A neurobiological role of music in social bonding

By N. Wallin, B. Merkur, S. Brown, Walter J. Freeman. 2000

270 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Music is regarded in biological terms as originating in the brain, so that most explanations concentrate on the ways in which brains process information. Recent studies of the nonlinear dynamics of the primary sensory cortices have shown that the patterns that are constructed by chaotic nonlinear dynamics in cortical neuropil replace stimulus driven activity. This finding supports the concept that knowledge in brains is entirely constructed within them without direct transfer of information from outside. As knowledge increases by learning, brains of individuals grow progressively apart. The separation results from the uniqueness of the knowledge that is constructed within each brain. The resulting condition of isolation is known among philosophers as epistemological solipsism. This view is reinforced by the tenets of aesthetics, which emphasize the deeply personal experiences of individuals, not as active listeners but as passive recipients of beauty in music and other arts. Neither conventional neuroscience nor aesthetics can explain the deep emotional power of music to move humans to action. An alternative view is presented, in which human brains are seen to have evolved primarily in response to environmental pressures to bridge the solipsistic gulf between individuals, and to form integrated societies. An evolutionary origin is found in the neurohumoral mechanisms of parental bonding to altricial infants. A case is made that music together with dance have co-evolved biologically and culturally to serve as a technology of social bonding. Findings of anthropologists and psychiatrists are reviewed to show

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c7a19599cf89167c89d548b753760a55d9524a22

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In Cognitive Neuroscience

Citations in the corpus

The effects of mother–infant singing on emotional closeness, affect, anxiety, and stress hormones (2018, background): “There is a wide literature on the potential role of music as an evolutionary adaptation (Freeman, 2000; Huron, 2001; Tarr, Launay, & Dunbar, 2014).”
Provisional evidence that the arginine vasopressin 1a receptor gene is associated with musical memory (2007, background): “None of these studies looked into the relationship between music and AVP, although OXT has been postulated to be an important neurochemical underlying the ability attributed to music to establish group bonding (Freeman, 2001).”
It's all in the timing: Interpersonal synchrony increases affiliation (2009, background): “, Macdonald & Wilson, 2005) and it has been argued that interpersonal coordination may have been selected evolutionarily for its role in social cohesion (Freeman, 2000; McNeill, 1995), the causal effect of interpersonal synchrony on affiliation has not been experimentally established.”
Imagination and the Meaningful Brain (2003, background): “These same cultural forces are one among many elements that contributed to the depreciation of Freud and psychoanalysis in the United States, in contrast to Europe. I agree with Jonathan Lear (1998) that Freud is only a stalking horse, that the culture war is really about the nature of the human sou”
Individual Differences in Music Reward Experiences (2013, background): “Because of the importance of music activities in the bonding and cohesion of groups of persons in all cultures (Cross, 2001; Freeman, 2000), an additional four items most related to Social Reward were also included for the subsequent version.”