Music familiar worldwide, study says

On the door of music-education professor Steven Demorest's office hang 21 color-dotted cross-sections of the human brain.

"The colored portions represent the changes in blood flow over time," said fellow music-education professor Steven Morrison, whose office is located a few feet away from Demorest's.

The images are taken from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), used to study changes in brain activity by tracking blood flow. While fMRI is generally reserved for neuroscientists, Demorest and Morrison are using the technique to answer a question they came across as music educators: How does cultural familiarity plays into the brain's response to music?

This question was the subject of a study conducted by the two, released in last week's NeuroImage. Their study found that while the brain reacts differently to familiar and unfamiliar language, music comprehension produces the same levels of brain activity, regardless of culture.

The researchers used three 30-second samples of a little-known baroque Italian sonata and three samples of the same length taken from a traditional Cantonese composition to test levels of brain activity.

The researchers also found that subjects with musical training had a higher level of brain activity when listening to music. The duo hopes to add to understanding the undefined relationship between the two by focusing their research.

"The idea of the field of music cognition, beginning now to incorporate biological processes like blood flow in the brain and electrical impulses, is very exciting," said Demorest. "We are a long way away from fully understanding the link."

With much attention to music from the neuroscientific research community in the past five years, this project was unique because it probed musical relationships beyond the western musical tradition, said Morrison.

"Almost all of the studies that have been done in neuroimaging and, for that matter, in musical psychology, deal primarily with Western music, because that is the background of most of the investigators," Demorest said. "This study introduced the variable of culture."

Demorest and Morrison were invited to Italy last October to present their research at the Neuroscience and Music Conference. While the two were there, they noticed that neurologists and psychologists -- not musical educators -- were doing most research in the field.

"In the neuroscience community, the response has been positive," said Morrison. "As teachers, we are bringing in other questions that may not have been asked, maybe a more applied view of what music is about."

Demorest and Morrison are scholars of applied music, actively specializing in choral conducting and instrumental music, respectively.

"Music does have a unique place in our identity as human beings," said Morrison. "There is a lot of debate about where it came from, whether or not it is essential, but one cannot deny music's presence in virtually every human society."