The Evolution and Science Behind Our Love for Music: Uncovering the Truth

[Ivan Seeking]

How did and why would we evolve such that we receive enjoyment from music? Is this a more complex form of communication than simple speech, so that somehow musical hominids had an advantage over non-musical ones, or, could our fondness for rhythms be due to a memory of our mother's heartbeat, or even our own? Is the fondness for music a primitive or an advanced evolutionary trait - it seems to be common to man and beast alike, but do birds and whales really sing? How does music cause the release endorphins, or whatever happens when it causes us to relax while listening? In short, how and why do we enjoy it?

 

[fuzzyfelt]

What is the purpose for the fact that all humans have a pleasing response to a combination of things like contour, key, tone, tempo, rhythm? I hope someone will answer you properly, in the meantime here are some rough notes of various, fairly repetitive, possibilities.
1. Music could be rewarding because it is a function important to survival- improving our pattern recognition techniques, our recognition of time, or demonstrating these for greater chance of selection (Miller). This could be a reason for a brain’s tendency for binding.
2. As it evokes emotion, and as emotions may be a central organizing process for consciousness (Panskepp), then the function could be to effect cognition for survival or other purposes.
3. Important mammalian emotions include fear, rage, separation distress, play, lust, nurturance, seeking; awareness of mortality, another (Panskepp), exercising these emotions in a pretend play scenario may be important. It could be used to distinguish our emotions (disgorging perhaps in our free time) for better use of them, either for natural selection, or for greater cognition that could be involved in other purposes.
4. As could appreciation of the exercise of creative freedom, possibly further to do with dealing with our awareness of mortality.
5. As music activates the ancient cerebellar vermis (Letivin), the implications of function could be archetypal, or at least something ‘ancient and important’.
6. As different parts of the brain react to different elements of music, the function of these elements may be constancies, eg, temporal order or Schoenberg’s atonality, essences of perfect platonic universals(along Shopenhauers lines).
7. As different parts of the brain react to different elements of music and filter and combine them within the brain so that the brain creates the music we hear (Mark Jude Tramo), Hegel’s ‘concept’ could be implied as function.
8. In music as in all art, primary function, logic, objectivity, etc is suspended for more ambiguous, open appreciation, for example via metaphor, the function of which may be prelogical judgement for morality(Kant), greater perception, more integrated, holistic perception or knowledge, again for survival or other purposes.
9. Music, like all art, could be a human response to nature, symbolising it, giving it an artificial rather than real state, from which all other knowledge is produced, for adaptive or other purposes. ‘Classifying objects into categories is obviously vital for survival… Seeing a deep similarity- a common denominator as it were- between disparate entities is the basis of all concept formation whether the concepts are perceptual or abstract’-Ramachandran and Hirstein.
10. As Ivan mentions it could be a language (Cooke), for various possible purposes.
11. Music’s function could be something like enhancing perception, I think, via aesthetic subsystem. (Josephson)
12. Music could be a functionless bi-product of important human functions (Pinker).
13. As different activities coincide with differing exposure to musical style, musical appreciation may be learned to a degree and this could imply a social function.(Henslick?)
14. The answer could be beyond our understanding (Langer).
http://cogweb.ucla.edu/ep/Music_Leutwyler_01.html
http://www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~bdj10/...erslautern.txt

 

[somasimple]

Here is a copy of a good paper:

