In 1997, the influencial linguist Steven Pinker, dismissed music as being "useless" in evolutionary terms, a mere by-product of evolution: that premise triggered this book. Mithen argues that music was not only 'useful,' it was vital for human evolution. Mithen is an anthropologist and along side reviewing the paleoarcheological record he draws on many areas of science, from neurology to musicology, to refute Pinker. In the process he demolishes Pinker, and shows convincingly that music is as fundamental to the human condition as language. An absolutely brilliant book!
Given the impact of body movement on musical meaning formation and signification, the musical mind is said to be embodied. Embodiment assumes that what happens in the mind is depending on properties of the body, such as kinaesthetic properties. Embodied music cognition tends to see music perception as based on action. For example, many people move when they listen to music. Through movement, it is assumed that people give meaning to music. This type of meaning-formation is corporeal, rather than cerebral because it is understood through the body. This is different from a disembodied approach to music cognition, which sees musical meaning as being based on a perception-based analysis of musical structure. The embodied grounding of music perception is based on a multi-modal encoding of auditory information and on principles that ensure the coupling of perception and action.

During the last decade, research in embodied music cognition has been strongly motivated by a demand for new tools in view of the interactive possibilities offered by digital media technology. With the advent of powerful computing tools, and in particular real-time interactive music systems, gradually more attention has been devoted to the role of gesture in music. This musical gestures research has been rather influential in that it puts more emphasis on sensorimotor feedback and integration, as well as on the coupling of perception and action. With new sensor technology, gesture-based research has meanwhile become a vast domain of music research, with consequences for the methodological and epistemological foundations of music cognition research.
The news has been hard to miss: in study after study, scientists are finding correlations between music making and some of the deepest workings of the human brain.

Research has linked active music making with better language and math ability, improved school grades, better-adjusted social behavior, and improvements in "spatial-temporal reasoning," which is the foundation of engineering and science. Physicists mapping brain activity have even identified patterns that resemble musical notes.
Sounds and noises are only separated by the experience of the listener. In the domain of the mind subjectivity reigns, and yet attempts are still made to chip away at individual variations to quantify the actions of the brain. As the ultimate subjective experience, music combines the cognitive elements of language, tonality, emotion, and rhythm to elicit widely variable responses. Amplitude scaling invariance is a symmetry of music. It corresponds to our ability to recognise the same item of music played more loudly or more quietly. It is not specific to music (or speech), because the brain must necessarily be able to recognise the equivalence of sounds that vary in perceived loudness because their source happens to be correspondingly closer or farther away. Although seemingly trivial, it may be non-trivial for the brain to implement. In particular, louder sounds actually activate a larger set of sensory cells in the Organ of Corti, so it is non-trivial for the brain to recognise the equivalence of softer and louder versions of the same sound.

One aspect of music perception which is not invariant under amplitude scaling is that our level of enjoyment of music that we like is increased when that music is played more loudly. A common consequence of this preference is deafness caused by listening to over-loud music. Other emotional impact can also be effected by volume; haunting music, for example, may be perceived differently at a louder volume.

Have a look in this site as well....


http://hs.riverdale.k12.or.us/~dthompso/exhib_03/jasonc/The_Affect_of_Music_on_the_Human_Brain.html