The brain's music system appears to operate with functional independence from the language system-the evidence comes from many case studies...When portions of his left cortex deteriorated, the composer Ravel selectively lost his sense of pitch while retaining his sense of timbre, a deficit that inspired his writing of Bolero, a piece that emphasizes variations in timbre...music and language do, in fact, share some common neural resources, and yet have independent pathways as well...

Consider that at a very early age, babies are thought to be synesthetic, to be unable to differentiate the input from the different senses, and to experience life and the world as a sort of psychedelic union of everything sensory. Babies may see the number five as red, taste cheddar cheeses in D-flat, and smell roses in triangles.

The process of maturation createst distinctions in the neural pathways as connections are cut or pruned. What may have started out as a neuron cluster that responded equally to sights, sound, taste, touch and smell becomes a specialized network. So, too, may music and speech have started in us all with the same neurobiological origins, in the same regions, and using the same specific neural networks. With increasing experience and exposure, the developing infant eventually creates dedicated music pathways and dedicated language pathways. The pathways may share some common resources, as has been proposed most prominently by Ani Patel in his SSIRH-shared syntactic integration resource hypothesis.

My collaborator and friend Vinod Menon, a systems neuroscientist at Stanford Medical School, shared with me an interest in being able to pin down the findings from the koelsch and Freiderici labs, and in being able to provide solid evidence for Patel's SSIRH. For that, we had to use a different method of studying the brain, since the spatial resolution of EEG wasn't fine enough to really pinpoint the neural locus of music syntax.

Because the hemoglobin of the blood is slightly magnetic, changes in the flow of blood can be traced with a machine that can track changes in magnetic properties. This is what a magnetic resonance imaging machine (MRI) is, a giant electromagnet that produces a report showing differences in magnetic properties, which in turn can tell us where, at any given point in time, the blood is flowing in the body. (The research on the development of the first MRI scanners was performed by the British company EMI, financed in large part from their profits on Beatles records. "I Want to Hold Your Hand" might well have been titled "I Want to Scan Your Brain.")...

-This Is Your Brain on Music, Daniel J. Levitin, 126-8





Amazingly, I found this interesting, and over-nerdy, well, a good description of MRI! Synesthetic babies and all, in 2 pages of the book! Enjoy!



Love and light being, Teo Do (Re, Mi, Far....)

Thank you Teo.

I did not know about Ravel's neurological problems. It is interesting what inspires composers to write their melodies.

Thank you for the informarion about the MRI. I was never quite sure what it does exactly.



yoko

Judging by how many freaks there were in the Oberlin Conservatory I'm convinced that there is a physiological component to aberrantly notable talent and genius. They claim Einstein had some neurological differences too that may have explained his ability to jump beyond Newtonian physics and to recognize new and important laws of nature.

Einstein was a violinist. Everyone knows about Beethoven's deafness and I know at least three blind musicians (if not mice) who can do amazing things that sighted people can't do - like "sight-reading" a whole piece of music in sonata form listening through someone else playing it once.

That was a guy named Sam Lane at Oberlin in Robertson Practice Hall.

"Got it" said Sam. . .

He could also mimic horns. I bet he could isolate the trombone solo from Bolero. I can hear it both him imitating it and the original just by saying the word even if the dance form is off somewhat from what it is. I can hear both but I can't hear the difference.

My brain has been on some Beatles lately.

I've just seen a brain I can't forget the time or plane where we just met it's just the genes that form the dreams that make that mind-body duet,

da da da da da da. . .

Speaking of Falling, or not falling - I once saw Philippe Petit the tight rope walker go across the Super Dome in New Orleans on a wire with a pole only and no net and the band had to play Bolero three times through before he got across.

You wonder two things: if he had an orchestra playing it when he did the trade center towers; and if every place where he walks on a tight wire there follows a disaster.

I don't know. I'd imagine tightrope walkers have special brains too. Or no brains, just guts.

I've been watching Mr. Obama lately too speaking of better brains in the States. Play Bolero again for him - I think he's half way across a whole different kind of tightrope.

Thank you Teo for the information.
I never knew about Ravel's disease.

Thank you for the added information regarding the MRI.

quote:

This is what a magnetic resonance imaging machine (MRI) is, a giant electromagnet that produces a report showing differences in magnetic properties, which in turn can tell us where, at any given point in time, the blood is flowing in the body. (The research on the development of the first MRI scanners was performed by the British company EMI, financed in large part from their profits on Beatles records. "I Want to Hold Your Hand" might well have been titled "I Want to Scan Your Brain.")...

Thank you for sharing the information Teo.
I find this a very fascinating topic.

I knew Ravel had a neurologic problem, but I did not know that it inspired Bolero, maybe that is why it goes on and on and on.... ...

Thank you for the post Teo.
This is a lot of information that I did not know about.

Love,
vicky

Thank youTeo.
This topic is very interesting.

quote:

What may have started out as a neuron cluster that responded equally to sights, sound, taste, touch and smell becomes a specialized network. So, too, may music and speech have started in us all with the same neurobiological origins, in the same regions, and using the same specific neural networks. With increasing experience and exposure, the developing infant eventually creates dedicated music pathways and dedicated language pathways

Thank you for the info regarding the MRI.

I knew about Ravel's medical problems, but I did not know that they inspired him to write Bolero.
It does go a bit in circles.