Using Music to Tap Into a Universal Neural Grammar

The human brain is exquisitely sensitive to musical stimuli. Cognitive neuroscientists and physicians are discovering that mere exposure to different musical forms can induce a wide variety of ‘extra-musical ’ brain responses, alleviate the symptoms of challenging neurological disorders and accelerate physiological development in premature infants. I suggest that music has the capacity to enhance both normal and suboptimal neural functioning because there are parallels between the temporal properties of musical forms and the dynamic properties of distributed neural networks. According to this musical brain metaphor, the brain uses neural codes made up of rhythmic and frequency-based patterns that resemble musical structures. Viewing the brain as a dynamic system that operates according to ‘music-like ' principles provides a new and potentially useful approach for probing the neural underpinnings of cognition at the appropriate temporal scale. To this end, I introduce a theory of higher brain function referred to as the Musical Brain Model