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Man has always made music, and man has to make music. It is an imperative of human existence. All human beings do, from their earliest age. It is a necessity that surges from within, like sexuality, like language, and is directed toward an other human being. It is an expression of the fundamentally social nature of each individual ... that is to say that music is at the most basic level a means of communication.
While it's clear that you believe that -- you've said it several times -- it's not clear why. Maybe the why isn't important, to you anyway. But consider, for example, the notorious view of Stephen Pinker that music is 'auditory cheesecake'. The ability to appreciate music, he says, is merely a by-product of the development of other, more evolutionary adaptive, faculties. You state your view that music is communicative as if it were self-evident, not even in need of justification. But the fact that there are respected and influential psychologists claiming almost the opposite suggests to me that it is far from self-evident. As it happens, I'm not saying that I disagree with you. I'm just less confident than you seem to be that, just because I believe something strongly, it must be true. This is interesting. Do you happen to know where the preponderance of psychological evidence lies?
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As it happens, I'm not saying that I disagree with you. I'm just less confident than you seem to be that, just because I believe something strongly, it must be true.
Thank you , but as it happens, I am not confident that something is true just because I strongly believe it. This said, I do believe strongly that music is at the most basic level a means of communication. Music exists because man is a social animal and his entire existence is communication. Self-evident or not, it is my point of view that, believe it or not, has not been formulated without thought and study over years and decades. You will have to excuse me if I don't feel the need to cite sources or Wiki pages. Beyond that, it is my view that this social nature of man is the starting point for any understanding of most anything concerning human existence. I'll go so far as to say that the individual brain itself is a product of the complexity of social relations.
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An understanding of the functioning of the brain I don't think is of importance. Because music is not, in the end, an internal affair. It is a social affair.
And the brain has nothing to do with social affairs???? Quand meme! It certainly is necessary to consider the brain in itself, as it is necessary to consider a giant body as a single point in physics. Yet however great are the benefits of this approach, I believe that we will never be able to explain human behavior through the examination of the brain. I think that Freud explained much more a century ago than neuroscience ever will. I doubt that there will ever exist a kind of unified field theory linking psychology and neurobiology. There will always exist different levels or different approaches of understanding the human existence, even in contradiction to each other, and that is necessary because human existence itself has so many different levels.
Last edited by landorrano; 07/09/11 02:02 PM.
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I think that Freud explained much more a century ago than neuroscience ever will. If you read Philosophy of Science books, they use Freud and his theories as examples of what pseudoscience is. So Freud did not do Science. Neuroscience by virtue of its name does Science. Its absurd therefore that you think that Freud "explained" more than what Neuroscience ever will. Firstly, Freud did not explain anything at all (this is not to say that he did not provide a useful framework for people at that time to work with considering how little was known at that time). That everything is a result of sexual fantasy is a theory that can be fit almost to anything. Freud would probably attribute your resistance to Science to repressed sexual feelings. Neuroscience wouldn't. Take your pick.
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liszt Look up the limbic system in PubMed not in Wiki, and you will find it to be alive and well. Your amygdala hippocampus talk, is at best "pseudoscience and in reality kind of sci-fi. At any rate I was not trying to explain what is primary and what is secondary, as in fact I am not sure if such a stratification exists. I suggest you expand your definition of emotion.
