"Why music causes memories to flood back"

Neuroscience, Psychology, and Health
,
1

An article about music and memory:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/02/26/songs-music-memory-connection/

To understand music’s effect on the brain, experts look at the different types of memory involved.

For instance, when we perform music, rather than just listen to it, we use “procedural” memory, a type of long-term “implicit” memory, which is the unconscious ability to remember a habit or routine that we can do every day without thinking about it, such as touch typing, riding a bike or brushing our teeth, researchers say.

This differs from “episodic” memory, a type of long-term “explicit” memory, which is a conscious recollection and is what your brain uses to remember — for example, the items on your shopping list. (Both implicit and explicit are types of long-term memory — the first unconscious and effortless, the second requiring conscious work to remember.)

Episodic memory originates in the brain’s hippocampus region, which “is the first to go” when dementia hits, Budson says.

“Alzheimer’s attacks the hippocampus first and foremost,” he says, explaining why procedural memory still enables dementia patients to remember lyrics and perform. “It’s a completely different memory system,” he says.

In those with healthy brains, “episodic memory allows you to be transported back in time” to a specific past event or time period “when you listen to a piece of music” Budson says, while the ability to sing or make music is procedural memory, meaning you don’t have to deliberately think about what you’re doing. A well-known recent example has been that of legendary singer Tony Bennett, 96, who in the throes of Alzheimer’s could still flawlessly perform his classic hits.

He says, however, that patients with Alzheimer’s still can experience the music “time travel” episodic memory phenomenon even after the disease has attacked their hippocampus, as long as those episodic memories are more than two years old. “They have been ‘consolidated,’ and once consolidated, they can be accessed even though the hippocampus has been destroyed,” says Budson, who also is a professor of neurology at Boston University.

8 Likes
The Cognitive Benefits of Engaging with Paintings and Art
Puzzles? Useful or Waste of Time
2

Reading the article in the link gave me a strong “the emperor’s new clothes” kind of vibe. Much to do about nothing.

Some personal remarks:

This ability of music to conjure up vivid memories is a phenomenon well known to brain researchers.

So brain researchers know about this phenomenon, just like most people do.

It can trigger intense recollections from years past — for many, more strongly than other senses such as taste and smell

How many get a stronger memory trigger? How would you even test this? There is something mentioned about this in the last part of the article, although the comparison between different triggers seems unfair; the music a test subject has heard a week ago is likely to be more unique than what he or she ate. A bit apples and oranges kind of comparison.

and provoke strong emotions from those earlier experiences.

Does the music provoke the emotions or the memories that are triggered by those emotions? And again, this is a clear case of science discovers what everybody already knows.

“Music can open forgotten doors to your memory,

What does it mean that a door is forgotten; what door?

It provides an auditory and emotional setting that allows us to retrieve all those memories.”

Does the music cause a direct retrieval of memories or does the emotion that the music causes do that, or both?; Does the memory have to be connected to the music or will music that you have never heard before also do the retrieval magic?

Scientists who study music’s powerful effects on the brain say that growing knowledge could improve therapy for such conditions as dementia and other memory disorders, anxiety, stress and depression, learning disabilities and many physical illnesses, such as chronic pain, cancer and Parkinson’s disease.

So is the writer of this article saying that all scientist that study the relationship between music and the brain have the exact same opinion about the possibilities of growing knowledge about this subject. Are they part of a cult?

Evidence also exists that music prompts the secretion of brain neurotransmitters, such as dopamine, a chemical messenger that plays a role in the brain’s reward/pleasure system.

Everything that’s fun causes dopamine secretion I imagine, like social media, gaming, movies and eating pizza. Seems like “water is wet” kind of a discovery.

“Music activates different parts of the brain,” making it an especially versatile tool,

How many parts are activated by eating pizza; if the answer is more than 1, it also qualifies as a versatile tool by this logic.

Melissa Owens, a music therapist at Virginia Commonwealth University Health, already has seen this in her work. “I still find myself in awe of music’s ability to positively change behavior, emotion and even the relationship between a caregiver and their loved one, if even only for the duration of the specific song,”

It would be a surprise if she said that what she does for a living is quackery.

2 Likes
3

Sorry to disagree, erikfromholland, but I thought it was a really good article. The links to the actual research heads off to some really useful stuff. It is an area I am researching at the moment in terms of the prehistory of music, and this provided some really good scientific data.

Thank you, @Josh!