Music and the Brain
What is the secret of music's strange power? Seeking an answer, scientists are piecing together a picture of what happens in the brains of listeners and musicians
By Norman M. Weinberger
Music surrounds us–and we wouldn't have it any other way. An exhilarating orchestral crescendo can bring tears to our eyes and send shivers down our spines. Background swells add emotive punch to movies and TV shows. Organists at ballgames bring us together, cheering, to our feet. Parents croon soothingly to infants.
And our fondness has deep roots: we have been making music since the dawn of culture. More than 30,000 years ago early humans were already playing bone flutes, percussive instruments and jaw harps--and all known societies throughout the world have had music. Indeed, our appreciation appears to be innate. Infants as young as two months will turn toward consonant, or pleasant, sounds and away from dissonant ones. And when a symphony's denouement gives delicious chills, the same kinds of pleasure centers of the brain light up as they do when eating chocolate, having sex or taking cocaine.
Therein lies an intriguing biological mystery: Why is music--universally beloved and uniquely powerful in its ability to wring emotions--so pervasive and important to us? Could its emergence have enhanced human survival somehow, such as by aiding courtship, as Geoffrey F. Miller of the University of New Mexico has proposed? Or did it originally help us by promoting social cohesion in groups that had grown too large for grooming, as suggested by Robin M. Dunbar of the University of Liverpool? On the other hand, to use the words of Harvard University's Steven Pinker, is music just "auditory cheesecake"--a happy accident of evolution that happens to tickle the brain's fancy?
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Why is music--universally beloved and uniquely powerful in its ability to wring emotions--so pervasive and important to us?
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Neuroscientists don't yet have the ultimate answers. But in recent years we have begun to gain a firmer understanding of where and how music is processed in the brain, which should lay a foundation for answering evolutionary questions. Collectively, studies of patients with brain injuries and imaging of healthy individuals have unexpectedly uncovered no specialized brain "center" for music. Rather music engages many areas distributed throughout the brain, including those that are normally involved in other kinds of cognition. The active areas vary with the person's individual experiences and musical training. The ear has the fewest sensory cells of any sensory organ--3,500 inner hair cells occupy the ear versus 100 million photoreceptors in the eye. Yet our mental response to music is remarkably adaptable; even a little study can "retune" the way the brain handles musical inputs.
Inner Songs
Until the advent of modern imaging techniques, scientists gleaned insights about the brain's inner musical workings mainly by studying patients--including famous composers--who had experienced brain deficits as a result of injury, stroke or other ailments. For example, in 1933 French composer Maurice Ravel began to exhibit symptoms of what might have been focal cerebral degeneration, a disorder in which discrete areas of brain tissue atrophy. His conceptual abilities remained intact--he could still hear and remember his old compositions and play scales. But he could not write music. Speaking of his proposed opera Jeanne d'Arc, Ravel confided to a friend, "...this opera is here, in my head. I hear it, but I will never write it. It's over. I can no longer write my music." Ravel died four years later, following an unsuccessful neurosurgical procedure. The case lent credence to the idea that the brain might not have a specific center for music.
The experience of another composer additionally suggested that music and speech were processed independently. After suffering a stroke in 1953, Vissarion Shebalin, a Russian composer, could no longer talk or understand speech, yet he retained the ability to write music until his death 10 years later. Thus, the supposition of independent processing appears to be true, although more recent work has yielded a more nuanced understanding, relating to two of the features that music and language share: both are a means of communication, and each has a syntax, a set of rules that govern the proper combination of elements (notes and words, respectively). According to Aniruddh D. Patel of the Neurosciences Institute in San Diego, imaging findings suggest that a region in the frontal lobe enables proper construction of the syntax of both music and language, whereas other parts of the brain handle related aspects of language and music processing.
Imaging studies have also given us a fairly fine-grained picture of the brain's responses to music. These results make the most sense when placed in the context of how the ear conveys sounds in general to the brain. Like other sensory systems, the one for hearing is arranged hierarchically, consisting of a string of neural processing stations from the ear to the highest level, the auditory cortex. The processing of sounds, such as musical tones, begins with the inner ear (cochlea), which sorts complex sounds produced by, say, a violin, into their constituent elementary frequencies. The cochlea then transmits this information along separately tuned fibers of the auditory nerve as trains of neural discharges. Eventually these trains reach the auditory cortex in the temporal lobe. Different cells in the auditory system of the brain respond best to certain frequencies; neighboring cells have overlapping tuning curves so that there are no gaps. Indeed, because neighboring cells are tuned to similar frequencies, the auditory cortex forms a "frequency map" across its surface.