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liszt Look up the limbic system in PubMed not in Wiki, and you will find it to be alive and well. Your amygdala hippocampus talk, is at best "pseudoscience and in reality kind of sci-fi. At any rate I was not trying to explain what is primary and what is secondary, as in fact I am not sure if such a stratification exists. I suggest you expand your definition of emotion. First to address what's in bold above: this thread is all about discussing what might be primary. If you don't believe anything is primary, then you're not arguing against any of what I said. I don't know if anything is primary either but if anything is, my argument is that its not emotion that's primary. So watch out before you start accusing me of dishing out pseudo-science or whatever (I doubt you even know what it means, I'll explain it to you soon enough). Now to go on to the specifics: 1) Do you agree that the Hippocampus is a large part of the limbic system (assuming it is well and alive)? 2) Do you know what the primary function of the Hippocampus is? 3) What do you think the amygdala does? I said it was a motivation center (and also mediates memory formation). What about that do you disagree? The amygdala and the hippocampus are important parts of your limbic system (the stratification of which you so staunchly believe in). If you do not agree with their functions (some of which are well established), then don't fool yourself into thinking that you're speaking science here. Answer these for me and we'll decide whether what I said is pseudo-science or not. You went to lengths explaining what you thought was going on in the brain backed by nothing at all (except a definition of the limbic system). I never called your hypothesis pseudoscience. Do you know what pseudoscience is? Its related to falsifiability, just to give you a clue. None of what I said is unfalsifiable in the foreseeable future (if people aren't already making speculations along the same lines, I do know of some literature, though not directly from brain studies). First learn to respect another point of view, then discuss. If you cannot do that, I'm not interested in wasting my time, really. It would be fine for you to make that accusation if you could analyze my post line by line and tell me what exactly was pseudoscience. I'd really love that. This discussion here is indeed about what's primary. I was trying to infer what that might be based on what I know about the hippocampus and since you wanted to talk about a system that has the hippocampus in it as a primary structure. PS: Btw, you fail to realize that nothing that you said disagrees with what I said, if you aren't making a commitment to what's primary and what's secondary. I'm well aware of how emotions can be intertwined with all of this. That was never in dispute. Kevin and I have pointed out multiple times to people that none of our posts really disputed that. If you're so very scientifically ingrained, I fail to understand why you would construct straw men as some others here have attempted to.
Last edited by liszt85; 07/09/11 03:55 PM.
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An understanding of the functioning of the brain I don't think is of importance. Because music is not, in the end, an internal affair. It is a social affair.
And the brain has nothing to do with social affairs???? Quand meme! It certainly is necessary to consider the brain in itself, as it is necessary to consider a giant body as a single point in physics. Yet however great are the benefits of this approach, I believe that we will never be able to explain human behavior through the examination of the brain. I think that Freud explained much more a century ago than neuroscience ever will. I doubt that there will ever exist a kind of unified field theory linking psychology and neurobiology. There will always exist different levels or different approaches of understanding the human existence, even in contradiction to each other, and that is necessary because human existence itself has so many different levels. I do understand what you mean and I do agree, as I paraphrase, that so-called psychobiology is a very young if not primitive field. "Social Science" also remains, IMHO, largely a misnomer, i.e. there is not much hard science to it other than statistics and epidemiology perhaps. But this is not to say that science will never evolve to be able to explain the biological basis of social phenomena, music included. The social nature of man is not up for discussion but, and you may disagree, behavior has its basis in the brain and therefore in neuroscience. As for the purpose of music, I think it would be difficult to pin it down as it is too complex and too dynamic with much inter-individual and cross cultural variability. But we are gleaning useful information about brain function through methods that allow us to visualize which areas of the brain get activated upon listening to music or engaging in other activities. I remember reading one such study, using functional MRI, showing that a specific area in the brain (the insula) gets robustly and consistently activated upon engaging the subject in plans for shopping (impulse buying, bargain hunting)..I am just giving a simple example, not claiming much else. As a disclaimer, I have not read actively much of what is recently written about music and the brain as i find it still pseudo-scientific as I said before, which is not to say that it is not interesting.
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I have not read actively much of what is recently written about music and the brain as i find it still pseudo-scientific as I said before, which is not to say that it is not interesting. If you haven't read the recent literature about it, how can you conclude all of it is pseudo-science. This must be the second most absurd thing I've heard on this thread. Sorry to be blunt but since you like being blunt yourself, you shouldn't have an issue with this, I hope.
