Abstract:

In the past decades, the concept of a ‘language-ready’ brain has stimulated language research from the perspective of evolution and development. However, parallels in research on the music-ready brain is still in its infancy (Arbib & Iriki, 2013; Seifert & Kim, 2006). To promote a comparison at the level of music- and language-readiness, we suggest beat induction as a promising starting point. In the current paper, first, we propose four fundamental mechanisms for beat induction, namely hierarchical structure processing, auditory-motor coupling, prediction, and social interaction. Second, we discuss two approaches investigating evolutionary origins and neurocognitive mechanisms of beat induction. Their relation to components of a language-ready brain is discussed in terms of two (out of seven) criteria introduced by Arbib (2005). One approach emphasizes the role of basal ganglia and dorsal pathway as well as the motor cortico-basal ganglia-thalamo-cortical circuit giving rise to the domain-general properties involved in beat induction and vocal learning, for example, prediction and auditory-motor coupling (Merchant et al., 2015; Merchant & Honing, 2014; Patel & Iversen, 2014; Patel, 2006). Concerning a component of the language-ready brain, these neural mechanisms are hypothesized to be involved in sequence processing, i.e. mapping hierarchical structure to temporal order. The other approach stresses mechanisms of social interaction as central to investigate the nature of beat induction (Fitch, 2012). We propose to extend the social approach by pointing out the relevance of social learning (Tomasello, 1996) with our Social Learning Hypothesis which claims that imitation-based social learning mechanisms which emerged on the scaffolding of mirror neuron systems shared with monkeys and apes are involved in beat induction. Concerning another component of the language-ready brain, complex imitation and its neural correlates in connection with mirror neuron systems is suggested to get more attention in future research on beat induction. An integrative approach of biological and social perspectives introduced in our paper provides important implications for the growing field of social cognitive neuroscience as well as cultural neuroscience (Lieberman, 2007), playing a significant role in research of language and music evolution.



References

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Citation:

Asano R. and Shi E. R. (2016). On A Music-ready Brain: Neural Basis, Mechanisms, And Their Contribution To The Language Evolution. In S.G. Roberts, C. Cuskley, L. McCrohon, L. Barceló-Coblijn, O. Fehér & T. Verhoef (eds.) The Evolution of Language: Proceedings of the 11th International Conference (EVOLANG11). Available online: http://evolang.org/neworleans/papers/200.html