5 Likes
4

When I react to an article on a forum, my intent is, among other things, to provoke a reaction from fellow forum members, for there to be an interesting debate. For this intent I sometimes write in a somewhat hyperbolic and hopefully funny manner (like referring to a pizza as a versatile tool). However, I have not said anything contrary to what I believe to be true.

So, I applaud that you are disagreeing with me, but It is not clear to me what you are disagreeing on. You said that is was a good article, but you have not given a single example of why you think it is a good article (other than the links to the actual research). And for what it’s worth, I don’t think it is a bad article, but I honestly believe that the writer has a "The emperer’s new clothes writing manual (how to write about anything or nothing and make it interesting) lying on his desk, just like every other professional writer.

Would you be willing to point out something (or multiple things) in my post that you disagree on and why?

5

Everything that’s fun causes dopamine secretion I imagine, like social media, gaming, movies and eating pizza. Seems like “water is wet” kind of a discovery.

Your basic assumption is false. You have assumed that music’s role is for fun - likening it to a whole swag of trivial pursuits. My research is about music as a knowledge tool, dating way back into prehistory. In Indigenous cultures, the purpose of music is not primarily for fun - it is often used for communication and memory recall without any obvious fun element. My research sees music as having a much more fundamental role. The fact that it is enjoyed as well in many cases is a bonus.

The fact that music produces dopamine is a really useful result, because it relates to social bonding and many other aspects of anthropology. I am looking at music, and a genetic mutation which gave humans the ability for entrainment, rhythm, pitch, tonal variation … dating back over 300,000 years.

The relationship between music and dementia is critical given music is one of the last knowledge sets to be lost with dementia. Given then the evolution of the brain, in particular the hippocampus, this is valuable in possibly indicating the earlier origins of musical ability in humans than other functions. Really good for my research! I haven’t looked into the others yet.

People like me, exploring the role of music in a new direction (as a result of a recent genetic discovery) need articles like this which draw together the current state pf play among scientists - and give the citations so I can take it further.

Steven Pinker has been roundly criticised for referring to music as ‘auditory cheesecake’. Your view of music in simplistic ‘it is fun’ terms opens you to the same criticism.

4 Likes
6

Hi,

thanks for your response.

Some remarks:

I have not assumed that music’s role is for fun by lickening it to a whole swag of trivial persuits. I don’t agree with two parts of your logic.

part 1

In your statement you appear to be assuming that music is not trivial, but the the other things are. Would it logically follow from this statement that movies are trivial, but the music played in those movies (not many movies without music in them) is not trivial? What makes something trivial (or not) and what gives you the authority to determine this?

part 2

Even if we were to agree, that the other things are trivial, the comparison I made still doesn’t lead to the conclusion, that I think the role of music is for fun. If music is generally speaking fun (to do or listen to), than it is no surprise it causes the production of a fun inducing chemical like dopamine, regardless of the rol it plays.

My research is about music as a knowledge tool, dating way back into prehistory.

I honestly have trouble imagening what you are saying. In prehistory, by definition there are no written records, so what do you have to study?

In Indigenous cultures, the purpose of music is not primarily for fun

Are you saying that any culture that uses music primarily for fun is not indigenous? Can you really make such a clear cut seperation between cultures? I live in Holland and I remember that in elementary school we had to learn all kinds of songs, that had a educational message in them.

  • it is often used for communication and memory recall without any obvious fun element.

I’ve seen videos of native american playing music and quite often they are appeared to be having fun, just like the people listening to the music. Are they not indigenous?

The fact that music produces dopamine is a really useful result, because it relates to social bonding and many other aspects of anthropology.

What relates to social …, music or dopamine or both? And how is that fact usefull?

I am looking at music, and a genetic mutation which gave humans the ability for entrainment, rhythm, pitch, tonal variation … dating back over 300,000 years.

I sometimes take things to literally because of my autistic nature, but it completely goes over my head what you are saying here. Are you saying a single mutation does all of those thing you stated? And this mutation can be found in people from 300.000 thousand years ago?

The relationship between music and dementia is critical given music is one of the last knowledge sets to be lost with dementia. Given then the evolution of the brain, in particular the hippocampus, this is valuable in possibly indicating the earlier origins of musical ability in humans than other functions.

I don’t fully understand that last sentence. Are you saying that because music ability is connected to other parts of the brain than the hippocampus (I imagine that you consider this to be an evolutionary update of a much older (perhaps reptillian) brain), therefore this allows for an educated guess of the origins of musical ability? Does this imply that older parts of the brain cannot be updated in the course of evolution? I’m at a loss of how the origin of musical ability can be found this way.

Steven Pinker has been roundly criticised for referring to music as ‘auditory cheesecake’. Your view of music in simplistic ‘it is fun’ terms opens you to the same criticism.

I think Steven Pinker could convincingly play the role of the emperor in the “Emperor’s new clothes” play, given his book “better angels of our nature” in which he makes the (in my view rather arrogant) statement that generally speaking everything is getting better (less violent etcetera) for everybody.

7

Archaeologists would be a little worried to hear that. Australian Aboriginal people have a continuous culture dating back 65,000 years and no written script. But they have a phenomenal alternative set of knowledge technologies - which are the focus of my research. If we depended only on written records, we only hear what Europeans (and more recently, Aboriginal people themselves using European writing), have written down for the last 200 years. Yet, we have robust evidence of information dating back at least 17,000 years through oral tradition. I am also working with a Tlingit elder and storyteller in South East Alasaka, and his oral tradition also can be shown to date back thousands of years too. So writing is not the only information source we have. I have written four books to date based on this type of thinking. And it is all about phenomenal memory systems. We have so much to learn from Indigenous cultures about memory.

You have seen videos made for public showing and draw conclusions that they are having fun from that? They almost certainly are having fun. The public performances are those which were originally for children, and now for anyone else not initiated into the culture, especially for tourists. They are of little relevance to the way music is used for memory in Indigenous cultures.

Not sure about the word ‘people’ here. But I can say that this mutation is in you! Two copies of it. The mutation happened over 300,000 years ago (it isn’t in chimpanzees) and eventually spread to all modern humans, all Neanderthals and Denisovans - every hominin for which we have DNA. It was discovered in 2018, and our team has since been working with geneticists, archaeologists, palaeontologists, anthropologists, medical people, neuroscientists and primatologists. We’ve been peer reviewed at conferences and are now writing academic papers and a book. All very exciting!

And music is fundamental to it. I still really like that article!

Thank you for your questions - as I write the new book, I really need to learn how to explain. The more I have to defend the argument we are presenting, the more I learn what I need to be able to explain.

Your question about music and neuroscience and evolution is too hard for me, but something I have to get my head around. To date, I am just depending on quoting (or possibly misquoting) the experts in this field. But I still have a long way to go.

One book which might help answer this question is by neuroscientist Alan Harvey “Music, evolution, and the harmony of souls” (Oxford University Press) which I have just purchased. I am quoting my understanding from another neuroscientist telling me about his work. I have read Iain Morley “The prehistory of music” which is amazing.

Thank you for the debate!

Lynne

4 Likes
8

I reacted to this post 3 hours ago, but it is still waiting for approval. It would be nice to know what causes this.

If for example certain words are not allowed, it would be useful if you could see that straight away, so you can simply substitute those words without having to wait.

Anyway, I guess i just have to wait.

1 Like
10

Hi,

thanks again for your response.

Archaeologists would be a little worried to hear that. Australian Aboriginal people have a continuous culture dating back 65,000 years and no written script.

I think it is fair to say that you are technically correct, given a definition that requires written text(s) as part of history for it not to be classified as prehistory. However, I feel that you are pulling a bate and switch on me.

So, imagine I told you that I have memorised the first book of Harry Potter without reading it at all. “Witchcraft!” you may say and I would respond by telling you I just listened to the audiobook instead of reading it.

With regards to indigenous cultures not having fun element in their music:

The public performances are those which were originally for children, and now for anyone else not initiated into the culture, especially for tourists. They are of little relevance to the way music is used for memory in Indigenous cultures.

I agree, that those videos I saw, may not fully represent actual indigenous music, however you are now narrowing down the category of indigenous music in that only music used for memory counts; in contrast you said earlier:

In Indigenous cultures, the purpose of music is not primarily for fun.

What if I told you that modern American popular music doesn’t have an obvious fun element, by pointing at songs like “Telegraph road” from the Dire Straits; in this song the Telegraph road is a metaphor for the development of America and the ruining of one man’s dreams in the wake of its decline, in particular focusing on unemployment. Speaking of unemployment, how about some of the lyrics of the Bruce Springsteen song "The river: “But lately there ain’t been much work . On account of the economy”. And finally, one of the most memorable dutch songs of the eighties is a song from Frank Boeyen called “Kronenburg Park” and is about the miserable life of drug addicted prostitutes working in that park in the city of Nijmegen.

