14/05/2016

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When Music Becomes Language

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Source: Gerd Altmann/Pixabay

If youve ever taken a music class, youve probably encountered the old
clich that music is a universal language. The author of the phrase,
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,1 perhaps meant that music is a mode of
emotional expression that anyone can enjoy. He probably didnt
intend to imply, in the literal sense, that music is an actual language.
Nevertheless, research in neuroscience indicates that, for a select
group of people, the brain treats music and language in the same way.

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When you understand a language, whether written or spoken, you

dont simply hear sounds emanating from the speakers mouth or
shapes displayed on a page. Words are vehicles of meaning. When
they arrive in the brain, they are instantly rendered as linguistic
symbols and linked to the concepts they connote.
In contrast, to someone who doesnt understand the language, it might
seem like a set of meaningless sounds or pictures. For example, take a
look at this word: . For those of us who dont know Chinese, that
might look like a set of haphazard shapes. Perhaps its an abstract
portrayal of a barstool, on top of a file drawer, chasing a frightened
shopping cart. The images arent meaningful. But for the millions of
people who understand the language, those symbols bring the
following image to mind:

Source: Petra From sterreich/Pixabay

The same thing would happen to any English speaker who hears or
reads the word banana.
As we learn a new word, we slowly transition from merely perceiving a
set of symbols to experiencing meaning. In adults, speech production
is controlled by Brocas area, in the frontal lobe. Language

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WhenMusicBecomesLanguagewww.psychologytoday.com

comprehension is accomplished by Wernickes area, located in the

temporal lobe. Those are the areas of the brain that light up as we read
or have conversations.
Infants, on the other hand, are still developing their language skills.
Before they understand what a word means, its just a sound to them.
The word activates the auditory areas of their brains, but not Brocas
or Wernickes area. Once children are fluent in language, the sound of
a word will suddenly ignite the language circuitry.2
Like spoken words, music is comprised of strings of sound. The
question is, how does the brain treat it? Is it just a set of sounds, or is
it language?
For the average music listener, music only triggers the auditory
cortex.3 Its just sound. The brain activity resembles that which we
might see in babies hearing words they dont understand. But what
about brain of someone who is musically fluent?
Consider the way master jazz musicians can improvise a piece at will,
often taking turns playing riffs on their respective instruments. The
drummer plays a solo, followed by the trumpet player. The pianist
plays a few bars and the saxophone player answers. At times, the
players appear to be communicating with one another. In whats
called trading fours, musicians go back and forth exchanging solo
tunes, as if part of a conversation. The great jazz saxophonist Stan
Getz said of jazz:
Its like a language. You learn the alphabet, which are the scales. You
learn sentences, which are the chords. And then you talk
extemporaneously with the horn. Its a wonderful thing to speak
extemporaneously, which is something Ive never gotten the hang of.
But musically I love to talk just off the top of my head. And thats what
jazz music is all about.4

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When done with multiple performers, jazz becomes a dialogue.

In a study of musical improvisation, neuroscientists recruited
thirteen classically trained pianists to improvise tunes while hooked
up to a functional MRI (fMRI) machine, which measures brain
activation in real time. As the pianists fingers danced across the keys,
fashioning melodies in their minds, the fMRI recorded their brain
activity. What the researchers saw was shocking: the fMRI signal
highlighted Brocas area, the region of the brain in charge of speech
production.5 Evidently, the brain treated the performances as if the
players were speaking aloud.
A pianist improvising alone is analogous to a person speaking to
himself. Whats left out is dialogue. After all, the purpose of language
is to talk to each other, not just to think up phrases in our minds. A
recent study used fMRI to see how the brain treats music as part of an
improvisational dialogue.6 Two at a time, jazz musicians played
improv by alternating solos while the fMRI tracked the brain regions
that were at work. For comparison, each participant also played a
simple musical scale.
Compared with simply playing scales, the one-on-one improvisation
mobilized both language centers of the brain: Brocas (speech
expression) and Wernickes area (speech comprehension). In a
conversation you need not only to speak your mind, but also
understand what the other person is saying.
With the help of neuroscience, the masters of jazz have demonstrated
that when we attain the highest levels of proficiency in something, we
can actually change the underlying brain circuitry that gives rise to
our art. If nothing else, its motivation to practice.
REFERENCES

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[1] Longfellow, HW. Ancient Spanish

Ballads, Historical and Romantic. Translated, with notes, by J. G.
Lockhart, 8vo. New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1841.
[2] Travis, KE et al. Spatiotemporal neural dynamics of word
understanding in 12- to 18-month-old-infants. Cerebral Cortex 21, 8
(2011):1832-9.
[3] Toiviainen, P et al. Capturing the musical brain with Lasso:
Dynamic decoding of musical features from fMRI data.
Neuroimage 88C (2013): 170-180.
[4] Maggin, DL. Stan Getz: A Life in Jazz. New York: William Morrow,
1996, p. 21.
[5] Berkowitz AL, Ansari D. Generation of novel motor sequences: the
neural correlates of musical improvisation. Neuroimage 41, 2 (2008):
535-43.
[6] Donnay GF, et al. Neural substrates of interactive musical
improvisation: an FMRI study of 'trading fours' in jazz. PLoS One 9, 2
(2014): e88665.

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