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In Reply to: RE: Take civilization, posted by unclestu on June 12, 2011 at 20:54:56
>> “Current fMRI studies show that the brain recognizes pitch first and then subdivides the signal into separate areas of the brain for more detailed analysis, the cortex, amygdala, and the cerebellum. However, current brain tracking indicates the auditory circuit then cues the visual circuits to engage. I would say that your explanation is far from complete and needs to incorporate some of the latest brain scan date.” <<
OF COURSE my explanation is far from complete. NO explanation is ever complete !!!!!!!!!! I merely explain my concepts in the best way I know how. But no brain scans I have seen show how the latest “reading/sensing” (memory) is being checked against previous memories – which is one of the crucial points I was attempting to make. THAT is the basis of the survival mechanism – whether it is sight, hearing, taste, touch or smell. And which, I might add, has been the basis for survival long before sight, hearing, taste, touch or smell ever existed !! Whatever tiny memory such as bacteria or viruses possess, they are still mainly able to survive different environments and replicate and evolve !!
Of course the auditory circuit will cue the visual circuits to engage – “the existing memories have to be checked out and compared against the latest memory for the best “picture of the environment” to be built by the brain – that is the point I have been trying to make. But the process of ‘checking existing memory details against new happenings’ existed long before the evolution of the hearing and sight senses as we now know them. As far as I am aware, the hearing system which exists now evolved from an original jaw bone (and from whatever function that jaw bone had) and I firmly believe that as soon as the sense of sight evolved, sight proved SO successful from a survival point of view that Nature allowed it more priority in the evolutionary stakes. So, obviously, ‘sight memories’ will be accessed even though it could be sounds which are being heard.
I don’t think one can start at any given point in evolution and say that that is the start of the present state of evolution because at whatever point one would wish to start from, there has to have been ‘something’ already existing for any new stages of evolution to build from. AND, those earlier stages must have been successful in whatever they did because they had survived to that point!!!!
>> “Indeed reading This is Your brain on Music by Levitin, the most common survival reflex is the startle reflex when it comes to the auditory realm. That is hardly the case when it comes to listening to music, however. Levitin advances the theory that music lays the foundation for communication an important aspect of civilization.” <<
The “startle” reflex IS exactly what I was attempting to get over. But, you can only have the “startle” reflex if, previous to that event which caused the ‘startle’, there had been ‘readings/sensings (and subsequent memories) of stability’ (i.e. nothing to create a “startle”). If you don’t like the term ‘stability’, then how about a ‘state of equilibrium’, or ‘a stationary pattern’, or a ‘state of ease’, or a ‘state of peace’ or a ‘state of stillness’? It is the “COMPARISON” between a ‘state of stillness’ and ‘something then causing a startle’ which creates the survival reflex. If there were continuous ‘crackling of twigs’, or continuous ‘shrieks of danger’, then all creatures would be ‘on the alert’ (under tension) continuously and would remain under tension until signals of ‘reassurance’ were sensed. If no signals of reassurance were sensed, then the creature would still remain under tension i.e. not able to ‘sign off their environment as safe’ THIS is the point I was attempting to make – that in the modern environment there is now no longer a ‘state of stillness’ so we are now under various degrees of ‘tension’ –(i.e. not able to ‘sign off our environment as safe’) and that ‘tension’ is not conducive to fully resolving the wealth of information contained in the music being presented to us by the Hi Fi equipment.
In the early 1950s, our own household had electric light, a radio, a one bar electric fire and an electric toaster. Nothing else electric !! Just look at what people have NOW, in their households in 2011. I am sure that you and I would agree that the mass of electromagnetic energy, the RF energy, the microwave energy etc around today, in the modern environment, is not conducive for fully appreciating the complexities of music. Where you and I part company is that you want all that to be having an effect on the audio signal travelling through the audio equipment !! And to give that as the explanation why improvements in the music can be heard from such various so called “tweaks”.
I am fully aware that some electromagnetism, some RF, CAN affect the audio signal, but when similar (sometimes identical) improvements in the music can be experienced from such as different chemicals, from different colours, from different crystals, from different materials etc, and from considerable distances from any audio or electronic equipment, then surely one has to stretch ones thinking further than “an effect on the audio signal”???
If Nature used specific chemicals in the past as danger signals, why can’t we be sensitive to those same chemicals now ? If, for example, we are just sitting reading a book, then we might not register the effect of such a chemical being introduced into our environment (or alternatively, removed from our environment) but if we are doing something intensive like listening to and following an intricate piece of music, then “an effect” could be registered !! - increased tension (worse sound), lessened tension (better sound).
The “startle” result when there is a sudden improvement in the sound is a look of amazement or a smile and the “startle” result when there is a deterioration in the sound is a cringe. The cringe is the working memory ‘shouting, kicking and screaming’ because the standard has suddenly gone below what it has been used to (i.e. what is in it’s memory). I am sure that you are aware of this, only you believe that it is always the audio signal which must have been affected !!
Regards,
May Belt,
Manufacturer.
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