This never-ending process is well exemplified by the famous cellist Pablo Casals who, when asked why he continued to practice at age 90, replied “Because I think I’m making progress”. In the context of the predictive coding theory of music, music listening is an active process of prediction and updating those predictions, which occurs at any exposure to new sounds over all temporal courses, from seconds up to an entire life. Merely listening to music in the course of days, or even hours and minutes, can result in modifications of the functioning of the brain. These neuroplastic changes, however, are not limited to the yearlong physical acts of motor practice with an instrument, as in the case of professional musicians. Consequently, music and musicians have been identified as a promising model for neuroplasticity, as the result of intense repeated exercise focused on the improvement of domain-specific skills. Research has for the most part focused on the perceptual and cognitive consequences of listening, linking it with the phenomenon of neuroplasticity or neural changes deriving from adaptation to new environmental demands as in the case of sensory deprivation or repeated exercise (see for an overview). Music listening is an experience that has been operationalized by psychologists and neuroscientists in recent decades as mainly concerning the auditory system and cognitive and affective functions. It is argued, further, that music listening, even when conceptualized in this aesthetic and eudaimonic framework, remains a learnable skill that changes the way brain structures respond to sounds and how they interact with each other. We propose that the connection between music and the reward system makes music listening a gate towards not only hedonia but also eudaimonia, namely a life well lived, full of meaning that aims at realizing one’s own “daimon” or true nature. Of special importance is the finding that neural activity in the reward circuit of the brain is a key component of a conscious listening experience. These latter range from objective and sensorial effects directly linked to the acoustic features of the music to the subjectively affective and even transformational effects for the listener. Thanks to the advent of neuroaesthetics, research on music cognition has broadened its scope by considering the multifarious phenomenon of listening in all its forms, including incidental listening up to the skillful attentive listening of experts, and all its possible effects. The last decades have seen a proliferation of music and brain studies, with a major focus on plastic changes as the outcome of continuous and prolonged engagement with music.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |