The Feelings of Music

The same day that I puzzled over the use of The Transporters DVD to teach emotions to kids on the spectrum, a study was published by researchers from Northwestern University according to which training in music enhances an individual's ability to detect emotion in sound.

The study, Musical experience and neural efficiency – effects of training on subcortical processing of vocal expressions of emotion, is published in the European Journal of Neuroscience. 30 right-handed men and women with and without music training (aged 19-35) were asked to watch a subtitled nature film while simultaneously hearing a 250-millisecond fragment of a distressed baby’s cry; the participants wore scalp electrodes. The results were not quite what was expected. The researchers "........found that musicians’ brainstems lock onto the complex part of the sound known to carry more emotional elements but de-emphasize the simpler (less emotion conveying) part of the sound"---and that this was not the case for those who were not musicians.

Intriguing that it's the part of a sound that is "known to carry more emotional elements" that the musicians' brains focus on. The study's authors have some further observations about emotion and sound in Science Daily:

“Scientists already know that emotion is carried less by the linguistic meaning of a word than by the way in which the sound is communicated,” says [Dana] Strait [the study's lead author]. A child’s cry of “Mommy!” -- or even his or her wordless utterance -- can mean very different things depending on the acoustic properties of the sound.

The Northwestern researchers measured brainstem processing of three acoustic correlates (pitch, timing and timbre) in musicians and non-musicians to a scientifically validated emotion sound. The musicians, who learn to use all their senses to practice and perform a musical piece [my emphasis], were found to have “finely tuned” auditory systems.

This fine-tuning appears to lend broad perceptual advantages to musicians. “Previous research has indicated that musicians demonstrate greater sensitivity to the nuances of emotion in speech,” says [Richard] Ashley [an associate professor of music cognition], who explores the link between emotion perception and musical experience. One of his recent studies indicated that musicians might even be able to sense emotion in sounds after hearing them for only 50 milliseconds.

Pardon the pun, but the study's results struck me (happily) as a no-brainer. Music and the music of the human voice are how emotion is conveyed in our household. It's not just what Jim, Charlie and I say to each other that says how we're feeling, but how we use our voices. Often it seems more the tone and pitch and melody of our voices gets the message across the Charlie, the words somewhat secondary.

While this study resonates with my own experience, the study's authors themselves

.... also note that the acoustic elements that musicians process more efficiently are the very same ones that children with language disorders, such as dyslexia and autism, have problems encoding. “It would not be a leap to suggest that children with language processing disorders may benefit from musical experience,” says [Nina] Kraus [the Hugh Knowles Professor of Communication Sciences and Neurobiology].

Strait, a pianist and oboe player who formerly worked as a therapist with autistic children, goes a step further. Noting that impaired emotional perception is a hallmark of autism and Asberger’s syndromes, she suggests that musical training

I concur with Kraus: "Musical experience" and, in particular, piano lessons and also cello lessons have been of multifaceted benefit, from listening skills to fine motor coordination to even reading. Recently Charlie's been entranced listening to his iPod, after his teacher taught him to wear headphones and then started playing ocean sounds and Coldplay for him (the whole class apparently likes Coldplay). He's been going to sleep with his puffy noise-canceling headphones over his ears or beside him on the bed, the little silver machine tucked in beside him. He used to sing "Frère Jacques" when he was upset; maybe listening to the Beatles and the Byrds he'll be singing a new song.

(And yes, that is the cello Charlie uses in the photo.)