To inquire about the origin of the musical faculties is to look for what advantages music gives to a group of humans in the primitive plains. Some argue that music served to keep the group together, which has more or less apparent advantages for organisms that have to defend themselves from fleas that are stronger and faster than them, and that have to give them hunts to obtain food. Darwin, meanwhile, thought that music in humans emerged as a tool for courtship, as the tail of the peacock and the song of many birds (today minority opinion: if the music was of sexual origin, why do so many other functions and appears in such diverse activities?).
The experimental psychologist Steven Pinker, from the Department of Psychology at Harvard University, has an irreverent opinion: that music is not an adaptation, but a kind of secondary effect of other abilities and needs of the human organism. Pinker compares the music with the cheesecake (without any pejorative desire, we must add). This delicacy contains fats and sugars in large quantities and has a creamy texture that makes your mouth water.
Cheesecake is a technology that we have invented to stimulate the cerebral circuits of pleasure artificially. These circuits have evolved to indicate that we have carried out an action that improves our chances of living; For example, obtain food full of energy to cope with lean times (or, taking into account the way of life of our ancestors, skinny mammoths). The cheesecake focuses on social stimuli that in a certain way deceive the brain, making it believe that we have carried out an action that promotes our survival. Music, according to Pinker, is the same. Their repetitive, ordered and predictable sounds tickle us in the centers of pleasure that serve to indicate that we have found an orderly and predictable environment, a safe environment.
To support his thesis of the "auditory cheesecake" Pinker points out that music can be innate without being adaptive, like other pleasure technologies; for example, gastronomy: the organism only demands nutrients, without requiring that they come cooked, seasoned and served with a sprig of cilantro. Also, says Pinker, the hypothesis of social cohesion and the others of that tenor - that music calms down, or that strengthens the bond between mother and child - deep down does not say anything about the origin of music. Indeed, we should explain why music favors social cohesion, calms or strengthens the bond with the mother.
Describing sound in terms of its measurable physical characteristics is one thing; To understand the details of our auditory sensation, which is entirely subjective, is quite another. The perception, in general, is a collaboration between the organ that captures the stimulus and the brain, which interprets it.
The sound is full of useful information about the environment and others. To extract and interpret it, the brain does not act as a simple recorder, which receives a signal and registers it as such but distributes the sound stimulus to various regions of the brain, where the processes of recognition and interpretation are taken into account.
The ear is a sound wave analyzer. When a sound is produced, it enters the auditory channel, which tends to amplify high frequencies (high-pitched sounds). The eardrum vibrates, and these vibrations are communicated to the cochlea, an organ in the form of a coiled tube where the ciliary cells are housed. These cells are like thin rods of different sizes. The shorter ones resonate with the sharp components of the sound, the longer ones respond to the low notes, the lower frequencies.