The response to music per se, though, is more complicated. Music consists of a sequence of tones, and perception of it depends on grasping the relationships between sounds. Many areas of the brain are involved in processing the various components of music. Consider tone, which encompasses both the frequencies and loudness of a sound. At one time, investigators suspected that cells tuned to a specific frequency always responded the same way when that frequency was detected.
But in the late 1980s Thomas M. McKenna and I, working in my laboratory at the University of California at Irvine, raised doubts about that notion when we studied contour, which is the pattern of rising and falling pitches that is the basis for all melodies. We constructed melodies consisting of different contours using the same five tones and then recorded the responses of single neurons in the auditory cortices of cats. We found that cell responses (the number of discharges) varied with the contour. Responses depended on the location of a given tone within a melody; cells may fire more vigorously when that tone is preceded by other tones rather than when it is the first. Moreover, cells react differently to the same tone when it is part of an ascending contour (low to high tones) than when it is part of a descending or more complex one. These findings show that the pattern of a melody matters: processing in the auditory system is not like the simple relaying of sound in a telephone or stereo system.
Although most research has focused on melody, rhythm (the relative lengths and spacing of notes), harmony (the relation of two or more simultaneous tones) and timbre (the characteristic difference in sound between two instruments playing the same tone) are also of interest. Studies of rhythm have concluded that one hemisphere is more involved, although they disagree on which hemisphere. The problem is that different tasks and even different rhythmic stimuli can demand different processing capacities. For example, the left temporal lobe seems to process briefer stimuli than the right temporal lobe and so would be more involved when the listener is trying to discern rhythm while hearing briefer musical sounds.
The situation is clearer for harmony. Imaging studies of the cerebral cortex find greater activation in the auditory regions of the right temporal lobe when subjects are focusing on aspects of harmony. Timbre also has been "assigned" a right temporal lobe preference. Patients whose temporal lobe has been removed (such as to eliminate seizures) show deficits in discriminating timbre if tissue from the right, but not the left, hemisphere is excised. In addition, the right temporal lobe becomes active in normal subjects when they discriminate between different timbres.
Brain responses also depend on the experiences and training of the listener. Even a little training can quickly alter the brain's reactions. For instance, until about 10 years ago, scientists believed that tuning was "fixed" for each cell in the auditory cortex. Our studies on contour, however, made us suspect that cell tuning might be altered during learning so that certain cells become extra sensitive to sounds that attract attention and are stored in memory.
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Learning retunes the brain, so that more cells respond best to behaviorally important sounds.
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To find out, Jon S. Bakin, Jean-Marc Edeline and I conducted a series of experiments during the 1990s in which we asked whether the basic organization of the auditory cortex changes when a subject learns that a certain tone is somehow important. Our group first presented guinea pigs with many different tones and recorded the responses of various cells in the auditory cortex to determine which tones produced the greatest responses. Next, we taught the subjects that a specific, nonpreferred tone was important by making it a signal for a mild foot shock. The guinea pigs learned this association within a few minutes. We then determined the cells' responses again, immediately after the training and at various times up to two months later. The neurons' tuning preferences had shifted from their original frequencies to that of the signal tone. Thus, learning retunes the brain so that more cells respond best to behaviorally important sounds. This cellular adjustment process extends across the cortex, "editing" the frequency map so that a greater area of the cortex processes important tones. One can tell which frequencies are important to an animal simply by determining the frequency organization of its auditory cortex.
The retuning was remarkably durable: it became stronger over time without additional training and lasted for months. These findings initiated a growing body of research indicating that one way the brain stores the learned importance of a stimulus is by devoting more brain cells to the processing of that stimulus. Although it is not possible to record from single neurons in humans during learning, brain-imaging studies can detect changes in the average magnitude of responses of thousands of cells in various parts of the cortex. In 1998 Ray Dolan and his colleagues at University College London trained human subjects in a similar type of task by teaching them that a particular tone was significant. The group found that learning produces the same type of tuning shifts seen in animals. The long-term effects of learning by retuning may help explain why we can quickly recognize a familiar melody in a noisy room and also why people suffering memory loss from neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's can still recall music that they learned in the past.
Even when incoming sound is absent, we all can "listen" by recalling a piece of music. Think of any piece you know and "play" it in your head. Where in the brain is this music playing? In 1999 Andrea R. Halpern of Bucknell University and Robert J. Zatorre of the Montreal Neurological Institute at McGill University conducted a study in which they scanned the brains of nonmusicians who either listened to music or imagined hearing the same piece of music. Many of the same areas in the temporal lobes that were involved in listening to the melodies were also activated when those melodies were merely imagined.
Well-Developed Brains
