Music, language and meaning: brain signatures of semantic processing

Koelsch, Stefan; Kasper, Elisabeth; Sammler, Daniela; Schulze, Katrin; Gunter, Thomas C.; Friederici, Angela D.

doi:10.1038/nn1197

Cited by 437 publications

(403 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…Using chord sequences, either consonant or dissonant, as priming stimuli, it was shown [21] that target words are faster recognized for emotionally congruent chord-word pairs than for incongruent ones. Further, when target words are preceded by semantically unrelated musical primes, N400, an ERP component reflecting contextual integration, effect is reported [12]. Altogether, this suggests that music has an excellent potential to be used as an emotional priming stimulus.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 82%

“…In other words, can music be used as an affective priming stimulus which could systematically influence the emotional processes of target visual stimuli? Music was earlier used as a priming stimulus in semantic context [12,21]. To the best of our knowledge, the current study is the first to address this issue in a crossmodal context by using both behavioural and ERP experiments.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 94%

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Crossmodal transfer of emotion by music

Logeswaran

Bhattacharya

2009

Neuroscience Letters

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 82%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Crossmodal transfer of emotion by music

Logeswaran

Bhattacharya

2009

Neuroscience Letters

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“…A long history of dissociation between aphasia and amusia from the clinical neurology suggested that there are differences in the ways music and language are implemented by the brain, and modern brain imaging work has partially confirmed this finding. To the extent that music really requires a different suite of mechanisms from language, this is prima facie evidence against its being a spandrel of language (Peretz & Hyde, 2003;Peretz & Zatorre, 2005) but the considerable overlap between brain regions involved in musical and lingustic tasks currently offers no clear verdict on this question at present (Koelsch et al, 2002(Koelsch et al, , 2004Patel, 2003;Peretz & Zatorre, 2003). Another approach is to seek evidence that musical and linguistic skills are dissociated among individuals in a population, and that these differences have a genetic basis.…”

Section: Music As a Spandrelmentioning

confidence: 99%

The biology and evolution of music: A comparative perspective

2006

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Studies of the biology of music (as of language) are highly interdisciplinary and demand the integration of diverse strands of evidence. In this paper, I present a comparative perspective on the biology and evolution of music, stressing the value of comparisons both with human language, and with those animal communication systems traditionally termed ''song''. A comparison of the ''design features'' of music with those of language reveals substantial overlap, along with some important differences. Most of these differences appear to stem from semantic, rather than structural, factors, suggesting a shared formal core of music and language. I next review various animal communication systems that appear related to human music, either by analogy (bird and whale ''song'') or potential homology (great ape bimanual drumming). A crucial comparative distinction is between learned, complex signals (like language, music and birdsong) and unlearned signals (like laughter, ape calls, or bird calls). While human vocalizations clearly build upon an acoustic and emotional foundation shared with other primates and mammals, vocal learning has evolved independently in our species since our divergence with chimpanzees. The convergent evolution of vocal learning in other species offers a powerful window into psychological and neural constraints influencing the evolution of complex signaling systems (including both song and speech), while ape drumming presents a fascinating potential homology with human instrumental music. I next discuss the archeological data relevant to music evolution, concluding on the basis of prehistoric bone flutes that instrumental music is at least 40,000 years old, and perhaps much older. I end with a brief review of adaptive functions proposed for music, concluding that no one selective force (e.g., sexual selection) is adequate to explaining all aspects of human music. I suggest that questions about ARTICLE IN PRESSthe past function of music are unlikely to be answered definitively and are thus a poor choice as a research focus for biomusicology. In contrast, a comparative approach to music promises rich dividends for our future understanding of the biology and evolution of music.

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“…Although Koelsch et al [2004] argues in favor of a greater role for musical semantics, there is certainly no dictionary of symbols and designates as exists for spoken language. Given a musician's special set of long-term experiences with listening to and creating a set of sounds (their ''listening biography''), we ask whether neural sensitivity reflects not only IBE combinations that are typically communication-relevant, but also distinct IBE combinations that have become relevant across the course of this extensive history.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Selective neurophysiologic responses to music in instrumentalists with different listening biographies

Margulis

Mlsna

Uppunda

et al. 2007

Human Brain Mapping

108

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To appropriately adapt to constant sensory stimulation, neurons in the auditory system are tuned to various acoustic characteristics, such as center frequencies, frequency modulations, and their combinations, particularly those combinations that carry species-specific communicative functions. The present study asks whether such tunings extend beyond acoustic and communicative functions to auditory self-relevance and expertise. More specifically, we examined the role of the listening biographyan individual's long term experience with a particular type of auditory input-on perceptual-neural plasticity. Two groups of expert instrumentalists (violinists and flutists) listened to matched musical excerpts played on the two instruments (J.S. Bach Partitas for solo violin and flute) while their cerebral hemodynamic responses were measured using fMRI. Our experimental design allowed for a comprehensive investigation of the neurophysiology (cerebral hemodynamic responses as measured by fMRI) of auditory expertise (i.e., when violinists listened to violin music and when flutists listened to flute music) and nonexpertise (i.e., when subjects listened to music played on the other instrument). We found an extensive cerebral network of expertise, which implicates increased sensitivity to musical syntax (BA 44), timbre (auditory association cortex), and sound-motor interactions (precentral gyrus) when listening to music played on the instrument of expertise (the instrument for which subjects had a unique listening biography). These findings highlight auditory self-relevance and expertise as a mechanism of perceptual-neural plasticity, and implicate neural tuning that includes and extends beyond

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Music, language and meaning: brain signatures of semantic processing

Cited by 437 publications

References 24 publications

Crossmodal transfer of emotion by music

Crossmodal transfer of emotion by music

The biology and evolution of music: A comparative perspective

Selective neurophysiologic responses to music in instrumentalists with different listening biographies

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