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liszt Look up the limbic system in PubMed not in Wiki, and you will find it to be alive and well. Your amygdala hippocampus talk, is at best "pseudoscience and in reality kind of sci-fi. At any rate I was not trying to explain what is primary and what is secondary, as in fact I am not sure if such a stratification exists. I suggest you expand your definition of emotion. 1) Do you agree that the Hippocampus is a large part of the limbic system (assuming it is well and alive)? 2) Do you know what the primary function of the Hippocampus is? 3) What do you think the amygdala does? I said it was a motivation center (and also mediates memory formation). What about that do you disagree? The amygdala and the hippocampus are important parts of your limbic system (that you so staunchly believe in). If you do not agree with their functions (some of which are well established), then don't fool yourself into thinking that you're speaking science here. Answer these for me and we'll decide whether what I said is pseudo-science or not. You went to lengths explaining what you thought was going on in the brain backed by nothing at all (except a definition of the limbic system). I never called your hypothesis pseudoscience. Do you know what pseudoscience is? Its related to falsifiability, just to give you a clue. None of what I said is unfalsifiable in the foreseeable future (if people aren't already making speculations along the same lines, I do know of some literature, though not directly from brain studies). First learn to respect another point of view, then discuss. If you cannot do that, I'm not interested in wasting my time, really. This discussion here is indeed about what's primary. I was trying to infer what that might be based on what I know about the hippocampus and since you wanted to talk about a system that has the hippocampus in it as a primary structure. liszt Allow me to clarify: 1- I know more about the brain than you think. But I do not feel the need to prove it to you. 2- Your questions are very simplistic and the answers can be found on the internet by just about anyone, especially if you accept Wiki standards. (the equivalent of me asking you to define and prove the role of say, electromagnetic forces) 3- My explanation was labeled as an oversimplification and it was provided only to illustrate the level of complexity involved, which is obvious even within the very simple framework I showed. You should NOT consider it to be a definitive explanation of the purpose of music 4- You,liszt85, will not be able to explain the "primary purpose' of music. It is simply too complicated.
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Here's something from a recent book: "When it was later demonstrated that the emotional disturbances of the Klüver-Bucy syndrome could be elicited by removal of the amygdala alone, attention turned more specifically to the role of this structure in the control of emotional behavior." http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK11060/Other than the amygdala, none of the other structures seem all that important (though I'm sure they are all involved due to what I said about the brain being one huge neural network) in regulating emotional behavior. So if you wanted to talk only about the amygdala, lets do so. However, if you want to assume that everybody accepts that the entire limbic system primarily functions to regulate emotion, a lot of people will disagree with you.
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I have not read actively much of what is recently written about music and the brain as i find it still pseudo-scientific as I said before, which is not to say that it is not interesting. If you haven't read the recent literature about it, how can you conclude all of it is pseudo-science. This must be the second most absurd thing I've heard on this thread. Sorry to be blunt but since you like being blunt yourself, you shouldn't have an issue with this, I hope. What I mean by "reading" is in-depth reading and analysis . But most of this material has been reviewed by scientists and others and that is the source of my knowledge about it. You are too literal, not always an advantage.
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So if you wanted to talk only about the amygdala, lets do so. However, if you want to assume that everybody accepts that the entire limbic system primarily functions to regulate emotion, a lot of people will disagree with you.
You, an amygdala specialist??? Which amygdala, dominant or non-dominant hemisphere?? We should both be practicing, except that I have a good excuse not to, and you don't. Let us stop here. I certainly am.
Last edited by Andromaque; 07/09/11 04:06 PM.
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liszt Allow me to clarify: 1- I know more about the brain than you think. But I do not feel the need to prove it to you. 2- Your questions are very simplistic and the answers can be found on the internet by just about anyone, especially if you accept Wiki standards. (the equivalent of me asking you to define and prove the role of say, electromagnetic forces) 3- My explanation was labeled as an oversimplification and it was provided only to illustrate the level of complexity involved, which is obvious even within the very simple framework I showed. You should NOT consider it to be a definitive explanation of the purpose of music 4- You,liszt85, will not be able to explain the "primary purpose' of music. It is simply too complicated.
I, liszt85, will be unable to explain the primary purpose of music alright (and I've said as much right from the beginning. Ever heard of a plausibility argument?). However, andromaque certainly can based on the "well established" limbic system idea. Secondly, if you don't feel the need to prove anything to me, I believe you really shouldn't call any of what I said pseudoscience because your very presence here with your kind of attitude is pseudoscientific (due to your refusal to support your arguments). My questions are simplistic and the answers to which can be EASILY found online, yet you think nothing conclusive is really known about the brain. I don't understand how the two can be compatible. You say that you don't feel the need to prove to me that you know anything about the brain. I really don't think you believe you can do it even if you wanted to. Anyway,.. since I really don't understand your purpose here by talking about the brain but don't want to answer "simple" questions (which were asked specifically to argue that your depiction of the situation is just overly simplistic, if not inaccurate), I'll stop here for now.
