Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-03T03:21:47.675Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Why we experience musical emotions: Intrinsic musicality in an evolutionary perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 October 2008

Daniela Lenti Boero  and
Luciana Bottoni
Daniela Lenti Boero
Affiliation:
Faculty of Psychology, Université de la Vallée d'Aoste, I-11100 Aosta, [email protected]
Luciana Bottoni
Affiliation:
Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Milano Bicocca, 1-20126 Milan, Italy. [email protected]@unimib.itwww.disat.unimib.it/bioacoustics/it
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Taking into account an evolutionary viewpoint, we hypothesize that music could hide a universal and adaptive code determining preferences. We consider the possible selective pressure that might have shaped, at least in part, our emotional appreciation of sound and music, and sketch a comparison between parameters of some naturalistic sounds and music.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 31 , Issue 5 , October 2008 , pp. 585 - 586
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anderson, L. M., Mulligan, B. E., Goodman, L. S. & Regen, H. Z. (1983) Effects of sounds on preferences for outdoor settings. Environment and Behavior 15:539–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Andrade, P. E. (2004) Uma abordagem evolutionària e neuroscientìfica da mùsica [Evolutionary and neuroscientific approach to music]. Neurosciéncias 1:24–33.Google Scholar
Attias, H. & Scheiner, C. E. (1998) Coding of naturalistic stimuli by auditory midbrian neurons. In: Advances in neural information processing systems 10, ed. Jordan, M. I., Kearns, M. J. & Solla, S. A., pp. 103–109. MIT Press.Google Scholar
Beament, J. (2001) How we hear music: The relationship between music and the hearing mechanism. Boydell & Brewer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Borchgrevink, H. M. (1975) Musikalske akkordpreferanser hos mennesket belyst ved dyreforsok [Musical chord preferences in humans as demonstrated through animal experiments]. Tidskift for den Norske Laegeforening 95:356–58. Also in: Frova, A. (1999) Fisica nella musica, pp. 203-208. Zanichelli.Google Scholar
Bregman, A. S. (1999) Auditory scene analysis: The perceptual organization of sound. MIT Press.Google Scholar
Catchpole, C. K. & Slater, P. J. B. (1995) Bird song: Biological themes and variations. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gardiner, W. (1832) The music of nature; or an attempt to prove that what is passionate and pleasing in the art of singing, speaking, and performing upon musical instruments, is derived from the sounds of the animated world. Wilkins, Rice & Kendall.Google Scholar
Geschwind, N. (1979) Specialization of the human brain. Scientific American 241:180–99.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Guillén, J. D. & Lopez-Barrio, I. (2004) Incidence of meaning in the sound preferences. Estudios de Psicologia 25:73–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herzog, T. R. (1985) A cognitive analysis for preferences for waterscapes. Journal of Environmental Psychology 5:225–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kahn, P. H. (2001) The human relationship with nature: Development and culture. MIT.Google Scholar
Kaplan, R. & Kaplan, S. (1989) The experience of nature: A psychological perspective. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kaplan, R., Kaplan, S. & Brown, T. (1989) Environmental preference: A comparison of four domains of predictors. Environment and Behavior 21:509–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klump, G. M. (2006) How does the auditory hearing system perform auditory scene analysis? In: 23 problems in system neuroscience, ed. van Hemmen, J. L. & Sejnowski, T. J., pp. 303–21. Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Langner, G. & Ochse, M. (2006) The neural basis of pitch and harmony in the auditory system. Musicae Scientiae 10:185–208. (Special Issue 2005–2006).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lenti Boero, D., & Nuti, G. (2006) Musical qualities in the infant cry. In: Abstracts of the 9th International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition; 6th Triennial Conference of the European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music, ed. Baroni, M.Addessi, A. R.Roberto, C. & Costa, M., p. 106. Bononia University Press.Google Scholar
Lenti Boero, D., Nuti, G., & Bottoni, L. (2007) Infant cry as musicians hear it. In: Proceedings of the 3rd Symposium on Cognition and Musical Arts – International, ed. Santiago, D. & Bordini, R., pp. 613–14. EDUFBA.Google Scholar
Lewis, J. W., Wightman, F. L., Brefczynski, J. A., Phinney, R. E., Binder, J. R. & DeYoe, E. A. (2004) Human brain regions involved in recognizing environmental sounds. Cerebral Cortex 14:1008–21.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Liberman, A. M. & Mattingly, I. G. (1989) A specialization for speech perception. Science 243:489–94.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McAndrew, F. T., Turner, S., Fiedeldey, A. C. & Sharma, Y. (1998) A cross-cultural ranking of the pleasantness of visual and non-visual features of outdoor environments. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society, Davis, CA.Google Scholar
Miraglia, S. (2007) Analisi musicale del pianto neonatale [Musical analysis of infant cry]. Undergraduate thesis, Università della Valle d'Aosta, Aosta, Italy.Google Scholar
Mithen, S. (2005) The singing Neanderthals: The origins of music, language, mind and body. Weidesfeld & Nicolson.Google Scholar
Oba, T. (1994) Sound environment of the pond shore and laurel wood in the Ecology Park (1991.4–1993.3): The study of natural sound source composition and examination of the methodology. Journal of the Natural History Museum and Institute, Chiba 1:277–332. (Special Issue).Google Scholar
Oba, T. (1995) What is the natural sound diversity? A consideration for the local natural amenity. Natural History Research 3:173–85.Google Scholar
Orians, G. H. & Heerwagen, J. H. (1992) Evolved responses to landscapes. In: The adapted mind: Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture, ed. Barkow, J. H., Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J., pp. 555–79. Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peretz, I. (2001) Listen to the brain: A biological perspective on musical emotions. In: Music and emotion: Theory and research, ed. Juslin, P. N. & Sloboda, J. A., pp. 105–34. Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peretz, I. & Zatorre, R., eds. (2003) The cognitive neuroscience of music. Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schafer, M. R. (1973) The music of the environment. Universal.Google Scholar
Schafer, M. R. (1977) The tuning of the world. McClelland & Stewart.Google Scholar
Scherer, K. R. & Zentner, M. R. (2001) Emotional effects of music: Production rules. In: Music and emotion: Theory and research, ed. Juslin, P. N. & Sloboda, J. A., pp. 361–92. Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Striedter, G. F. (2005) Principles of brain evolution. Sinauer.Google Scholar
Suga, N. (2006) Basic acoustic patterns and neural mechanisms shared by humans and animals for auditory perception. In: Listening to speech: An auditory perspective, ed. Greenberg, S. & Ainsworth, W. A., pp. 159–81. Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Tuan, Y. F. (1974) Topophilia. Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Zentner, M. R. & Kagan, J. (1996) Perception of music by infants. Nature 383(6595):29.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed