Music and the Brain

Origins of music

• 05 October 2011 by Sandra Baron, Santa Cruz, California, US
• Magazine issue 2833.
  

When reading the review by Bob Holmes of Mark Changizi’s book Harnessed: How language and music mimicked nature and transformed ape to man (20 August, p 48) I noticed an oversight in the theory.

It is interesting that music and language use neuronal circuits that evolved to discern sounds in our environment, but I believe it is the brain’s natural inclination to recognise complex patterns that makes music so compelling for us.

I think it is pretty clear that the brain creates and enjoys music as one way to satisfy its constant need for pleasant and interesting stimulation. Music’s physical and emotional punch comes from the combination of this mental and sensory experience mixed with our innate sense of rhythm from the metronome in our chests.

 

Reflections on Special Relativity

There is a wonderful book on Cosmology: Its called Cosmology, the Science of the Universe by Edward Harrison. It explains difficult concepts very concisely. In the chapter on Special Relativity I came across the following quote:

“Brief happenings are events denoted by points in spacetime diagrams. Things that endure, such as observers, are world lines extending from the past to the future. An observer receives light signals that come in from the past and transmits light signals that go out into the future.”

What an incredible image of us existing on the brink between future and past. Any information that comes at us from the environment, comes from the past. And, anything we transmit, a word, an action, our image, transmits into the future.  Even as a thought makes its  journey from our brain to our mouth, it’s coming from the past to be transmitted to the future.  Instead of time being either a river we are wading in, or an unfolding dimension propagating along with space, we find ourselves at a nexus. Each and every piece of matter is located at a similar junction. This image/idea is somehow haunting and visceral.

But, what about energy?  Is it different for energy because of the speed of light? Harrison says that “the fact that light moves at speed c, and c is a speed limit for all particles moving at high energy, is not in itself greatly astonishing. It is the constancy of c for all observers, even for observers moving in opposite directions at high-speed, that astonishes.”  Light travels through spacetime, subject to the laws of physics, but it doesn’t receive and transmit information, it is information, strange.

Dark matter impression

Objects of high mass distort space-time. If the object is no longer there, could a distortion remain in space-time? Perhaps space-time doesn’t bounce back unless a force acts upon it. If this were the case, the distorted space-time would “behave” as if there was mass there, and that is how we would interpret it.

Could this be the missing (dark) matter in the universe?

Self-optimizing agent

Any living thing that learns (all mobile life forms) is a self-optimizing agent. For humans, this factor motivates much or maybe even most of what we do.  We observe and copy what other people do, this gives us a huge advantage, a short-cut to shared knowledge. We constantly evaluate and learn from our experiences. If you stop and ask what motivates our choices in life, you can see self-optimization lurking. If we plan ahead (which we constantly do) we  improve our performance. So you find yourself daydreaming about making dinner, having a conversation, taking a trip. Brain research has found that to the brain there is not a lot of difference between doing something and thinking about doing something. Musicians can improve their technique by mentally practising.

In some situations, thinking about the future and not the present  can cost you your life, but in most situations, planning for the future optimizes more, the present is short, the future long. So in the soup of human motivations, we may find that this is a biggie. A fun further question is always, why? Why is life self-optimizing? We can surmise that if it wasn’t, we wouldn’t be here.

Computational Equivalence

Stephen Wolfram’s Principal of Computational Equivalence kind of puts everything on equal footing. The concept of  “comparing the computational sophistication of systems that we study with the computational sophistication of the systems we use to study them” is a unique way of looking at issues related to observation and measurement, a mainstay of philosophy and quantum physics. His Principal of Computational Equivalence indicates that our assumption that our analytical abilities far outstrip the natural processes we study is wrong.  Therefore, our predictions can not be any shorter than the actual computations that create the behavior we study – they are  “computationally irreducible” (except for systems with very simple or repetitive behavior). Could this be why there is no Theory of Everything?

I often feel, when I look at the world, that I am looking at a mirror. I figure this is a function of the way the world comes in through my senses to be interpreted by my brain. The senses, the brain, that’s me. The world merely stimuli. But, if I think of myself as a computational system measuring another system of comparable complexity; then the mirror is not a function of my being cut off from the real world, but merely a function of all the things shared between me and everything outside. One of the main tenets of life is that energetic transactions are circumscribed in space. My chemistry is not unique, but it resides within my skin, that is the basic underlying requirement for life – the cell wall, the body. The ability to replicate, delineates life in time as well as in space. By replicating,  life can go forward in time and be subject to natural selection.