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We should both be practicing, except that I have a good excuse not to, and you don't.
And what's that? You're a brain expert and I'm not? So you don't need to practice because you can coax your brain to learn while you relax?
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Here's something from a recent book: "When it was later demonstrated that the emotional disturbances of the Klüver-Bucy syndrome could be elicited by removal of the amygdala alone, attention turned more specifically to the role of this structure in the control of emotional behavior." http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK11060/Other than the amygdala, none of the other structures seem all that important (though I'm sure they are all involved due to what I said about the brain being one huge neural network) in regulating emotional behavior. So if you wanted to talk only about the amygdala, lets do so. However, if you want to assume that everybody accepts that the entire limbic system primarily functions to regulate emotion, a lot of people will disagree with you. I have kind of fallen behind on this topic, but in terms of emotion the septum is as important as the amygdala. I just felt this needed stating. The amygdala gets too much credit.
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Here's something from a recent book: "When it was later demonstrated that the emotional disturbances of the Klüver-Bucy syndrome could be elicited by removal of the amygdala alone, attention turned more specifically to the role of this structure in the control of emotional behavior." http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK11060/Other than the amygdala, none of the other structures seem all that important (though I'm sure they are all involved due to what I said about the brain being one huge neural network) in regulating emotional behavior. So if you wanted to talk only about the amygdala, lets do so. However, if you want to assume that everybody accepts that the entire limbic system primarily functions to regulate emotion, a lot of people will disagree with you. I have kind of fallen behind on this topic, but in terms of emotion the septum is as important as the amygdala. I just felt this needed stating. The amygdala gets too much credit. That's even better. In fact I'm sure more structures are important as well. It is simply impossible to imagine a huge bulk of work (for any given task) being done by one isolated part in the brain simply because it cannot function without all the different and complex connection patterns from other parts of the brain. fMRI and other techniques have their resolution issues (both time and space). Simply because one region lights up on the scan and another does not, doesn't mean that the other structure did not have anything to do with the behavior. This is because the temporal dynamics of many of these processes are quite unknown. So what is it exactly that you're measuring by amount of blood flow or whatever at any given point of time? Nobody really has a very good answer to that. Andromaque believes that my questions are far too simplistic and that the answers can be found online. I really do wish he was right..
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That's even better. In fact I'm sure more structures are important as well. It is simply impossible to imagine a huge bulk of work (for any given task) being done by one isolated part in the brain simply because it cannot function without all the different and complex connection patterns from other parts of the brain. fMRI and other techniques have their resolution issues (both time and space). Simply because one region lights up on the scan and another does not, doesn't mean that the other structure did not have anything to do with the behavior. This is because the temporal dynamics of many of these processes are quite unknown. So what is it exactly that you're measuring by amount of blood flow or whatever at any given point of time? Nobody really has a very good answer to that.
Andromaque believes that my questions are far too simplistic and that the answers can be found online. I really do wish he was right.. There is also the issue that fMRI does not tell us whether the activation we are seeing is excitatory or inhibitory. And there is the further issue that fMRIs require that a subtraction method be used, which means we are potentially not seeing the involvement of vital brain structures.
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Don't know exactly what you mean by subtraction methods but are you referring to the pattern classification algorithms used in the technique by any chance?
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I am not intensely knowledgeable about fMRI, but the subtraction method is this in a nutshell as far as I understand it:
Because so much of the brain is working all of the time when you do fMRI research you have to take a baseline measure of all the current activity and subtract it from your experimental measure otherwise about 90% of the brain is going to appear active on the fMRI scan.
So for instance, suppose during the baseline phase your brain was using structure X for purpose A. And further suppose during the experimental measure your brain still needed structure X. This structure X, which might be vital to the behaviour in question, will be subtracted out simply because it was used during during both the baseline and experimental measure.
You have to do the same thing for PET scans.
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Ok.. makes sense. Not sure though that it implies that we're missing out on much relevant activity.
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Piano
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