The universal language

We have all heard the saying “music is a universal language.” Most of the time, what we draw from this statement is that music is a form of emotional expression shared and enjoyed by all cultures across the world. But to what extent can music really be called a language? Recent brain imaging studies have shown that music and language are treated more similarly by our neural circuitry than one would imagine.

Let’s start our exploration by setting up the theoretical basis. When we understand a language, we are perceiving more than just sounds coming from a person’s mouth or strokes on a piece of paper. As aural and visual inputs become linked to the concepts they connote, we experience meaning (Travis et al., 2011). On the other hand, someone who does not understand a language would not experience any meaning beyond what they hear and see. For example, without knowing the associated meaning of the Japanese symbol shown in Figure 1, it would appear to be simply a set of strokes or maybe even something out of our imagination, like a trident. However, languages can be learned such that sounds and strokes start possessing meaning. And music follows a similar pattern! To study the connection between the two, it is important to have an idea of the areas of the brain that are activated when we interact with spoken language and sound, as shown in Figure 2.

Before one has learned the meaning of a word, it is simply a sound; therefore, hearing the word would only activate the auditory cortex. Travis et al. (2011) have observed that when infants of 12 to 18 months start learning words for the first time—experiencing images and feelings associated with the word in addition to its sound—hearing the word ignites both the auditory cortex and language circuity such as Wernicke’s area, which is associated with language comprehension. As infants gradually start speaking and conversing fluently, activation is observed in Broca’s area, which is associated with speech production. In summary, one progresses from using only the auditory cortex to also using Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas.

Music follows a similar pattern. For the average music listener, as demonstrated by Toiviainen et al. (2013) in a study involving fifteen healthy individuals selected without regard to their musical education, music only triggers the auditory cortex. However, when studying the brains of trained musicians, individuals who may be considered fluent in the language of music, it was observed that both Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas become activated. In a study by Berkowitz and Ansari (2008), 13 trained pianists were told to improvise melodies while their brain activity would be measured in real-time by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The fMRI showed activation in Broca’s area, which is associated with speech production; more specifically, activation was observed in the inferior frontal gyrus, which is responsible for sequence generation, or melodies in terms of musical improvisation. As activation was observed in Broca’s area but not Wernicke’s area, one can imagine that a musician improvising alone would be analogous to speaking to one’s self. What’s missing here is dialogue between individuals. Therefore, Donnay et al. (2014) employed fMRI to examine how the brain responds to music when part of an improvisational dialogue. When two jazz musicians were told to alternate playing equal lengths of improvised solos, fMRI showed activation in both Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas. Like conversation, music provided a medium for both speech production and language comprehension. More broadly, neural overlap between music and language supports the view that neural resources may not be domain-specific for spoken language, but rather domain-general for auditory communication.

So, can music really be considered a language? Brain imaging research points to similarities in the way we process music and language. However, it is important to recognize that although both music and language may activate both Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas, music differs in the extent to which it possesses semantic meaning. Further research into tonal languages, where pitch can change meaning, would provide more insight into this debate. For now, there is no doubt that even if music is not a universal language, it is still a universal phenomenon to be enjoyed by all.

References

Berkowitz, A.L. and Ansari, D., 2008. Generation of novel motor sequences: The neural correlates of musical improvisation. NeuroImage, 41(2), pp.535–543. Available at: <https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S1053811908001602> [Accessed 22 Nov. 2019].

Donnay, G.F., Rankin, S.K., Lopez-Gonzalez, M., Jiradejvong, P. and Limb, C.J., 2014. Neural Substrates of Interactive Musical Improvisation: An fMRI Study of ‘Trading Fours’ in Jazz. PLoS ONE, 9(2). Available at: <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3929604/> [Accessed 22 Nov. 2019].

Japanese Kanji Symbol, 2019. Mountain Kanji. Available at: <http://kanji-symbol.net/common/images/txt/nat0004-kai.gif> [Accessed 22 Nov. 2019].

sfam_photo, 2019. Human Brain Side View. Available at: <https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/human-brain-side-view-isolated-vector-1261260583?src=baaf1087-ef19-49cc-a74e-e99e84a5c559-1-9> [Accessed 22 Nov. 2019].

Toiviainen, P., Alluri, V., Brattico, E., Wallentin, M. and Vuust, P., 2014. Capturing the musical brain with Lasso: Dynamic decoding of musical features from fMRI data. NeuroImage, [online] 88, pp.170–180. Available at: <https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S1053811913011099> [Accessed 22 Nov. 2019].

Travis, K.E., Leonard, M.K., Brown, T.T., Hagler, D.J., Curran, M., Dale, A.M., Elman, J.L. and Halgren, E., 2011. Spatiotemporal Neural Dynamics of Word Understanding in 12- to 18-Month-Old-Infants. Cerebral Cortex, [online] 21(8), pp.1832–1839. Available at: <http://academic.oup.com/cercor/article/21/8/1832/268595> [Accessed 22 Nov. 2019].