A presentation given to the 31st LACUS Forum, U of Illinois at Chicago, July 28, 2004.

1. Music, the Social Mind, and
Language
Thirty-first LACUS Forum
University of Illinois at Chicago, July 28, 2004
wl b
William L. Benzon

2. An Exercise in Speculative
Engineering
1. Brain-to-Brain Communication
2. Neural Life in the World
3. Music and Coupled Oscillation
4. Collective Decision
5. From Synchrony to TOM
6. Vygotsky & Development
7. Poetry as Musical Language
?

3. 1. Brain-to-Brain Communication:
A Thought Experiment

4. Long-Term
Storage
CPU
If the brain were a computer . . .
Working RAM
Moving patterns of bits from place to place.

5. • Point-to-point connections, end-to-end
• Isolated signal paths
• Bit patterns have an identity that is
independent of location in the system
• Locations are labeled (addresses)
Digital Computers

6. • “Wire” brain A to brain B directly
– neuron to neuron
• Assume physical problems are solved
• Two problems remain
– Correspondence
– Source identification
Direct Connection

7. Correspondence Problem
• How do you identify which neuron in
brain A corresponds to which neuron in
brain B?
• This is possible for small nervous
systems
– e.g. C. elegans, 959 cells, 302 neurons
• Not possible for large nervous systems

8. Source Identification
• How does a neuron distinguish between
native and foreign signals?
• Neural signals do not have source and
destination codes.

9. Therefore . . . .
• Direct communication between nervous
systems would result in incoherent
noise.
• Though one can imagine that, in time,
people might learn how to interact with
specific others through such a channel.

10. Questions . . . .
• What does this suggest about
interactions between brain regions?
• What does this suggest about the
“standard” computer analogy?
• What does this suggest about meaning?

11. Reset . . . .
• Interpersonal communication cannot be
thought of as sending signals through a
wire.
– Even if the “wire” consists of millions upon
millions of neurons.
• Let’s start from a beginning . . .

12. 2. Neural Life in the World

13. External
World
Neural Net Internal
Milieu
Life in Two Worlds

14. External
World
Internal
Milieu
A Simple Animal
Meaning is in relationships.
Lamb, S. M. (1999). Pathways of the Brain. Amsterdam, John Benjamins B. V.

15. External World
Fred
Internal Milieu
NS
CNS
Spot Spot
Joan
Joan
Self in the World
Fred

16. External World
NS
CNS
Spot Spot
JoanJoan
Self and Other
Fred
NS
CNS
Spot
Fred
Joan
Fred

17. 3. Music and Coupled Oscillation

18. Coupled Oscillators
• Pendulum clocks (Huygens)
– a purely physical device, no symbols
• Fireflies
– mediated, but still no symbols
• Self-organizing, no leader
Strogatz, S. H. and I. Stewart (1993). "Coupled Oscillators and Biological Synchronization."
Scientific American (December): 102-109.

19. Bi-modal Clapping
• Hear individually, act collectively
• Desynchronized, and loud
• Synchronized, not so loud
• Two values:
– Enthusiasm for performance
– Group solidarity
• No leader
Néda, Z., E. Ravasz, et al. (2000). "The sound of many hands clapping."
Nature 403: 849-850.

20. Jamming
• Things happen
• The some things happen again
• Group memory
– holophony: Longuet-Higgins
• Well-coordinated interaction
• No leader necessary
Longuet-Higgins, H. C. (1987). Mental Processes: Studies in Cognitive Science. Cambridge,
MA, MIT Press.

21. Musicking Creates Social Space
• The group of individuals are closely
coordinated in a common activity.
• They become a coherent individual
actor.
• As far as we know, apes do not
synchronize.
Benzon, W. L. (2001). Beethoven's Anvil: Music in Mind and Culture. New York, Basic
Books.
McNeill, W. H. (1995). Keeping Together in Time: Dance and Drill in Human History.
Cambridge, Harvard University Press.

22. 4. Collective Decision

23. Baboon Travel: Their Problem
• Where does the troop move next?
• Each has some preference.
• They all know the territory, more or less.
• How do they coordinate their
preferences and knowledge?

24. The Problem
?
World
Geoffrey
Terence
X
X

25. Hans Kummer:
• Younger adult males and their groups at
periphery.
• Pseudopods protrude and withdraw
again.
– male faces in some direction
• Older male from center of the troop struts
toward one of the pseudopods.
• The troop moves out.
Baboon Travel: Solution
Kummer, H. (1971). Primate Societies: Group Techniques of Ecological Adaptation. Chicago,
Aldine • Atherton.

