How The Brain Processes Music
Researchers from the Stanford University School of Medicine have published results of a survey designed to analyse the brain’s circuitry for event segmentation. To do this, they asked subjects to listen to several symphonies by William Boyce. These works were chosen because they are relatively short, and feature well-defined movements…
Music Changes On The Right
The ultimate goal of the research is not only to monitor neurological responses to musical stimuli, however – music simply provides a convenient natural source of stimulus for observing the brain’s activities during event segmentation. According to the researchers:
“Studying event segmentation in real-world or “ecologically valid” stimuli is of particular interest for two reasons: first, such an investigation can reveal perceptual grouping processes that occur under natural conditions; second, there is growing evidence suggesting that neuronal populations behave differently under natural conditions than they do under controlled experimental conditions… For instance, responses of neurons to simple, controlled stimuli are often not predictive of how they respond to more complex, natural stimuli. Currently, the brain systems underlying the segmentation of ecologically valid stimuli, particularly in the auditory domain, are poorly understood…Studying such segmentation processes in music may be a useful window into similar processes in other domains, such as spoken and signed language, visual perception, and tactile perception.”
For more details on the research, Terradaily have an article here, or you can go to the Stanford site and watch their video.