To describe any system that exact same delineation is needed. What is the system being examined? How do I carve it out. It is fun that systems operate on multiple scales.  We can pick a large-scale to examine, and ignore everything at smaller scales.  Yet, according to Wolfram, those processes at smaller scales are not necessarily simpler.  But, anyone who has studied cell biology already knew that! So what do we do with life, with the universe, all made up of systems within systems. We study pieces as we define them and then get frustrated that gravity doesn’t fit in with quantum mechanics. Perhaps we try to reduce too far. As Wolfram points out, there may be a simple equation that represents the Theory of Everything, but there is no way to recognize it without letting it run from the beginning.  And what do you get when you do that? Everything, irreducibly everything.

From the simple comes the complex

In Stephen Wolfram’s New Science he fully develops a theory that complex outcomes are likely to be based on simple rules. When I started reading this huge book, I was already familiar with cellular automata, and how a very simple program reiterated many times can and often does result  in a complex pattern. His aim to apply this concept to the whole universe, while ambitious, is largely very convincing.  His idea is that  nature, not constrained the way human inventors are by needing goals,  is free to try a lot of different things. This sets the stage for us to consider the basic processes we see as simple programs. Are chemical reactions like simple programs? I think so. They have set  rules of engagement that are finite and easily characterized.  Can we think of particle interactions, say within an atom or within a molecule as a simple program? I think so. Looking at the physical universe this way gives us a new way to filter the huge number of details, a new way to compare behavior across the board.

Wolfram set up a wide range of initial conditions in his models, some were random. Most created orderly behavior of some kind, often exhibiting patterns that are visually familiar to a biologist such as myself.  He argues that natural selection could not have found optimal programs for organisms, that there hasn’t been enough time for that. But that the physical world we see around us came about because it represents the easiest growth arrangements resulting from simple interactions. I can certainly see  that a complex organism, such as a human, is an arrangement of parts that could be based on simple rules. Where the whole becomes more than the sum of the parts is an interesting story, and that story includes natural selection in a much more dynamic way. Yet selection CAN act on even the simplest level, so it can’t be discounted for the development of life. Wolfram argues that it couldn’t have been the main element in optimizing outcomes, if the underlying simple rules didn’t provide the basic trajectories of growth that we see.

Wolfram has a very interesting analysis of what definition to use for randomness. The patterns he develops using simple rules can look very regular, or look very random, but in both cases we are not capable of discerning the simple rules that gave rise to the pattern. In the case of the more regular patterns, we could make up a rule to describe it, thereby shortening the description of the pattern. For the patterns that appear random, we can’t even make up a simpler way to describe them. Therefore, he argues, for all intents and purposes, those patterns are truly random, even though we know we created them using a simple rule. This concept is a component of complexity theory – what we call random is often non-random but too complex for us to interpret.

So, perhaps this new way of analyzing the universe wont really give us much information. We can say there is a simple pattern or pattern underlying it all, but we have no way of discerning what it is?

I’m not quite finished with this book, perhaps he’ll show the way at the end. I’ll keep you posted.

Water drops or rain in buckets

I have a really hard time flushing the toilet with drinking water. It  feels very wrong to me and I avoid it when ever possible (even though I have a  toilet with a half flush option). When I wash dishes, I rinse them over a pot which I empty into a bucket. This provides at least 2 flushes for every load of dishes. If we bathe we use the bath water for a few flushes.

We collect rain water off the roof  and use it for flushing and sometimes for the laundry. But, we often get enough water just from warming up the shower to cover the laundry.

I have a well in an area with a groundwater shortage, so I am having an immediate effect. Most people don’t think about how their usage sends freshwater into the ocean. There are high-tech ways to deal with this, beyond pots and buckets. New houses should have gray water systems. Household gray water or recycled waste water is appropriate for toilets. I’m afraid that if we don’t change our ways, we will all eventually end up drinking recycled waste water .

Why have commodities such as water (and gas) stayed so cheap in the US for so long? These commodities have a limited supply. Why haven’t prices risen very much with increased demand?