Studies of musicians have extended many of the findings noted above, dramatically confirming the brain's ability to revise its wiring in support of musical activities. Just as some training increases the number of cells that respond to a sound when it becomes important, prolonged learning produces more marked responses and physical changes in the brain. Musicians, who usually practice many hours a day for years, show such effects--their responses to music differ from those of nonmusicians; they also exhibit hyperdevelopment of certain areas in their brains.
Christo Pantev, then at the University of Münster in Germany, led one such study in 1998. He found that when musicians listen to a piano playing, about 25 percent more of their left-hemisphere auditory regions respond than do so in nonmusicians. This effect is specific to musical tones and does not occur with similar but nonmusical sounds. Moreover, the authors found that this expansion of response area is greater the younger the age at which lessons began. Studies of children suggest that early musical experience may facilitate development. In 2004 Antoine Shahin, Larry E. Roberts and Laurel J. Trainor of McMaster University in Ontario recorded brain responses to piano, violin and pure tones in four- and five-year-old children. Youngsters who had received greater exposure to music in their homes showed enhanced brain auditory activity, comparable to that of unexposed kids about three years older.
Musicians may display greater responses to sounds, in part because their auditory cortex is more extensive. Peter Schneider and his co-workers at the University of Heidelberg in Germany reported in 2002 that the volume of this cortex in musicians was 130 percent larger. The percentages of volume increase were linked to levels of musical training, suggesting that learning music proportionally increases the number of neurons that process it.
In addition, musicians' brains devote more area toward motor control of the fingers used to play an instrument. In 1995 Thomas Elbert of the University of Konstanz in Germany and his colleagues reported that the brain regions that receive sensory inputs from the second to fifth (index to pinkie) fingers of the left hand were significantly larger in violinists; these are precisely the fingers used to make rapid and complex movements in violin playing. In contrast, they observed no enlargement of the areas of the cortex that handle inputs from the right hand, which controls the bow and requires no special finger movements. Nonmusicians do not exhibit these differences. Further, Pantev, now at the Rotman Research Institute at the University of Toronto, reported in 2001 that the brains of professional trumpet players react in such an intensified manner only to the sound of a trumpet--not, for example, to that of a violin.
Musicians also must develop greater ability to use both hands, particularly for keyboard playing. Thus, one might expect that this increased coordination between the motor regions of the two hemispheres has an anatomical substrate. That seems to be the case. The anterior corpus callosum, which contains the band of fibers that interconnects the two motor areas, is larger in musicians than in nonmusicians. Again, the extent of increase is greater the earlier the music lessons began. Other studies suggest that the actual size of the motor cortex, as well as that of the cerebellum--a region at the back of the brain involved in motor coordination--is greater in musicians.
Ode to Joy--or Sorrow
beyond examining how the brain processes the auditory aspects of music, investigators are exploring how it evokes strong emotional reactions. Pioneering work in 1991 by John A. Sloboda of Keele University in England revealed that more than 80 percent of sampled adults reported physical responses to music, including thrills, laughter or tears. In a 1995 study by Jaak Panksepp of Bowling Green State University, 70 percent of several hundred young men and woman polled said that they enjoyed music "because it elicits emotions and feelings." Underscoring those surveys was the result of a 1997 study by Carol L. Krumhansl of Cornell University. She and her co-workers recorded heart rate, blood pressure, respiration and other physiological measures during the presentation of various pieces that were considered to express happiness, sadness, fear or tension. Each type of music elicited a different but consistent pattern of physiological change across subjects.
Until recently, scientists knew little about the brain mechanisms involved. One clue, though, comes from a woman known as I. R. (initials are used to maintain privacy), who suffered bilateral damage to her temporal lobes, including auditory cortical regions. Her intelligence and general memory are normal, and she has no language difficulties. Yet she can make no sense of nor recognize any music, whether it is a previously known piece or a new piece that she has heard repeatedly. She cannot distinguish between two melodies no matter how different they are. Nevertheless, she has normal emotional reactions to different types of music; her ability to identify an emotion with a particular musical selection is completely normal! From this case we learn that the temporal lobe is needed to comprehend melody but not to produce an emotional reaction, which is both subcortical and involves aspects of the frontal lobes.
An imaging experiment in 2001 by Anne Blood and Zatorre of McGill sought to better specify the brain regions involved in emotional reactions to music. This study used mild emotional stimuli, those associated with people's reactions to musical consonance versus dissonance. Consonant musical intervals are generally those for which a simple ratio of frequencies exists between two tones. An example is middle C (about 260 hertz, or Hz) and middle G (about 390 Hz). Their ratio is 2:3, forming a pleasant-sounding "perfect fifth" interval when they are played simultaneously. In contrast, middle C and C sharp (about 277 Hz) have a "complex" ratio of about 8:9 and are considered unpleasant, having a "rough" sound.

