Musicophilia - music & relationship to the brain

i am fascinated with the field of music therapy. I often say that it is my Prozac. More recently music therapy has been used in the speech rehabilitation of stroke patients with good success. I know in my case, after a long hard working day with lots of stress, coming home and listening to music gets me back to my (ab)normal self. Thanks for the post.

Another great, related book I'm now reading: "This is your Brain on Music" by Daniel Levitin, who's been a musician & record producer. Fascinating stuff.

I have often felt that we audiophiles clearly must have something uncommon going on in our chemical or neuronal makeup to care so much for getting as close as possible to the original event.

For most people I think the experience of hearing a fantastic system doesn't resonate with them. We all know lots of people who are avid music fans with large collections for whom once the sound quality reaches a certain threshold, there seems to be no additional pleasure derived from even great fidelity.

I'm also convinced that changes I hear in my system due to tweeks, new components, etc, that I consider to be significant, would hardly even register to the average person. So we must either be dedicating considerably more brain activity, or perhaps have more grey mattter in our auditory center, or perhaps are just wired in such a way that the auditory center drives he pleasure center to a greater degree than other people.

When I recently put in hi fi tuning fuses in my amps, I couldn't believe how much more inner voicing and detail I was hearing, but at the same time really wondered to myself if anyone else could I know could really detect any difference at all.

In a similar veign, an audio friend told me of a guy he knew who use to work testing used plumicon video tubes for broadcast video cameras. He could detect color shifts as small a 1 degree I believe (I could be wrong on the number) I sometimes color correct tv shows all day long on pro video monitors and yet could not detect this small a color shift.

So while we can all learn to be better listeners, I think there are definitive biological reasons for why we are the way we are. Personally I have been into audio since I was a kid, literally. And though my father and brother always played music and had some sort of stereo, I was the one who ended up obsessed. My brother is still using the stereo he had from high school, 30 years ago, even though he found some Denon seperates in an apartment he bought. I don't think he ever set them up.

Emailists,
Your observations are exactly why I posted this here. I do believe that "audiophiles" have trained their brains to use even more areas to derive pleasure from music than the average person.

This study talks about how many different areas of the brain are engaged in listening and enjoying music, not just a certain part.

We often talk of joy experienced when listening. The changes we make to ours systems where music sounds differently must have a different affect on certain parts of our brains. It's got to stimulate them.

We hear that we should keep our brains stimulated to stave off Alzheimer's and other later life dementia. So the question is: Do you think that simply listening to music is considered that type of stimulation?

If you answer is yes, could be, then we all have yet ANOTHER GOOD REASON to keep doing what we're doing :-)

Angela

FWIW, I suspect that audiophile activities are in inverse porportion to the ability of the listener to appreaciate (understand) musical content. When the musical content is complex and requires concentration who has time to think about audiophile concerns such as detail, imaging, etc. When the music is very simple/direct for many bordom sets in early. Then the focus of the listener becomes the quality of the audio.

For example, with a pop song, after you've heard it a few times, what is left but to think about things like the quality of the recording or audio system. Doesn't take long, and darned little mental exercise. Now juxtaposed to a complex classical piece, you could listen to it for years before you even were able to distinguish the difference between varius performances let alone understand how the composer put the notes all together. Interestingly, in this case I think a lot of 'audiophiles' opt out on understanding (in pieces they do like) what different musicians bring to the different performances and simply look for the best 'sounding' version.

I noticed the other day someone in the AA Hig Res forum lamenting that a young violinist who has a lot of talent and promise would no longer be recording for Pentatone (SACD recordings or Hybred's only) so that in all likelyhood he would not hear her perform again. Somehow I suspect he will also, if asked, proclaim that he just loves music and the quality of the audio only inhances his love of the music.

As I said, FWIW. Oh, re Alzheimers, I think as much (or more) would be gained by playing bridge, chess, or just reading some good old fashion classical literature.