This Is Your Brain On Music

[BillD 239]

I picked up this book at the library and just finished it.  I'd give it 3 out of 5 stars.  It was good for me, someone who enjoys music but can't play worth a crap.  I never formally studied music, but I learned to read music in an attempt to play the piano, trumpet and guitar, all without much success.  If you are a professional musician and studied musicology, you might be disappointed with the music parts but interested in the physiology of the brain parts, and vice versa.  The author is a former pop record producer who decided to get a PhD in neuroscience.  He really isn't an author (and it shows). And he likes to share stories about all the pop stars he's met.  The book rambles a little, but it was worth slogging through.

[elgrau 89]

Sounds interesting, Bill. Like light, how the brain produces "sound" is very fascinating. With light, it has always fascinated me how the brain can "generate" the minute details of what we "see" just from electromagnetic waves entering little tiny holes in your eyes and "tickling" the optic nerve that then simply sends an electrical signal to the brain! Afterall, light does not actually "shine": it's all created/constructed by your mind...there is no one inside your head looking at a movie of the "outside world". It all (minute details of EVERYTHING around you) comes from interpreting an electrical signal of various frequencies and amplitudes and phases (albeit from different locations on the retina)...how??? I tend to believe more in something called the "assemblage point" (that takes all these light rays and "assembles" them in toto into our world....that makes more sense to me then doing it via some kind of signal processing by the mind!

[BillD 239]

Well, like all waves, you can't see them directly, only their reflection.  Sound reflecting off your eardrum or light reflecting off of surfaces.

[elgrau 89]

??

You saying I can't "see" the sun (thru a dark filter, of course)? That light has reflected off of nothing.....

 

And it gets even more "weird": This "picture" of the world that the brain creates from these photons/electrmagnetic waves entering our eyes don't actually "reflect" from surfaces: photons are absorbed by "matter" and this "matter" then emits a totally different photon (and this emission CAN come out at ANY angle; however, the most probable angle is equal to the angle of incidence - see Feynmien's "QED" book). But the point being that the mind interprets all of this "activity" and tells you what you "see". But what is REALLY out there?? Some say that there are REALLY no "solid" objects at all (true in the sense that everything is energy feilds in opposition, but also true in another sense as well)....only flowing energy fields that the MIND organizes and INTERPRETS as "solid" objects (in order that we may deal in an orderly fashion with these flowing energy feilds; e.g., as in "hunting" in order to survive). And until someone can explain to me how the brain actually DOES all this (regardless of whether or not there are solid objects "out there" or not!), then I'm open to any explanation! As many have said, there is a lot more to this "picture" than meets the eye! And that "lot more" is our minds... 

[Balok 1,747]

I have been in the "eye" business for 20 years and I could offer some insight into the physical processes of sight, but I don't really like to type that much and it would be difficult to explain anyway.  As for HOW the brain does all of this, well, just never you mind.

 

Bill, could I get the jist of the book by simply reading the back cover? 

[BillD 239]

I don't know, but probably, or some of the positive reviews (the negative ones missed the forest).

 

Ed, I think you misunderstood what I said.  I meant that you can't see waves passing by.  Only waves that meet your rods and cones are "seen". 

[elgrau 89]

Ok (I guess); but not what you said. And just to further annoy:

 

"Well, like all waves, you can't see them directly"

 

You've never seen waves radiate out from a rock thrown in a lake/pond?

 

Plus, the famous wave/particle experiment supports the assertion that the mind "creates" solid objects: in this experiment, as long as no observation, the light acts as a wave, but as soon as it is observered, it is mysteriously turned into particles ("solids")! This famous experiment in quantum mechanics has never been fully explained or understood (like most aspects of QM - but no theory has been more tested than it has been and experimentation has never failed to produce the theory's predicted result)!

 

[Scarabeo500gt 6]

Ok (I guess); but not what you said. And just to further annoy:

 

"Well' date=' like all waves, you can't see them directly"

 

You've never seen waves radiate out from a rock thrown in a lake/pond?

 

[/quote'] 

Once I was sitting down at my pond tossing/skipping rocks off the water and sniffing Glue and having just good ol times and I swear I seen directly that, rediating waves in colors shooting up from the power of the force from the rocks and it shot like lighting going up to the sky!

Maybe this ones too deep for me to post anything here???

[elgrau 89]

yeah; perhaps: but I was just talking about the waves in the WATER that this produces.....pretty basic stuff

[BillD 239]

Ed, you just can't avoid a fight, can you.  I know you know what I meant, so I'll leave it at that.

[weitrhino 1,445]

The title of this thread caught my attention because just last week I saw a show, on Nova I think, where several musical savants were studied.  The host got into an MRI machine having his brain scanned while listening to a piece of classical music that he knew and enjoyed very much.  The MRI observed the brain activity.  Then he was scanned again but this time he was only to recall the same piece of music and the MRI revealed a great deal more brain activity.  The mental rehearsal stimulated far more activity than actually hearing the music.

 

The point?  Bear with me while I stitch this together.  My alarm goes off every morning at 4:00am with the radio often playing some intricate jazz interplay or some snippet of a Baroque masterpiece.  There I lie in a semiconscious state until a piece of music catches my attention and I can literally feel my brain bounce into action absorbing the sound.  This happens in a state where I know the radio is on but have no connection to the fact.  It's quite a sensation, really.