 

[somasimple]

and the end of this article.

What are the underlying brain mechanisms of that experience? PET (positron emission tomography) imaging conducted while subjects listened to consonant or dissonant chords showed that different localized brain regions were involved in the emotional reactions. Consonant chords activated the orbitofrontal area (part of the reward system) of the right hemisphere and also part of an area below the corpus callosum. In contrast, dissonant chords activated the right parahippocampal gyrus. Thus, at least two systems, each dealing with a different type of emotion, are at work when the brain processes emotions related to music. How the different patterns of activity in the auditory system might be specifically linked to these differentially reactive regions of the hemispheres remains to be discovered.
In the same year, Blood and Zatorre added a further clue to how music evokes pleasure. When they scanned the brains of musicians who had chills of euphoria when listening to music, they found that music activated some of the same reward systems that are stimulated by food, sex and addictive drugs.
Overall, findings to date indicate that music has a biological basis and that the brain has a functional organization for music. It seems fairly clear, even at this early stage of inquiry, that many brain regions participate in specific aspects of music processing, whether supporting perception (such as apprehending a melody) or evoking emotional reactions. Musicians appear to have additional specializations, particularly hyperdevelopment of some brain structures. These effects demonstrate that learning retunes the brain, increasing both the responses of individual cells and the number of cells that react strongly to sounds that become important to an individual. As research on music and the brain continues, we can anticipate a greater understanding not only about music and its reasons for existence but also about how multifaceted it really is

 

[cotarded]

Superb article !
Thanks =).

 

[waht]

As the article suggests, music affects distributed areas of the bain, in one area it touches the emotional part hence we get different feelings,

Consider a musician randomly experimenting with differents sounds when composing music, he then finds out by trial and error, when playing a certain tune, he gets a feeling or awe. Then he puts it all together into a musical piece.

Since all humans are similar, the music should similarly affect the emotional part of the brain, depending on your nurture.


This is just my theory, I'm not a musician.

 

[fuzzyfelt]

As the article suggests, music affects distributed areas of the bain, in one area it touches the emotional part hence we get different feelings,
Consider a musician randomly experimenting with differents sounds when composing music, he then finds out by trial and error, when playing a certain tune, he gets a feeling or awe. Then he puts it all together into a musical piece.
Since all humans are similar, the music should similarly affect the emotional part of the brain, depending on your nurture.
This is just my theory, I'm not a musician.

Not all composers compose by trial and error, nor even by listening to sounds. There are examples of composition existing in the brain first. Some composers (e.g. Mozart) have claimed to have seen a whole new composition in a flash. Paul McCartney woke up humming 'Yesterday', and wondered who wrote it, to realize he just did. Beethoven composed while deaf. As well, some similarly enjoy the music without hearing it. Like Bach preferring to read music in the comfort of his armchair at home than going to hear a concert.

 

[El Hombre Invisible]

Does anyone know much about the theory of memes? I don't have much of a grasp on it. I read one article and on the back of that bought The Meme Machine by Susan Blackmoore, a book so badly written I buried it. As such, this is a novice's understanding.

