Music and the Brain

But as long as the note is in the right context, it sounds fine. As humans, we have grown to develop a sort of musical grammar in detecting a wrong note. We develop an awareness to the knowledge of the rules of how certain sequences are made, very much like grammar with linguistics. Now, musical grammar can be a lot more complex than just a sour note, and can greatly differ depending on the culture you were raised in. And just as with language, this grammar has to be learned. The evidence being that infants don’t seem to be sensitive to this (21).

And on the topic of grammar, there is a mental disorder known as Aphasia, that causes the brain to lose the ability of understanding or expressing speech; thus, having a central problem understanding words and connecting them into sentences. One of the most common kinds of victims that suffer from Aphasia are stroke patients (21). However, there is also a parallel disorder involving music known as Amusia (less studied), which is the loss of musical abilities because of brain damage. This disorder cannot be confused with tone deafness (which many people have a bit of); however, if you are tone deaf, you are still somewhat able to carry on a tune and differentiate basic melodies and generally enjoy music. With amusia, this is impossible. One amusia patient stated that whenever she went to concerts, what we heard as music sounded to her like a bunch of pots and pans constantly clanging together. It made no sense; it was simply noise. Most times, cases of amusia occur from a brain injury and a few people are born with it. This type of disorder is neither a hearing problem nor is it lack of intelligence (21).

One research specialist in Amusia found that this type of brain damage may only d...

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...it to take in new knowledge or memories), attention, motor control, pattern perception, imagery, and many more (21, 26).

When Albert Einstein was a young kid, his teachers believed that he was “too stupid to learn.” They suggested to his mother that he just skip school and start manual labor early, because he was a hopeless case. In spite of this, his mother continued to make him go to school; in addition, she also bought him a violin (24). Violin soon became one of his greatest passions, and he even stated that playing the violin was what made him intelligent. His friend, G.J. Withrow, had said that whenever Einstein had trouble figuring out an equation he would go and improvise on the violin (24).

“If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.”

― Albert Einstein