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“Sound. Glorious Sound.”

-Introduction p.xii

Music, the Brain, and Ecstasy

By Robert Jourdain

Book Review by Eden McQueen

Neurobiology and Behavior, May 2007

Music, the Brain, and Ecstasy by Robert Jourdain is a creative and insightful look into musicology, the science of music. Through clear descriptions and thought-provoking interpretations Jourdain takes his reader from sound, the very simplest component of music, all the way up the neurological ladder to music’s mysterious ability to transform the mind in “ecstasy.” Jourdain is so thorough and patient in guiding the reader through the complex concepts of musicology that even a person with no musical background can easily follow his thought process. The book complimented the Neurobiology course very well, both in general content and in many of the author’s interpretations of the observed phenomena. A few particularly interesting concepts are discussed below.

Language is a fundamental part of everyday life. In fact, the use of verbal and written communication is so ubiquitous it is often taken for granted. Language is a keystone of society, plastered all over billboards, blasted over the radio, and flashed across television screens to connect and inform the waiting eyes and ears of citizens from all cultures and backgrounds. Equally important as these public messages however, is an individual’s private use of language. Processing new information, worrying, dreaming; all these things are done by the use of the inner language of thoughts. It is impossible for most people to imagine a world devoid of language, because the act of imagining requires thinking, which requires language. Could a person really “think” if he or she did not possess language? And if a person could not “think,” how could he or she establish and reflect upon one of the most fundamental of human thought processes: the concept of self? For this reason, acquiring language can be considered the most important step of human development, as it provides an individual with the ability to form a concept of self. The simplest way to discuss this idea is to seek out examples of individuals who, for various reasons, do not fit into the societal “standard” of language, and discuss the effects of divergence from the linguistic norm.

Personality is arguably one of humankind’s most complex and fascinating features. Unfortunately for academia, centuries of philosophical musings and psychological studies have shown that personality is also one of the hardest aspects of human nature to conceptualize, exacerbated by the fact that it is also difficult to give it a definition that everyone can agree upon. Putting disagreements aside for the purpose of the discussion at hand, in this essay term “personality” will be defined as an individual’s sense of self, and from this how that individual then interacts with his or her cultural environment. Knowing that every one of 6.5 billion human beings on the planet is in possession of this incredibly intricate feature, a question that may follow is “From where, exactly, does personality arise?” While some argue that personality is a result of genes inherited from an individual’s parents, others claim that it arises simply from the way one is raised. This age-old “nature versus nurture” argument has plagued behavioral scientists and parents throughout the ages. However, perhaps some clarity can be gained on this issue by taking a step back and looking at the even broader picture, that is, what is the mechanism that gave rise to personality in the first place? If personality is taken to be a function of the brain it can then be said that, at least from the perspective of a neurobiologist, personality is a biological aspect displayed by an organ of the body. This said, one may ask, “By what mechanism do all other biological processes arise?” Thanks to Darwin and other contributing scientists, we know the answer to this question is, of course, evolution by natural selection. Thus it must be that human personality, just like any other part or function of the human body, was formed and shaped and is continually formed and shaped by the process of natural selection.

If you ever have the chance, open up your skull and take a good look at your brain. Inside you will see layers: meninges, infoldings, grey matter, white matter. Looking closer you will see different parts of the brain: the medulla, cortex, and cerebellum. An even closer look reveals even more small parts, boxes within boxes, until finally you arrive at the nervous system’s most basic unit: the neuron. Highly specialized, as many cells are, neurons are set up to be carriers of electrical potential. They are like microscopic batteries that race information around the body, enabling an organism to respond to its environment. Information is relayed as signals in the form of a traveling electrochemical gradient which may serve to inhibit or excite a response. All neurons are essentially the same in structure and manner of function, the manner being this all-or-none blip of energy moving down an axon to a target elsewhere in the body.