The theory is that units of information, memes, like genes, self-replicate, and much faster than genes do. Picking up a catchy tune, for instance, or reading a great book, or passing on some great cooking tip, or some other technique. Less desirable memes die out.

So some caveman somewhere starts beating two rocks together randomly, making bad noise. People walk away. Another caveman does so with rhythm. People stop and listen. So far, if this were the first moment a musical meme reproduced, there is a level of coincidence that the beat in question was innately attractive to the animal hearing it - a case of information and genetics crossing paths.

Those listening to the good beat admire the percussionist. They then strive to reproduce that beat so that they might be similarly admired (in the exact same manner a young teenager will try to imitate his or her favourite rock star). Not everyone will be capable of it, and those that are seem more attractive, and may succeed in reproduction better and beget children with their talents. Moreover, each good reproducer of the beat will pass that on to others, increasing the spread of the meme, increasing its importance in society, and increasing the number of people capable of reproducing it.

So already, the meme has had some impact on the evolution of the species. Like genes, the beat might not be reproduced exactly, but will undergo minor (or even major) mutations. Some of these will be awful and die, some will be good and prosper, but some might be even better than the original beat. But what is better? Perhaps it appeals to a wider range of people (attracts listeners the original beat didn't), or perhaps it is more popular within those that liked the original. In the former, the meme has evolved towards increased suitability in its host carrier. In the latter, the meme has essentially changed its host environment to increase its own effect effectiveness (i.e. that meme may not have been successful without the one before it). For instance, we now would admire a piper on the streets of Edinburgh, but what would the first rock-hitters have made of it? They'd probably have found a different use for their rocks. Anyway, whether a beat appeals to more people, or whether it appeals to a given person more, it is what we'd call a catchier riff.

So the meme has found an aspect of our genetics that both we and it can exploit. The hitherto unobserved talents possessed by the percussionist improve his or her fitness, while the talent itself improves the meme's fitness. From here on, the two go hand in hand, with more rhythmically, and later musically, inclined humans becoming more prevalent due to their fitness, while at the same time increasing the fitness of the memes and spreading existing ones further.

The leap from beats to notes is easy enough to make. Even a drum kit wouldn't work without pitch. Just like finding a good beat, finding the objects that compliment each other well would have the same effects of repulsion and attraction, the difference being that the attracted audience has already evolved to be musically inclined.

Obviously there had to be something in the human mind that was predisposed to enjoy the beat, tune, whatever, but I think the point is that that's what memes do - they find the parts of us that will increase their chances of survival and reproduction. We like music because music found us.

I don't know what the latest thinking on the theory is. Anyone got more up to date thinking/debunking?

 

[somasimple]

http://www.susanblackmore.co.uk/memetics/index.htm

 

[cotarded]

waht said:
music affects distributed areas of the brain, in one area it touches the emotional part hence we get different feelings

fi said:
Not all composers compose by trial and error, nor even by listening to sounds. There are examples of composition existing in the brain first.

The way I reconcile these two bits is to ignore waht's assumption of a trial and error discovery. Maybe initially it occurs that way, or maybe the musician only needs to be a reciever for some time first, but eventually I believe the brain learns to translate it's own emotional state into music. Taking the trial and error example again, although acknowledging it's not the only route, one might discover different emotional states resonating with sounds frequently enough for their mind to begin cracking the underlying relationship, producing hypotheses (in the form of inspirations or ideas that come into their mind for music that would hopefully be resonant with their current state of mind) that can be tested to refine the internal machinery. Ultimately you have a finely tuned system in the musician's mind for translating their mood - and in the gifted musician this can be expanded to any mood they can imagine. So I think of music as some sort of really crude hologram of the brain's state. So I think a good bit of musical appreciation then depends on your receptivity to influence from sound, and your congruence with the author's mind (which can be trained - if you see people you esteem laughing to a type of music, your brain probably modifies itself slightly, in the auditory circuit, so that the music has a higher likelihood of resonating with that emotion).

Of course I only apply all of that direct brain influence stuff to certain subtle basic parts of much which are universal to all genres. Much of the stylistic difference (although I believe death metal is more likely to whip your brain into adrenergic overdrive than, say, country) can be attributed to bits that aren't naturally resonant - i.e. if you weren't paying attention at all they wouldn't affect you - but that your mind can appreciate.

