Music in the Brain: Scientists Finally Reveal the Parts of Our Brain That Are Dedicated to Music

The late neu­rol­o­gist and writer Oliv­er Sacks had a big hit back in 2007 with his book Musi­cophil­ia: Tales of Music and the Brain, address­ing as it did from Sacks’ unquench­ably brain- and music-curi­ous per­spec­tive a con­nec­tion almost all of us feel instinc­tive­ly. We know we love music, and we know that love must have some­thing to do with how our brains work, but for most of human his­to­ry we haven’t had many cred­i­ble expla­na­tions for what’s going on. But sci­ence has dis­cov­ered more about the rela­tion­ship between music and the brain, and we’ve post­ed about some of those fas­ci­nat­ing dis­cov­er­ies as they come out. (Have a look at all the relat­ed posts below.)

But now, a study from MIT’s McGov­ern Insti­tute for Brain Research has revealed exact­ly which parts of our brains respond specif­i­cal­ly to music. They’ve put out a brief video of this research, which you can watch above, explain­ing their process, which involved putting sub­jects into an MRI and play­ing them var­i­ous sounds, then study­ing how their brains respond­ed dif­fer­ent­ly to music than to, say, the spo­ken word or a flush­ing toi­let. Not look­ing to test any hypoth­e­sis in par­tic­u­lar, the research team found “strik­ing selec­tiv­i­ty” in which regions of the brain lit up, in their spe­cial­ly designed ana­lyt­i­cal mod­el, in response to music.

“Why do we have music?” asks the McGov­ern Insti­tute’s Dr. Nan­cy Kan­wish­er in a New York Times arti­cle on the research by Natal­ie Ang­i­er. “Why do we enjoy it so much and want to dance when we hear it? How ear­ly in devel­op­ment can we see this sen­si­tiv­i­ty to music, and is it tun­able with expe­ri­ence? These are the real­ly cool first-order ques­tions we can begin to address.” The piece also quotes Josef Rauscheck­er, direc­tor of the Lab­o­ra­to­ry of Inte­gra­tive Neu­ro­science and Cog­ni­tion at George­town Uni­ver­si­ty, cit­ing “the­o­ries that music is old­er than speech or lan­guage,” and that “some even argue that speech evolved from music,” which “works as a group cohe­sive. Music-mak­ing with oth­er peo­ple in your tribe is a very ancient, human thing to do.” Which all, of course, goes to sup­port the bold hypoth­e­sis put forth by the late Tow­er Records: No Music, No Life.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Neu­ro­science of Bass: New Study Explains Why Bass Instru­ments Are Fun­da­men­tal to Music

The Neu­ro­science of Drum­ming: Researchers Dis­cov­er the Secrets of Drum­ming & The Human Brain

Play­ing an Instru­ment Is a Great Work­out For Your Brain: New Ani­ma­tion Explains Why

New Research Shows How Music Lessons Dur­ing Child­hood Ben­e­fit the Brain for a Life­time

Why We Love Rep­e­ti­tion in Music: Explained in a New TED-Ed Ani­ma­tion

This is Your Brain on Jazz Impro­vi­sa­tion: The Neu­ro­science of Cre­ativ­i­ty

Free Online Psy­chol­o­gy & Neu­ro­science Cours­es

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.