shape each other, building a vivid motor of aesthetic evolution.

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Acknowledgements

The author is supported by the Australian Research Council (DE160101064).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. MARCS Institute, Western Sydney University (WSU), Penrith, NSW, Australia

    Sylvie Nozaradan

  2. Institute of Neuroscience (Ions), Université catholique de Louvain (UCL), Brussels, Belgium

    Sylvie Nozaradan

  3. International Laboratory for Brain, Music and Sound Research (BRAMS), Montreal, QC, Canada

    Sylvie Nozaradan

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  1. Sylvie Nozaradan
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Correspondence to Sylvie Nozaradan .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Foundations of Economic Analysis II, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Bilbao, Spain

    Victoria M. Ateca-Amestoy

  2. ECARES, Brussels, Belgium

    Victor Ginsburgh

  3. Department of Economics and Business, University of Catania, Catania, Italy

    Isidoro Mazza

  4. Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    John O'Hagan

  5. Department of Economics, University of Oviedo, Oviedo, Spain

    Juan Prieto-Rodriguez

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Nozaradan, S. (2017). Musical Rhythm Embedded in the Brain: Bridging Music, Neuroscience, and Empirical Aesthetics. In: Ateca-Amestoy, V., Ginsburgh, V., Mazza, I., O'Hagan, J., Prieto-Rodriguez, J. (eds) Enhancing Participation in the Arts in the EU. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09096-2_7

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