Purpose
The purpose of this assignment is:
give you a context to think of our ability to create and listen to music as a key component of human nature.
give you a context to learn about how the areas of the brain involved in music creation and perception.
give you a context to learn about what we scientists have discovered about the brain processes of creativity by studying the brain of musicians.
give you a context to learn about disorders related to music.
give you a context to think about music can help patients with neurological disorders.
give you a context to learn about musical savants.
give you an opportunity to explore musical therapy as a career.
give you an opportunity to explore the role of music in your life.
Assignment
This week you will write a letter/essay to yourself, to a friend or family member, or to me (or simply write an essay) about the role that music plays in your life. You will also reflect on the material that you have learned this week and what you found most intriguing and interesting. This week I will give you less specific direction than in previous weeks.
STEP 1- I would like you to reflect on the role of music in your own life. You could talk about any or all of the following.
Do you create music? Do you play an instrument? Do you sing? Did you take lessons, or did you self-taught? What kind of music do you play or create? (if you don’t, you can skip this part)
How often do you listen to music? If you listen to music daily, for how long? Any particular times of the day? Do you listen to music more during the weekends? While on vacation? Do you listen to music alone or with others? In the car?
What kind of music do you like to listen to?
Could you share a song or two, an artist, or a band that you like? What do you like about that song/s, artist, or band?
What do you feel when you listen to music?
Have you gone to any concerts or musicals?
STEP 2- How does music impact you emotionally or cognitively? Do you use music for emotion regulation? Do you use music for exercise?
STEP 3- Explore the materials for this week and write your reflections on what was most interesting and intriguing to you. This part of the essay doesn’t need to follow a smooth flow; just write about what was genuinely interesting to you and explain why. Note that in this section, the most important word is reflection. You should reflect on what you have learned and not to simply repeat what you have learned.
Explain a few things you found intriguing or interesting from this week’s materials (at least 3). Then explain why you found those ideas interesting. Try to think deeply for this part of the essay.
STEP 4- Any other reflections you would like to share?
STEP 5- Closing comments.
This essay organization will help me with the grading, and hopefully, it will help you to structure your thoughts.
In addition to the essay:
References: It will be important that you appropriately reference your sources with in-text citations and that you add your references at the end of your letter/essay in APA style.
References : ( use all the following youtube links and incorporate into essay)
Music is fundamental to the human experience.
Through its role in human emotion and cognition, music has shaped human evolution. Daniel Levitin explores the interaction between music and the human condition. Listen to this talk while keeping in mind the general question of how does music affect the human experience?
What are the evolutionary forces behind our capacity to make and experience music? What might be the evolutionary purpose of music?
Friendship; how did music affect relationships within social groups, social cohesion, and social emotions like sympathy and affection?
Joy; how does music affect the experience of joy through music and dance? Can music affect dopamine levels? Can music boost well-being and reduce stress? Can music facilitate exercise and play?
Comfort; how can lullabies produce comfort? Can music soothe us throughout our lives? How can music transmit the message “you are not alone”? What calming hormone can be released while listening to music?
Knowledge; music can serve to encode knowledge. Setting something to music can improve memory and important life lessons
Religion; music enhances the religious experience, which is present in all cultures.
Love; important brain changes take place during the experience of love. Music can affect the love of existence and of humanity.
Daniel Levitin is a neuroscientist and cognitive psychologist. He is Founding Dean of Arts & Humanities at the Minerva Schools at KGI (now Minerva UniversityLinks to an external site.) in San Francisco, and Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Neuroscience at McGill UniversityLinks to an external site. in Montreal. He is the author of This Is Your Brain on Music, The World in Six Songs, The Organized Mind, A Field Guide to Lies and Successful Aging (published in the UK as The Changing Mind).
What can we learn about cognitive processes such as creativity from the study of music?
Artistic creativity is a neurological product- what does this mean?
Is it possible to study creativity scientifically?
Why should scientists study creativity?
How did Limb study the creative process of jazz musicians?
What areas of the brain decrease activity during the creative process?
What areas of the brain increase activity during the creative process?
What areas of the brain light up as musicians are having a musical conversation?
Freestyle rap vs memorized lines
Dr. Charles Limb is a surgeon, neuroscientist, and musician at the University of California, San Francisco, who has carried out research on the neural basis of musical creativity and the impact of cochlear implants on music perception in hearing-impaired individuals.
How music changes the brain?
Robert Zatorre
Understand that there is a connection between the auditory cortex and motor regions of the brain
How does musical training change the brain?
What areas of the brain allow us to experience positive experiences through music?
What evidence suggest that the reward systems are linked to perceptual auditory systems in the brain?
Robert Zatorre is a cognitive neuroscientist whose laboratory studies the neural substrate for auditory cognition, with special emphasis on two complex and characteristically human abilities: speech and music. He a have published over 280 scientific papers on topics including pitch perception, auditory imagery, absolute pitch, perception of auditory space, and the role of the mesolimbic reward circuitry in mediating musical pleasure. His research spans all aspects of human auditory processing, from studying the functional and structural properties of auditory cortices, to how these properties differ between the hemispheres, and how they change with training or sensory loss. His lab makes use of functional and structural MRI, MEG and EEG, and brain stimulation techniques, together with cognitive and psychophysical measures. In 2006 he became the founding co-director of the international laboratory for Brain, Music, and Sound research (BRAMS), a unique multi-university consortium with state-of-the art facilities dedicated to the cognitive neuroscience of music. In 2011 he was awarded the IPSEN foundation prize in neuronal plasticity. In 2013, he won the Knowles prize in hearing research from Northwestern University, and in 2017 he was elected to the Royal Society of Canada. In 2020, he was awarded the C.L. de Carvalho-Heineken Prize in Cognitive Sciences, the most prestigious international science prize in The Netherlands.
