How would the brain process music?
It's hard to amplify the effect music can have on the human brain. A tune can induce emotions ranging from delighful joy to deep sorrow and can drive listeners into states of patriotic fervour or religious emotion.
Yet in spite of music's remarkable influence on the human psyche, scientists have spent little time attempting to understand why it possesses such potency. "We tend to think of music as an art or a cultural attribute," notes Robert Zatorre, a neuroscientist at McGill University in Montreal, "but it is a complex human behaviour that is as worthy of scientific study as any other."
What seems clear is that the ability to experience and react to music is deeply embedded in the biology of the nervous system. While music tends to be processed mostly in the right hemisphere of the brain, no single set of cells is devoted to the task. Different networks of neurons are activated, depending on whether a person is listening to music or playing an instrument, and whether or not the music involves lyrics.
Specific brain disorders can affect the perception of music in very specific ways. Experiments done decades ago showed that stimulating certain areas of the temporal lobe on both sides of the brain awakened “musical memories”.
For instrumentalists, music can evidently trigger physical changes in the brain's wiring. By measuring faint magnetic fields emitted by the brains of professional musicians, it shows intensive practice of an instrument leads to apparent enlargement of parts of the cerebral cortex, the layer of gray matter most closely associated with higher brain function.
As for music's emotional impact, there is some indication that music can affect levels of various hormones, including cortisol (involved in arousal and stress), testosterone (aggression and arousal) and oxytocin (nurturing behavior) as well as trigger release of the natural opiates known as endorphins.
Given music's central role in most of our lives, it's time that scientists found the answers.