A recent article in the New Scientist brings up an old debate amongst neurologists and music lovers: are music and lyrics processed together or are they considered separate aspects in the brain?
Most people probably don’t think too much about what is happening in their brains when they listen to music – especially the difference of what is happening when there is just music instead of music with lyrics. Really, there is something very complex going. Since the language center of the brain is stimulated by music, scientists have argued that music and lyrics must be processed together. However, other evidence shows that the brain treats music and lyrics differently. For example, people who are unable to speak are still capable of humming a tune, thus implying that melody is separate from language, i.e. lyrics.
The New Scientist article discusses an interesting experiment which was designed to test just which parts of the brain are processing music and opposed to just lyrics. The experiment was conducted by a team at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Germany. Researcher Daniela Sammler describes the foundation of the study.
Scientists already know that the brain activity decreases each time it experiences a stimulus. For example, the first time you hear a song, the neurons in your brain will be very active. The next time you hear the song, the neurons will be less active because they have already become accustomed to the stimulus. Using this knowledge, the team designed their experiment. They theorized that, if they varied just the melody or lyrics of a song, then it the neurons in the corresponding part of the brain would be less active. This way, the areas of the brain responsible for processing melody and lyrics could be distinguished.
To conduct the study, the research team composed 4 differing sets of 6 songs each. In the first set of songs, the melodies and lyrics were all completely different. In the next set, the melodies were the same but the lyrics were different. In the third set, the lyrics were the same but the melodies were different. In the last set, the songs were all exactly the same.
Volunteers listened to the songs while having functional MRI scans. Through the MRI scans, the research team was able to determine which parts of the brain were being activated by the music. The main area of activation was the superior temporal sulcus (STS). Interestingly, in the mid region of the STS, both melody and lyrics were processed together. In the anterior area of the STS, just the lyrics were apparently getting processed. The team could not isolate a certain part of the brain where only melodies are processed.
The researchers concluded that the brain deals with music and melodies as a whole first. Then, once the brain processes this information, it begins to break down the parts of the music into lyrics and melody. They theorized that the reason they couldn’t find a specific part of the brain for processing melody is because melody is much more complex than language. However, they did infer that the brains of professional musicians would react differently to melody because they are more attuned when it comes to deciphering tunes.