Listening to music starts with subcortical (below-the-cortex) structures--the cochlear nuclei, the brain stem, the cerebellum--and then moves up to auditory cortices on both sides of the brain. Trying to follow along with music that you know--or at least music in a style you're familiar with, such as baroque or blues--recruits additional regions of the brain, including the hippocampus--our memory center--and subsections of the frontal lobe, particularly a region called inferior frontal cortex, which is in the lowest parts of the frontal lobe. Tapping along with music, either actually or just in your mind, involves the cerebellum's timing cirtuits. Performing music--regardless of what instrument you play, or whether you sing, or conduct--involves the frontal lobes again for the planning of your behavior, as well as the motor cortex in the posterior part of the frontal lobe just underneith the top of your head, and the sensory cortex, which provides the tactile feedback that you have pressed the right key on your instrument, or moved the baton where you thought you did. Reading music involves the visual cortex, in the back of your head in the occipital lobe. Listening to or recalling lyrics invokes language centers, including Broca's and Wernicke's area, as well as other language centers in the temporal and frontal lobes.

At a deeper level, the emotions we experience in response to music involve structures deep in the primitive, reptilian regions of the cerebellar vermis, and the amygdala--the heart of emotional processing in the cortex....

-This is Your Brain on Music, Daniel J. Levitin, page 86

And I thought it was heard by my ears! he he..

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

Thank you for the information Teo.
The brain is a complex part of our anatomy. I cannot comprehend how it all functions, but I do know that all parts of my body and my brain love gentle and soothing music.



Love,
yoko

Thank you for the nice words dear Yoko!

In my music studies, hey, I'll look into ANYTHING! (This proves it!)

I found this over-nerdy, but hey, I guess many thinks in the brain are over-technical if you analyze them...

like:

quote:

At a deeper level, the emotions we experience in response to music involve structures deep in the primitive, reptilian regions of the cerebellar vermis...

Hmm... my reptilian regions are listening? I guess music truly soothes the savage beast! he he..



Love and *LIGHT* *BEING*, Teo Do (Re, Mi, Fa, Soul....)

I thought the correct quote was "music soothes the savage breast."

It's William Congreve. Here's the whole quote:

"Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast,
To soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak."

What was that instrument that Duran Duran puts Barbarella into?

It seemed she burnt the thing out while it was trying to extract her savage beast while stroking her savage breast.

Never bite off more than you can chew, I say. Especially if your machine language is more fluent than your intergallactic esperanto.

I'm in the Hanoi Jane part of my brain right now. And I like it.

There it is. Magic Fingers!

Thank you Teo.
Gentle music affects all parts of my brain, and actually all parts of my body.

I think my cats will agree with me.



Love,
Sue

Thank you for sharing Teo.
This is quite an earful of information.

I love to listen to beautiful classical music, and it affects my brain in a very positive way, not to mention the ears.

Gisele

Thank you Teo.
I forgot that my brain had so many parts.
However many parts it takes I enjoy listening to beautiful music.

Love,
Vicky

Glad you all enjoyed listening to this post... with many parts of your brain! he he..

And thanks YogiWon/Nick/Billy Congreve:

He looks pretty soothed, hum? he he..

quote:

It's William Congreve. Here's the whole quote:

"Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast,
To soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak."

Thanks for the savage beast soothing datums! Aaaaahhhh soothed...

though... here comes more savage beast(ly nerdismsnesses!)


page 130
Most astonishing was that the left-hemisphere regions that we found were active in tracking musical structure were the very same ones that are active when deaf people are communicating by sign language. This suggested that what we had identified in the brain wasn't a region that simply processed whether a chord sequence was sensible, or whether a spoken sentence was sensible. We were now looking at a region that responded to sight-to the visual organization of words conveyed through American Sign Language. We found evidence for the existence of a brain region that processes structure in general, when the structure in conveyed over time..

All sound begins at the eardrum. Right away, sounds get segregated by pitch. Not much lager, speech and music probably diverge into separate processing circuits... The music circuits start to decompose the signal and separately analyze pitch, timbre, contour, and rhythm. The output of the neurons performing these tasks connects to regions in the frontal lobe that put all of it together and try to figure out if there is any structure or order to the temporal patterning of it all. The frontal lobes access our hippocampus and regions in the interior of the temporal lobe and ask if there is anything in our memory banks that can help to understand this signal. Have I heard this particular pattern before? If so, when? What does it mean? Is it part of a larger sequence whose meaning is unfolding right now in front of me?

I went to a HIPpoCAMPUS, does that count?

Thank you for posting this topic Teo.
It is very informative.
I enjoyed reading this post.

Right now I am trying to recover from a long trip, so my brain may not be registering much...hahaha.