Whatever, whenever I write something like this I can't manage to believe it once I've fleshed it out. I'm rushing out the door now so no time to reflect, edit, and possibly delete; make of it what you will. I certainly think there is some natural resonant aspect, and that in the future people will be able to hack a studied mind with light/sound (to what degree I'm not yet sure).

lates,
cotarded

 

[Spin_Network]

Does anyone know much about the theory of memes? I don't have much of a grasp on it. I read one article and on the back of that bought The Meme Machine by Susan Blackmoore, a book so badly written I buried it. As such, this is a novice's understanding.
The theory is that units of information, memes, like genes, self-replicate, and much faster than genes do. Picking up a catchy tune, for instance, or reading a great book, or passing on some great cooking tip, or some other technique. Less desirable memes die out.
So some caveman somewhere starts beating two rocks together randomly, making bad noise. People walk away. Another caveman does so with rhythm. People stop and listen. So far, if this were the first moment a musical meme reproduced, there is a level of coincidence that the beat in question was innately attractive to the animal hearing it - a case of information and genetics crossing paths.
Those listening to the good beat admire the percussionist. They then strive to reproduce that beat so that they might be similarly admired (in the exact same manner a young teenager will try to imitate his or her favourite rock star). Not everyone will be capable of it, and those that are seem more attractive, and may succeed in reproduction better and beget children with their talents. Moreover, each good reproducer of the beat will pass that on to others, increasing the spread of the meme, increasing its importance in society, and increasing the number of people capable of reproducing it.
So already, the meme has had some impact on the evolution of the species. Like genes, the beat might not be reproduced exactly, but will undergo minor (or even major) mutations. Some of these will be awful and die, some will be good and prosper, but some might be even better than the original beat. But what is better? Perhaps it appeals to a wider range of people (attracts listeners the original beat didn't), or perhaps it is more popular within those that liked the original. In the former, the meme has evolved towards increased suitability in its host carrier. In the latter, the meme has essentially changed its host environment to increase its own effect effectiveness (i.e. that meme may not have been successful without the one before it). For instance, we now would admire a piper on the streets of Edinburgh, but what would the first rock-hitters have made of it? They'd probably have found a different use for their rocks. Anyway, whether a beat appeals to more people, or whether it appeals to a given person more, it is what we'd call a catchier riff.
So the meme has found an aspect of our genetics that both we and it can exploit. The hitherto unobserved talents possessed by the percussionist improve his or her fitness, while the talent itself improves the meme's fitness. From here on, the two go hand in hand, with more rhythmically, and later musically, inclined humans becoming more prevalent due to their fitness, while at the same time increasing the fitness of the memes and spreading existing ones further.
The leap from beats to notes is easy enough to make. Even a drum kit wouldn't work without pitch. Just like finding a good beat, finding the objects that compliment each other well would have the same effects of repulsion and attraction, the difference being that the attracted audience has already evolved to be musically inclined.
Obviously there had to be something in the human mind that was predisposed to enjoy the beat, tune, whatever, but I think the point is that that's what memes do - they find the parts of us that will increase their chances of survival and reproduction. We like music because music found us.
I don't know what the latest thinking on the theory is. Anyone got more up to date thinking/debunking?

I think the "pre-function" was actually comunication, the priority was 'species' oriented rather than socially inquisition?

For instance, prior to the use of tonic sounds, Humans/Like-types, would have had not verbal comunication, the mouth developed from an "air-breathing-hole" only, to that of using the moments between breaths to play around with sounds, one human may have just twiddled with the intake of air, and copied the whistling of external birds etc..?

The language of communication prior to the spoken word, was in effect 'birdlike' for the developing Humans. Once the tonic range was completed, emerging offspring would develop whistling skills to a complete "language", this is still inherent in some of today's isolated communities of tribal culture. Now if you remember your first try at "whistling", you may recall that the first go ended up as a 'duff' note that amused all your friends, my niece for instance keeps making sounds like (fff..fff..thth..!).