The point I try to make here, is that the difference between indigenous music and “modern” music may not be so significant as you make it appear.

In response to my question about the “music gene”: “Are you saying a single mutation does all of those thing you stated? And this mutation can be found in people from 300.000 thousand years ago?”, you responded:

Not sure about the word ‘people’ here. But I can say that this mutation is in you! Two copies of it. The mutation happened over 300,000 years ago (it isn’t in chimpanzees) and eventually spread to all modern humans, all Neanderthals and Denisovans - every hominin for which we have DNA.

I’m not sure if we are talking about the same thing here. I can see how a single (random) mutation may change something like the positioning of the human jaw and that given the already present (pre)musical abilities such as rythm and pitch, this may result in an evolutionary path guided by natural selection towards actual musical ability. I think you have a different idea of what constitutes a mutation, than I do. At the risk of saying things about a subject that I not an expert on by any means, let me further try to articulate my reservations. In some of the work I used to do, I was making all kinds of spreadsheet based programs (or tools). If I made a single typing error in a formula, this would result in a part of the program no longer working, like the adding up of all different kinds of products in stock. If someone were to compare the working program with the one that isn’t working (because of the typing error) he or she may come to the conclusion that the adding up of … is made possible by a single letter. In reality it is not even the whole formula that allows for the adding up to be possible, it is the formula in combination with the basic excel program and the rest of the program I made that does the magic.

Your question about music and neuroscience and evolution is too hard for me, but something I have to get my head around. To date, I am just depending on quoting (or possibly misquoting) the experts in this field.

You make, intended or not intended, an interesting point: Even someone like you who is obviously very smart and educated in a variety of subject has to rely on experts in fields outside your expertise. How would you know if those experts are really experts? What if the science of those experts is based on misconceptions that are the result of whisful thinking or willfull deceit by actors with a invested interest in the outcome of certain studies?

11

I am losing track of this. I am not sure how a bate and switch fits in, and I don’t think your analogies work well enough to be used.

I’ll think through the coding one in relation to the genetics, having taught programming for many years.

The genetics and the relationship to music is way more complicated than I can explain here. We will just end up in semantics over definitions of music. My co-author and I have been struggling with how to explain the genetic mutation and its implications for over a year now. And it will take us another year to manage it for the book we are writing. That will be published towards the end of next year. The astounding thing is that this single gene mutation gave us a lot more than just music! I still have to reassure myself every day of the research which makes the claim is so robust. It took me a long time to even join the research team because I was so skeptical.

Here is the press release from Andrea’s university which links at the bottom to a talk giving the details of the genetics and link to my work. She is presenting on behalf of the three of us in the team and detailing the genetics for the American Association of Biological Anthropologists. I’ll have to leave to you to assess your analogies. I must get back to writing the book.

Thank you for a stimulating discussion.

Lynne

3 Likes
12

Good article. It’s nice to see a bit more popular coverage of the different types of memory. Mnemonics mostly helps with episodic memory, which is why I’m a bit skeptical of overreliance on mnemonics (and even SRS systems) to study vocabulary. The language learning theories of Stephen Krashen came up here before, and while opinion still seems to be divided about them, I find his arguments on the topic of procedural vs episodic memory bias in conventional language learning compelling: memorising vocabulary lists is an episodic memory task, which doesn’t lend itself well to automatic fluency (a procedural skill).

The same is definitely true with music and other complex motor skills: trying to memorise the notes in an explicit sense isn’t very helpful for performance, except when used as a stepping stone and not the primary focus of your practice time.

The points about musical cues triggering sudden reawakenings of old memories, similarly to the function of specific smells and tastes, is well-taken and I’d be very interested to see more research into how that operates.
Marvin Minsky’s 1990 book “The Society of Mind” has an interesting conceptual model of memory storage and retrieval called “K-lines” which touches on that topic. An extremely interesting read if you have time.

2 Likes
13

Let me just first make it clear, that I by no means meant to suggest that the bate and switch was intentional. However I do believe that the analogie was good. For what it’s worth, allow me to make a stronger case for it. The meaning of the word prehistory is not as clear for most people (most of whom are not historians) as it may be for you. According to the Dutch prehistory Wiki page (strangely somehow different from the English version) in the 20e century the definition was becoming less strict and it included both written and oral sources. So the baiting part is the use of the word prehistory, a word that triggers ideas like "a period from which we only have objects like spears and cooking pots left to tell us what the period was like. And the switch part is the long history of aboriginals that is preserved by means of oral history tradition, that perhaps most people wouldn’t think of as examples of prehistory. And to finally connect this to the Harry Potter analogy: the difference between having read the written (fictional) history of Harry Potter and having listened to the oral history (audiobook) is irrelevant in most conversations between people about the content of the books.

