Music and the Brain

Series: Great Courses

4.4

(51)

Episodes

Rating

TVPG

Year

2015

Language

English

Publisher

The Great Courses

About

Music is an integral part of humanity. Every culture has music, from the largest society to the smallest tribe. It's marvelous range of melodies, themes, and rhythms taps into something universal. In Music and the Brain, neuroscientist Ani Patel probes one of the mind's most profound mysteries. Covering the latest research and findings, these 18 enthralling half-hour lectures will make you think about music and your brain in a new way.

Related Subjects

Episodes

1. Music: Culture, Biology, or Both?

30m

Explore the distinction between music and musicality. While musical styles change, musicality is the stable array of mental processes that underlie our ability to appreciate and produce music. Begin by looking at our capacity for relative pitch perception, asking why we excel over all other animals at this skill.

2. Seeking an Evolutionary Theory of Music

30m

Darwin believed that musical behavior arose because it gave our early ancestors a biological advantage. But what advantage? Investigate Darwin's theory and other adaptationist explanations for the evolution of music. Then look at two alternatives: invention theories and gene-culture co-evolution theories.

3. Testing Theories of Music's Origins

30m

Follow two lines of research that have put ideas about music's origins to the test. Start with studies of music perception in monkeys. Then turn to an ingenious experiment with young children, designed to evaluate the theory that musical behavior enhances social bonds between group members.

4. Music, Language, and Emotional Expression

30m

What makes a piece of music sound sad? Or joyful? Or angry? Why does music have expressive power beyond words? Explore the different ways that music conveys emotion. Test your own responses to musical passages composed especially for the course.

5. Brain Sources of Music's Emotional Power

30m

Delve deeper into the emotional reactions that people have to music. Feel the chills induced by certain musical passages and study the theories about where these powerful feelings come from. Then look at eight distinct psychological mechanisms by which music arouses emotions in listeners.

6. Musical Building Blocks: Pitch and Timbre

30m

Focus on two processes that are fundamental to musicality: the perception of pitch and timbre. Pitch allows us to order sounds from low to high. Timbre lets us distinguish two sounds with the same pitch, loudness, and duration. Both pitch and timbre are constructed by the brain and have deep evolutionary roots.

7. Consonance, Dissonance, and Musical Scales

30m

What brain processes lead people to hear certain intervals as more consonant and others as more dissonant? Evaluate the major theories, one of which traces the phenomenon to the acoustic quality of the human voice. Then examine the structure of musical scales.

8. Arousing Expectations: Melody and Harmony

30m

Melodies and harmonies combine pitches according to rules that we have internalized through experience. Listen to musical examples that demonstrate unresolved and resolved expectations. Consider the analogy to grammar in language, and search for a connection between music and language in the brain.

9. The Complexities of Musical Rhythm

30m

Begin your study of musical rhythm by distinguishing periodic from non-periodic rhythmic patterns. Periodicity can be thought of as beat; non-periodicity involves expressive techniques such as timing variations and phrasing. Close by asking whether composers write music in the rhythmic patterns of their native language.

10. Perceiving and Moving to a Rhythmic Beat

30m

Look beneath the surface of a seemingly simple feature of music: beat. Discover that beat perception in humans is exceedingly complex and incorporates six distinct criteria. Then survey animal studies to see if other species share our talent for getting the beat.

Extended Details

SeriesGreat Courses

Closed CaptionsEnglish

Artists

Aniruddh D. PatelActor