26. ?
What are They Doing?
Troop
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X

27. 5. From Synchrony to
“Theory of Mind”

28. Interaction Synchrony
• William Condon
• Films of people interacting
– adults and adults
– neonate and adult
• Neonate’s body movements track adult
voice.
– very slight phase lag
Condon, W. S. (1986). Communication: Rhythm and Structure. Rhythm in Psychological.
in Linguistic and Musical Processes. J. R. Evans and M. Clynes, eds. Springfield, Illinois,
Charles C Thomas • Publisher: 55-78.

29. Synchrony = Society
• Autistics and others have trouble with
synchrony.
• Does synchrony have any function or is
it just some arbitrary characteristic of
interacting humans?
– We don’t know
– But . . . .

30. Possible Value of Synchrony
• Segment the speech signal
– where are the boundaries?
• Read faces (TOM)
– people are in relative motion
– visual system moves as well
– synchrony eliminates one factor from this
relative motion

31. Synchrony & “TOM”
• TOM not a theory in any robust sense
– inference beyond the information given
• Synchrony ≠ TOM
• Synchrony as enabling condition for
TOM
Baron-Cohen, S. (1995). Mindblindness. Cambridge, MA, MIT Press.

32. Parkinson’s & Synchrony
• Disorder of Motor Control
– dopamine deficiency
• Music helps Parkinsonians
• Even late stage
– immobile patients become mobile by
synchronizing with music or with others
Sacks, O. (1990) Awakenings. New York, HarperPerennial.

33. Interactional synchrony binds
ego and alter into a single
intentional system.
Just as musicking makes a
group of individuals into a
coheren individual.

34. 6. Vygotsky & Development
Vygotsky, L. S. (1962). Thought and Language. Cambridge, Massachusetts, MIT Press.

35. External World
child
Internal Milieu
NS
CNS
blanket blanket
Child
mom
mom
World and Nervous System

36. Inner and Outer
• Signals flow from point to point
• The route can be entirely inside the
nervous system
• Or it can travel through the external
world
• Thus we might have:
– FUNCTIONALLY inside
– PHYSICALLY outside

37. Physical World
CNS
blanket
Child
CNS
blanket
Mother
Ablanky
Ablanky
speak hear
Rblanky
hear
mom
blanket
“blanky”
mom
Mother-Directed
Bloom, P. (2000). How Children Learn the Meanings of Words.
Cambridge, MIT Press.

38. Physical World
CNS
blanket
Child
Ablanky
speak
hear
Rblanky
blanket
“blanky”
Child-Directed

39. Physical World
CNS
blanket
blanket
Child
Ablanky
Rblanky
Inner-Speech

40. Now we can “walk” in
one another’s cortex.

41. 7. Poetry as Musical Language

42. Constituency in “Lime-Tree
Bower”
1
2
3
4
5 1.111 1.1121.1211.1221.1231.2111.2121.221 2.111 2.1122.1212.1222.123 2.21 2.22
1.11 1.12 1.21 1.22
1.222
2.11 2.12
2.21.1 1.2 2.1
1 2
LTB
beginning end
Benzon, W. L. (2004). Talking to Nature in “This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison. Unpublished
ms.

43. Lines and Constituents
topic
subtopicsubtopic
line line line line
topic
subtopicsubtopic
line line line line
CONSISTENT
INCONSISTENT

44. Constituents in “Kubla Khan”
KK
1
1.31.21.1
1.211.221.23 1.311.321.111.12
2
2.2
2.212.222.23
2.1
2.112.12
2.3
2.312.32
fountain sunny pleasure dome
caves of ice
Paradise
Benzon, W. L. (2003)."Kubla Khan" and the Embodied Mind, PsyArt: A Hyperlink Journal for
the Psychological Study of the Arts, November 29, 2003,
URL: http://www.clas.ufl.edu/ipsa/journal/2003/benzon02.htm

45. Rhyme in “Kubla Khan”
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil
seething
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
G
G
H
17
18
19
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Of chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
H
I
I
20
21
22
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
F
F
23
24

46. Perhaps . . . .
• Poetry externalizes the sound of
language so that it becomes a surrogate
for the external world.
• LTB is organized so as to emphasize
continuity of narrative consciousness.
• Rhyme in KK introduces an element of
predictability into the poetic act in
compensation for its lack of narrative.

47. Shareability
• Jakobson on the poetic function of
language
• Bateson: redundancy in primitive art
• Freeman: neural “alignment” during
ritual
Jakobson, R. (1960). Linguistics and Poetics. Style in Language. T. Sebeok. Cambridge,
MIT Press: 350-377.
Bateson, G. (1972). Steps To An Ecology of Mind. New York, Ballentine
Books.
Freeman, W. J. (2000). A Neurobiological Role of Music in Social Bonding. The
Origins of Music. N. L. Wallin, B. Merker and S. Brown. Cambridge, MA, MIT Press:
411-424

48. Neural Alignment

49. One-Liner
• The music IN language creates the
social space through which people
coordinate meanings and intentions
THROUGH language.

50. the end