Here is the press release from Andrea’s university which links at the bottom to a talk giving the details of the genetics and link to my work.

For what it’s worth, I’m unable to find any clear link between the art and music abilities and the newly found knowledge gene, other than perhaps a temporal coincedance of the gene emergence and human culture changes.

Thanks again for your time and please don’t feel pressured to have to respond . Good luck with the book.

14

I’m looking forward to reading about it.

I read a study years ago about how someone who is carrying a guitar case while asking for phone numbers had a much higher chance of getting the phone number than if they didn’t carry a guitar case. The study caught my eye because I’ve seen how strong that effect is.

It’s possible that humans partially select mates based on display of abilities that can encode memories. One reason that I found The Memory Code and Memory Craft so interesting is that they seemed to provide explanations for things like music, dance, poetry, storytelling, theater, and even “magic” and religion — all can be used as ways to encode and transmit knowledge across generations.

It’s possible that our human ancestors who selected for memory abilities had a better chance of survival, so they passed on their genes. Those traits could have been honed by survival rates, and that’s why people are often “irrationally” attracted to “memory encoders” like musicians, dancers, poets, actors, artists, etc. We are the way we are because our ancestors were like that, and they are the ones who survived to pass on genes.

It’s probably much more complex than that, and I don’t know if that is the correct explanation for “the musician/actor/etc. effect”, but I think about it a lot. :slight_smile:

1 Like
15

It took me while before I understood what you were saying. I imagined the guitar man was memorising the phone numbers and used the guitar case as a memory palace. Ed Cooke (mentor of Joshua Foer) used to do that (without the guitar part) according to his own admission.

It’s possible that humans partially select mates based on display of abilities that can encode memories.

In his book “Climbing Mount Improbable” Richard Dawkins argues that any biological complexity requires a (small) step by step evolutionary explanation. So in other words: going from humans without any type of musical ability to Jimmy Hendrix doesn’t happen overnight. That’s why I am among other things confused about the sudden appearance of the so called music gene.

Another observation that Richard Dawkins makes in several of his books, is that evolution by natural selections acts on whatever is present, regardless of it’s original purpose. So the trunk of an elephant can be used as a snorkel whem swimming, but once developed it further evolves as a tool for picking up things or vice versa.

Given the 2 above mentioned observations from Dawkins, a possible route to musical ability may be the mocking bird strategy: mockingbirds are known for their ability to mimic everything from sirens to crickets to other bird species . Some scientists think they produce these copycat calls to show off for potential mates. So basically this showing off might be just a way of displaying of overall physical and mental health. Once a significant level of musical ability is reached as a result of mate selection focussed on mimicing skills, natural selection may guide this skill towards other uses, such as attracting birds by mimicing their sounds for the purpose of hunting.

The step from having already a significant musical ability as a result of the above mentioned evolutionary process to singing songs to encode memories, doesn’t seen so big provided that story telling (without music) has already been estabilished in the culture.

It’s likely that once singing memory song becomes general practice in the culture, mate selection for musical ability may become even stronger than it already was. One “risk” of this type of mate selection is that the selected trait evolves beyond it’s functional use; if the best singers have become the most desired mates, than choosing a mate that is good at singing makes evolutionary sense, because you offspring will likely also be more desired and therefore likely find a mate that desires them. An example of this out of control mate selection is the male fiddler crab with one enormous claw that appears to make no sense based on it’s (lack) of utility.

1 Like
16

The gene mutation happened over 300,000 years ago. From then to Jimmy Hendrix isn’t overnight. The mutation granted a potential, of which humans slowly took great advantage.

Your thought experiments are very interesting, and I am enjoying considering them. But they have little to do with the research methodology we are using. We couldn’t make a claim like we are based on interesting thinking.

The research mythology is equivalent to that for FOXP2 being the language gene. That is well established research based on, initially, a small population of a family. With NF1 gene, NF1 disorder (I have to keep reminding myself to get the italics right) we have a research base of 1 in 3,000 births and long established cognitive impacts.

