Thread by @realscientists

I talked to the family, they all say "hi, people on the twitter", and now it's time for a little bit on the EVOLUTION OF MUSIC.

SO. We talked a bit about the limbic system and how one of its jobs is to reward us when we do survival-y things.

Also the limbic system:

So if music is in there as a reward, and it isn't chemically adding anything to the body (like drugs of abuse), or isn't designed (debatable) to be addictive (like gambling, certain *evil* internet games), what is it doing in there?!

IT'S TIME TO GO BACK IN TIME.

One of the things that separates us from apes is our capacity for language. Apes can convey concepts and can be taught sign language, but we are born ready and pick up language without formal instruction as wee tiny babbies.

Before this, some scientists think that music may have evolved as a kind of proto-language, something that had limited communicative capacity, but facilitated social bonding.

Music relies on a very widely-distributed network of brain areas working together, but includes areas that are pretty far back in the timeline (you can think of our brains as evolving back->front and bottom->top with the frontal lobes we have now among the most recent arrivals)

So the necessary pieces for music-making have existed for longer than the necessary pieces for language, supporting the music-as-proto-language idea.

When language finally did emerge, it was another sound-based communication system, but one that was much more precise. A melody can describe a giant swath of emotion, but it can't tell you how much a train ticket costs (if we ignore lyrics, which we are. For now.)

At this point in the evolutionary history, we had two sound-based communication systems. Both were capable of describing feelings, one capable of clearly describing factual information. WHICH ONE DO WE KEEP.

The brain:

This isn't surprising...evolution takes a veeeeeery looooong tiiiiiiiiiime and it stands to reason it would take a while for language to take over...but it's been a while and we still have music. So what's going on?

One current theory is that we need language to be precise, but we need music to be imprecise.

With language, we have the capacity for great precision, but are limited by grammar, vocabulary, dialect, and culture. For example, in Nova Scotia, if I say someone's doing a bang-up job, they're excelling at their task. THIS IS NOT UNIVERSAL.
Me, using bang-up job in Ontario:

Music, on the other hand, allows us to communicate across these linguistic boundaries and get some point across, which brings us to another interesting thing.

Meaning

When you create a piece of music, you have an idea of what it says. People hearing this music will have another idea about what it means based on their own experiences, and that's ok because, unlike language, precision is not the end-all be-all.

If this tickles you, have a read through Ian Cross' work on "floating intentionality":
tinyurl.com/y9cq3hma

Also, this book. The Singing Neanderthals, in addition to being a fantastic book name, is informative as all heck. And a good read:
hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?is…

But YET ANOTHER COOL THING (this will continue to happen. Cool Things Galore is the unofficial motto of neuroscience) is that two people who do not speak the same language can speak the same music.

This isn't quite the Star Trek universal translator here. Different cultures have different musical conventions but, with some exceptions, the stakes are lower with music than language. It allows misunderstanding.

Now think about music, in addition to being awesome to listen to/create on your own, as a vital part of society. Because it kiiiiiind of is. We have songs for celebrating, songs for grieving, songs for talking to god, songs for healing, and songs for making work suck less.

These are old, old, OLD ideas and we're still doing them. And that's awesome. So keep your tunes coming and the discussion going because tomorrow...TOMORROW IS BRAIN DAY.

Oh! And here's a song for the evening (or the morning for all of you Pacific lovelies) from IsKwé:
iskwe.bandcamp.com/track/slack-jaw