Music and the Frontal Lobe

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Studies of mental functions, behaviors and the nervous system.

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Music and the Frontal Lobe

#1  Postby Sovereign » Jan 23, 2013 5:00 am

Well here is an interesting propaganda piece promoting classical music and railing against rock and it masquerades as a scientific studies article. I can't find some of the resources cited in this article and I'm not a psychology expert.


Few people understand music’s powerful frontal lobe influence. All music enters the brain through its emotional regions yet some types of music also stimulate the frontal lobe responses.

Some kinds of music tend to produce a frontal lobe response that influences the will, moral worth, and reasoning power. Other kinds of music will evoke very little, if any, frontal lobe response, but will produce a large emotional response with very little logical or moral interpretation.

Music appears to have both general and specific brain effects. Listening to music appears to favorably balance the frontal lobe function in depression. By actual EEG measurement, music decreases over-dominant right frontal lobe activity in chronically depressed individuals. However, medical research also raises serious concerns about certain types of music.

Thus, depending on the type of music, its net influence can be either beneficial or detrimental—depending on whether it predominately stimulates the frontal lobe or the “lower” emotional centers. Music therapists tell us certain types of music, such as rock with its syncopated rhythm, bypass the frontal lobe and our ability to reason and make judgments about it. Evidence suggests that it, like television, can produce a hypnotic effect.

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Re: Music and the Frontal Lobe

#2  Postby Mr.Samsa » Jan 23, 2013 8:53 am

Basically, none of the claims he makes are backed up by evidence. The positive effects of music he finds only suggest that music has a positive effect, none appear to look at the effects of different kinds of music. The studies which he is trying to claim create a negative effect are all studies on music videos. Of course it's true that music with misogynistic or racist ideas will lead to increases in scores on misogynistic and racist measures, but that has nothing to do with it being "rock" music, it's because the specific songs reinforce negative stereotypes and beliefs.

The stuff about the brain is all nonsense as well, classic case of the reverse inference fallacy:

What he is describing here is a phenomenon known as the 'reverse inference fallacy' and this is just a specific example of "affirming the consequent" in logic. The traditional application (or misapplication) of the reverse inference fallacy is described by Poldrack1 who presents the argument as:

    In previous studies, when cognitive process X was assumed to be involved, brain area Z was activated
    In the current study, when task A was presented, brain area Z was activated
    Therefore, activation of brain area Z in the current study demonstrates the involvement of cognitive process X during task A.

This can also be presented as such:

    If P then Q
    Q
    Therefore, P.

The fallacious nature of the reasoning can be highlighted by inserting any everyday relationship, for example: "If it is raining, then I have an umbrella. I have an umbrella. Therefore, it is raining". This is an obviously false statement as we can think of a number of situations where (accepting the initial if-then premise) I could have an umbrella without it being raining, like if my old one had broken and I had just purchased one at a store, or maybe I'm on my way to a fancy dress party where I have donned my infamous Mary Poppins costume.
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Re: Music and the Frontal Lobe

#3  Postby Sovereign » Jan 23, 2013 2:09 pm

Thanks!
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Re: Music and the Frontal Lobe

#4  Postby Asta666 » Jan 24, 2013 8:30 pm

Haven't read the whole article yet, but from the abstract it seems a bit deceptive to me... activation in a certain lobe or brain area is not necessarily related with any particular behavior or syndrome (we are not talking about lesions or tumors here), like being impulsive or having depression, so changes in activation levels could be related to a lot of different things, which have to be determined by means of behavior assessment to be able to identify something specific, whether that'd be "positive" or "negative".
The behavioral account sets the task for the physiologist. Mentalism on the other hand has done a great disservice by leading physiologists on false trails in search of the neural correlates of images, memories, consciousness, and so on. Skinner
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