You assume storytelling came first. That is not a valid assumption. In fact, there is some evidence that music came first. I haven’t analysed that evidence enough to decide where the researchers are on that. It doesn’t really matter because it is FOXP2 and NF1 working together as a part of our argument. I’d just like it to be that NF1 came first.

NF1 is a huge gene, 300,000 bases (nice coincidence with the date and rate, helps me remember!). A change in one of those bases in one of your two copies will cause the disorder, hence the variable presentations. That’s how fragile this gene is. My co-author’s son, who has NF1, has only a single base change. Yet the rate of amusia jumps from 4.7 % in the normal population to 67% in the NF1 population. That is hugely statistically significant.

Likening human musicality to that of birds or insects is not valid. Michael Spitzer’s book The Musical Human: A History of Life on Earth explains why at great length. Others make the same argument, but Spitzer does it wonderfully well.

Evolution is no longer discussed in terms of just mate selection. On those grounds, the NF1 mutation should have been wiped out long ago - it should never have survived the early mutation and yet it eventually replaced all the primate NF1 in the entire ancestral hominin population. For decades, NF1 disorder researchers have been asking what could have made it so important that it could be so successful despite being so fragile that it leads to the disorder so often? Music is only part of the answer, and then it can only be music serving a very practical purpose. The knowledge systems Josh refers to and I have written about at length, give the full answer.

But that argument is only after very rigorous analysis of the 84 aspects of the skill set as referred to in the video. You’ll see that music is only a portion of the skill set.

When the book comes out, people will pose exactly the arguments you are doing, so it is good to think them through now. Thank you.

Lynne

2 Likes
17

I look forward to your response to the book, Josh. I’ll see if I can organise an advance copy, but that won’t be until late next year. This is way more complex than anything I have done before so taking a long time working out how to explain.

2 Likes
18

Youre making a valid point, however I’m still left with some questions. If that gene mutation itself appeared overnight it had to be very small in terms of number of base pairs; a gene like for example the NF1 with 300.000 bases (as you said) requires many generations of natural selection for it’s occurence. I’m also puzzled about how you could know how much of the musical ability potential can actually be attributed to the new found music gene. Put in another way: is there reason to assume that the human genome is needly organised like a library (with a horror section, science fiction …, etcetera) as opposed to being a complete mess, with musical genes on various chromosones all working together, some of whom may never be identified as such because they have different fuctions also?

You assume storytelling came first. That is not a valid assumption. In fact, there is some evidence that music came first. I haven’t analysed that evidence enough to decide where the researchers are on that. It doesn’t really matter because it is FOXP2 and NF1 working together as a part of our argument. I’d just like it to be that NF1 came first.

In my possible evolutionary explanation, I assumed that a basic music ability (as a result of the mocking bird strategy) came before the usage of that ability in singing memory songs. And I also assumed that story telling came before that. I made no claims about the relative occurence of musical ability and story telling. If you are right about storytelling coming after music ability, it doesn’t mean automatically that the storytelling was all musical from the very start.

Likening human musicality to that of birds or insects is not valid. Michael Spitzer’s book The Musical Human: A History of Life on Earth explains why at great length. Others make the same argument, but Spitzer does it wonderfully well.

Sounds interesting, I will look him up. Even if he is right, it doesn’t (I imagine) disqualify the possibility that human musical abilty started as a mimicing exercise; my next door neigbour from childhood (we were in the same class in elementary school) started playing “Fur Elise” a thousand times on the piano and than went on to become a music composer.

19

Thank you for this, Erik. My co-author who is the geneticist and evolutionary biologist, so I trust her and her colleagues on these themes.

NF1 is present in many organisms who date from long before this mutation. The mutation we are talking about, the human version of NF1, separates it from the chimpanzees, our nearest cousin. The gene mutation for the human version is only a few base pairs different from the chimps.

You keep talking natural selection and I am talking evolution. Natural selection os one of the forces of evolution, given a really significant one. But it is no longer used alone.

Yes, genes work together. That is taken into account.

Yes, human musical ability probably started with imitation. That is different from bird mimicking. Spitzer explains all that.

I am afraid that I must leave this conversation now. I have a great deal of work to do. Thank you for such a stimulating exchange. I hope the book will explain everything that you have raised.

Lynne

1 Like
20

Music is one of my interests, so I’m looking forward to checking it out.

1 Like
22

I accidentally made a reply to this thread because I made a link to this thread as part of my reply in the The Cognitive Benefits of Engaging with Paintings and Art, so when you click reply without paying attention things go wrong.