This action is the first foundation of actual speach recgognition, as a species we actually made more 'duff' notes that 'pure' notes, it was the msitakes that were developed into spoken words, but deep inside the brain, the tonic pure structure of primordial 'whistles', filters out the language into associated meanings, example if you are walking down a street and see an old friend at some distance away, it is the "whistle-mode" that you instinctly go into, this would get a response form quite a few strangers , all of who turn their heads into the direction of the"tuned" sound.

I would have thought music is a repeat of those ancient communications, where a two-party team of tribesmen used to entice "birds" down from the safety of trees by mimicking their birdsong, and thereby the use of sound provided us with an easy option for survival, food comes down from tree beckoned by the fake-call?

Tonic information brings parties together in ancient times, as well as today, such as a DJ playing music, triggers people to gather at one location, the dancefloor?

The Human development of music for communication is nothing than an extension, of the inherent ancient process of a 'copied' natural frequency, the whistle?

 

[fuzzyfelt]

Although I like the previous answers posted, I don’t think they say enough, especially about the depth of emotion involved- similar to food or sex according to Somasimple’s post.

Emotion is something like experiential judgement, evolved (at least in reptiles and higher phyla) so that less room in the brain is devoted to stimulus-response mechanisms, and more room devoted to information storage, and because it allows flexible decisions. (Cabanac)

Emotion became greatly involved in the processing of stimulus, I’m not quite sure how, but we need to be emotionally ready to receive information, and this information is filtered according to categories useful to us (Newton). Visually- motion, then light waves (colour) are bound according to similarity, then form, etc are grasped; aurally- novel sounds, the absence of sound, harmony etc. Emotions must play an important part here, as how we feel about things must help us decide how to react. In time, surely more situations and related emotions have evolved. I think mental creativity exists at this stage- exploring (integrating, testing seemingly unrelated pathways…) symbolized phenomena, our emotions involved with this, and possible reactions. Eventually we become consciously aware of these emotionally contrived symbols of phenomena. (Sometimes, in fact, we react before awareness.)(Panskepp, Domasio?)

Creative activity is translating perceived, symbols into external symbols- cotarded’s hologram. ‘By concretely symbolizing an emotion, we explore far-reaching meanings that go far beyond stimulus-response theories that would try to exhaust the meaning of emotion by nailing it to the stimulus or type of stimulus that triggers the emotional “response”(see Panksepp 1988).’-Ellis. External symbolisation has allowed us to record and explore further abstracted concepts to the extent of all conscious knowledge, including, or culminating so far, as the physics exhibited in this forum.
Panksepp cites a reason for this as the need to experience emotions, real or symbolised, to provide reason for living.

During the course of this evolution, at some stage, some spot in our brain came to conceive the 4 dimensions we now perceive. I suspect, with some help from Kant, that where visual art helped us come to understand more the spatial dimensions, music was important in conceiving the temporal dimension, and its effect on us. That is, the distinctions we evolved to understand between sounds and there absence developed into distinctions between their similarities, discords, patterns and focus in time, due to our continuing exploration and needs. I think the principles of successful art must be a result of how phenomena is emotionally originally perceived. For example, focus in art reflects the mental conditions necessary for conscious awareness. I think evolutionary needs, like Spin Network’s communicative reasons or El Hombre’s social, dictated further exploration.

I think music touches us on many levels (an all inclusive idea) that it touches across various phyla, and across the human species, as it is so closely connected to our understanding. Also that it has evolved to touch us on a cultural level, with styles that we acquired an appreciation for, for social purposes. Also, on an individual level, as the emotions evoked are necessarily ambiguous due to the fluidity of creative process, and is conducive to individual interpretation. Finally, I’m of the view that there is also a greater, highly speculative, highly optimistic, platonic/zennish/slightly Hegelian reason why we like music/art- that the path the survival of the organism has chosen for us to understand the universe can lead somewhere and the involvement of emotions is, as has evolved to be the case, an important part of the journey. That science and other knowledge, emotions, and integrated in creativity will make sense of the route and as a consequence discover its destination.

 

[VikingF]

My personal "theory" is that we like music because of human's fascination of order.