If the government wants to change behaviour, they should tax gas and water. Or how about rewarding conservation. If you lower your water and gas use, you get a rebate. Doing both would be best, the carrot and the stick combined. Higher prices are the best way to encourage innovation and conservation.

Power to the peeps

A November 4th editorial in the WSJ (by John Steele Gordon) discussed the old liberal paradigm that divided the world’s people into the sheep and the wolves. The point being – it’s not like that anymore, now the government is more likely to be the wolf then the industrialists. When Obama says he didn’t come to Washington to do things for “fat-cat bankers” its obvious that he is stuck in this old way of thinking. The American public is not downtrodden. We have been made soft, spoiled by the nanny state. There are poor people, educated and not, there are people who experience racism, people with few opportunities. We should help them, but not by large swaths, not by calling every homeowner in default a victim. If they are a victim, it was government that set them wrong, not the bankers. It was government policies that led to banks over-lending and over-leveraging, government policies that led to high health insurance premiums. Now the  government’s latest power grab is on the environment. As an life-long environmentalist who believes government has an important role to play in protecting the earth, I say stop. This latest power grab in the name of climate change is not environmentalism. If we want to encourage innovation in clean energy, all we need to do is raise the price of fossil fuels (by taxation). Our elected representatives don’t want to do this, it’s too risky. Better to sink the ship than be voted out of office.

At first, Cap and Trade looked like a free market solution to pollution and deforestation. But now it is obvious that since governments can hand out carbon credits, it’s just another source of corruption that wont really do anything to help the environment. The big polluters will buy credits to keep polluting, the non-polluters will cash in for doing nothing. Some forests will be saved and that is important, but this is a corrupt wasteful way to achieve that end. Better to raise taxes on fossil fuels and ear-mark that money to buy up forest lands and help communities that take forests out of production to create other ways to make a living.

Government is an important component in environmentalism. But nature has taught us that competition breeds both innovation and efficiency. Competition, not government subsidies, not layers of laws for every campaign contributor. Competition.  The latest money-making plan from Washington, raise taxes on venture capital. Oh, this is a good idea when its innovation that we need. The US has been the worlds innovators. That’s not an accident, it was because of our free market system, our freedom of ideas, our ability to seize opportunities. Lets not give up on this, our last best strength by letting our government seize control of everything. Lets have a discussion on the rightful place for government intervention, the Goldilocks scenario, not too little, not too much. Just right.

Present opened

There may or may not be a universal Now. We have no way to perceive it, no way to measure it, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. I’m ready to put this whole line of questioning to rest (about time!).

The Present is the interval between the ticks of our clocks. It may be arbitrary, but so be it. As for our perceptions, the Present is probably the interval between the beats of our hearts; or the interval that we are able to pay attention to incoming stimuli without the chatter of our brains.

Why are we so intent on capturing the feeling that time stops and everything exists in an eternal now? Probably because it gives us some measure of relief from the constant uncertainty of the future. It allows us to really feel life, and that feels meaningful. It  feels as if we are tapping into something that exists outside time, something eternal…If there is such a thing, the wonderful human mind will certainly try to find it and never know for sure if it is creating it.

The human condition is untenable, yet we thrive. Everyone has their ways of dealing with the knowledge that we will die and probably suffer, that everyone we love will die, that life may very well have no meaning other than what we bring to it. Yet when you feel time stop, it’s a moment of relief from all that. It’s quiet, yet full of energy, peaceful yet humming, existing as is, yet full of potential.

That’s my story and I’m sticking with it.

A present for you

As I probably mentioned in an earlier post, I used to think that only the present was real, only the present existed; the past and future only in our heads. Then I realized the present does not have a measurable duration, so how can it be real? It must be a dimensionless line between past and present, or a dimensionless point.

So when I say “I am paying attention to the present, to what is happening now to and around me”,  I am paying attention to something, but we can’t use that experience to define it as the present. My paying attention to it does not automatically create a definition of the present as such. Technically,  we can’t experience what we think of as the present, because there is a lag time in our perceptions. So, where does that leave us? We have some relationship to this thing we think of as the present. Perhaps we revolve around it like a planet, or balance on the edge of a dimensionless line.  Wait, consciousness is dimensionless isn’t it? That could explain our ability to be there.