The Origins of Music: Innateness, Uniqueness, and Evolution - Josh McDermott and Marc Hauser

From the perspective of cognitive science, music is one of the most bizarre and fascinating features of human culture. If we think about other human behaviors, such as eating or sleeping, music seems to have no obvious benefits. That's why the evolutionary origins of music have puzzled scientists for a long time (McDermott and Hauser, 2005, p. 29).

 

When we think that every culture in the world has some form of music and that most cultures developed music independently from each other, it can’t be helped to ask if there is some innate “machinery” motivating the production and appreciation of music (McDermott and Hauser, 2005, p. 30). Much of the 20th-century theories were based on the idea that musical preferences were mostly arbitrary, however, in 1984 composer and music theorist Arnold Schönberg argued that musical preferences were mostly part of one’s cultural upbringing (McDermott and Hauser, 2005, pp. 30 – 31).

 

 

Universal Features of Music: Pitch, lullabies, and ancient instruments

 

Comparative studies suggest that at least some of music‘s features can be considered “universal”, shared across cultures and historical eras, and even innate to human ability and behavior. Some of the closest examples are pitch, lullabies, and archaeological evidence of ancient musical instruments. Their characteristics and importance may vary from time to time and from culture to culture, but they have proved to share features that can be considered as examples of universal music tendencies (McDermott and Hauser, 2005, pp. 32 – 34).

 

Innate Sensitivity to Musical Structure

 

In general, music and any other musical stimuli can be represented or remembered better than others. People’s interactions and sensitivity to them have proved to be different regardless of experience or expertise. Many studies suggest that these kinds of sensitivity differences could be innate, thinking for example of the exposure to music during human development that makes adults insensitive to “unfamiliar musical structures”, similar to what happens with language. Suggesting that at least some aspects of musical structure are learned from exposure to music, and depend not only on the brain’s development but also in the way the auditory system works (McDermott and Hauser, 2005, pp. 38 – 44).

 

Musical Preferences

 

Sensitivity to musical structures still doesn’t explain why we like and enjoy it. Clearly, many aspects of musical preferences are learned and that’s why many people prefer music from their own culture. However, some preferences for certain sounds or harmonies might be innate and could be traced to the presence of specific musical features across cultures. McDermott and Hauser, 2005, p. 44).

 

This debate has been around for a long time and several studies have tried to compare preferences and sound perceptions across different cultures, even between animals and humans. What they have found supports that even aesthetic judgments of melodies can be part of the experience, tuned by local cultures (McDermott and Hauser, 2005, p. 45).

 

Emotional Responses to Music

 

Another important feature of music is the emotional response it can produce. Music can sound happy, sad, contemplative, etc. But how are any of these responses innate? (McDermott and Hauser, 2005, p. 46). For example, in Western music, happy emotions can be expressed with fast tempos and major keys, while slow tempos and minor keys are linked to sad emotions. The origins of these acoustic cues in music remain unclear but studies have proved that at least some of them are shared across cultures, being also products of cultural exposure (McDermott and Hauser, 2005, p. 46).

 

Dedicated Brain Mechanisms for Music?

 

In recent studies, neuroscientists have tried to find if there is a specific neural circuitry for music perception. Functional imaging and neuropsychology have provided new tools to investigate this topic and in time, will provide more information about the active brain networks during music perception and production (McDermott and Hauser, 2005, p. 49).

 

In general, studies have proved how “perceiving” music involves many kinds of processes that involve different regions of the brain. Important findings report that right hemisphere mechanisms present in non-human ancestors were adapted in humans to enable the perception of certain pitches (McDermott and Hauser, 2005, p. 49).

 

These kinds of studies have a long way to go but so far have begun to explain the different stages involved in the cognitive and “perceptual” processes that take place when we listen to music (McDermott and Hauser, 2005, p. 51). It still remains unclear if any “music-specific mechanisms” are hard-wired into the brain. It is safe to assume that at least to some extent, humans have an innate drive to make and enjoy music and that they are predisposed to make music with certain features (McDermott and Hauser, 2005, p. 54). The interest in the innate qualities of music are motivated by the desire and need to continue studying its evolutionary origins and adaptive implications (McDermott and Hauser, 2005, p. 54).

 

 

Reference

 

McDermott, J., & Hauser, M. (2005). The origins of music: Innateness, uniqueness, and evolution. Music Perception, 23(1), 29–59. https://doi.org/10.1525/mp.2005.23.1.29

 

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