Music and the Mind

Fifty years ago Leonard Bernstein presented six seminal lectures entitled, "The Unanswered Question," first in the Harvard Square Theater and later to a national public television audience. What is the meaning of music, he asked, and why do we enjoy it? This course takes his inquiry several steps further, exploring the evolutionary origins of our musicality, the relationship between music and speech, and the unique emotional impact of music. We explore the neuroanatomy of hearing and music perception, its relationship to sound perception in other species, the extraordinary capacity for musical memory, the relationship between music and emotion, the role of involuntary music (that is, ear worms), and alterations in music perception experienced by patients with autism, Williams syndrome, stroke, and dementia. No previous musical training is necessary, but students can anticipate gaining an improved appreciation of musical form and variety across cultures, and a sense of the experimental progress the past twenty years in the neuroscience of music perception.