Peter Fletcher
Although the origins of music and language remain largely theoretical at this juncture, it is clear that there is a connection between the two. The likelihood that both of these faculties are functionally related, and may have developed out of a common ancestor is strongly supported both by characteristics of the two systems and shared pathways in the brain. A number of studies suggest that, although music and language are produced independently of one another, the syntactic structures of both are processed together. The correlation between the two opens the possibilities that music and language be of similar values in understanding the worldview and experience of a culture.
Charles Darwin postulates that before the onset of either music or language in their modern incarnations, humans communicated via a system which exhibited characteristics of both. From this primitive system music and language emerged as separate entities.
Steven Brown, musicologist, made a similar proposal naming this protolanguage “musilanguage”. He proposed musilanguage exhibited the shared features of language and music, including phrase units and formations, as well as functional purposes on both a phonological level and a meaningful one. Musilanguage evolved out of the vocalizations of primates which he names “referential emotive vocalization”; these vocalizations were calls, not songs, which communicated emotive responses to environmental stimuli, and are exemplified by the alarm call system of the African vervet monkey.
Brown developed another conceptual model for the development of music and language, which he called “HMMMM” communication, an acronym for a communication system that was “H”olistic, “M”anipulative, “M”ulti-modal, “M”usical and “M”imetic in character. Again, this model proposes a sort of musical protolanguage from which capacities for language and music both evolved.
Information borrowed in: Mannion, C. (2001). The Human Spirit Speaks Through Song: Exploring the application of the theory of linguistic relativity to music.
Kat Fulton wrote: I utilized drumming at a camp for kids who have parents with cancer. We sang, chanted, and drummed. At the end of it all, I invited each child one by one to come to the center whenever they wanted. When they got to the center, they could cut off the drumming and share something they are thankful for. Then we’d continue drumming. After drumming and singing, and playing rhythm games for an hour, you can imagine how supported and safe these kids felt among their peers. One little 6-year-old girl came to the center and said “That my mom can still be happy.” Her father had passed from cancer.
This little girl experienced what many other children and adolescents have experienced before: group support and the feeling of safety that allowed her to share a big feeling. All facilitated through drumming.
For children with special needs, drumming can be a powerful tool to help them address:
As with many interventions, there are contraindications involved. Too loud a volume, playing with poor technique, and using instruments with a high vibrotactile response can potentially pose problems. This is why getting trained as a facilitator is important.
Image from http://rhythmkids.com/photos/1/11/DMN_1192/image_vault/110124014657867_1.jpg
The study recruited 70 healthy adults age 60 to 83 who were divided into groups based on their levels of musical experience. The musicians performed better on several cognitive tests than individuals who had never studied an instrument or learned how to read music. The research findings were published online in the APA journal Neuropsychology.
"Musical activity throughout life may serve as a challenging cognitive exercise, making your brain fitter and more capable of accommodating the challenges of aging," said lead researcher Brenda Hanna-Pladdy, PhD. "Since studying an instrument requires years of practice and learning, it may create alternate connections in the brain that could compensate for cognitive declines as we get older.
"While much research has been done on the cognitive benefits of musical activity by children, this is the first study to examine whether those benefits can extend across a lifetime, said Hanna-Pladdy, a clinical neuropsychologist who conducted the study with cognitive psychologist Alicia MacKay, PhD, at the University of Kansas Medical Center.
The three groups of study participants included individuals with no musical training; with one to nine years of musical study; or with at least 10 years of musical training. All of the participants had similar levels of education and fitness and didn't show any evidence of Alzheimer's disease.
All of the musicians were amateurs who began playing an instrument at about 10 years of age. More than half played the piano while approximately a quarter had studied woodwind instruments such as the flute or clarinet. Smaller numbers performed with stringed instruments, percussion or brass instruments.
The high-level musicians who had studied the longest performed the best on the cognitive tests, followed by the low-level musicians and non-musicians, revealing a trend relating to years of musical practice. The high-level musicians had statistically significant higher scores than the non-musicians on cognitive tests relating to visuospatial memory, naming objects and cognitive flexibility, or the brain's ability to adapt to new information.
The brain functions measured by the tests typically decline as the body ages and more dramatically deteriorate in neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer's disease. The results "suggest a strong predictive effect of high musical activity throughout the lifespan on preserved cognitive functioning in advanced age," the study stated.
Half of the high-level musicians still played an instrument at the time of the study, but they didn't perform better on the cognitive tests than the other advanced musicians who had stopped playing years earlier. This suggests that the duration of musical study was more important than whether musicians continued playing at an advanced age, Hanna-Pladdy says.
"Based on previous research and our study results, we believe that both the years of musical participation and the age of acquisition are critical," Hanna-Pladdy says. "There are crucial periods in brain plasticity that enhance learning, which may make it easier to learn a musical instrument before a certain age and thus may have a larger impact on brain development.
"The preliminary study was correlational, meaning that the higher cognitive performance of the musicians couldn't be conclusively linked to their years of musical study. Hanna-Pladdy, who has conducted additional studies on the subject, says more research is needed to explore that
possible link.
