Language, Music, and the Brain - 9780262018104

This book explores the relationships between language, music, and the brain bypursuing four key themes and the crosstalk among them: song and dance as a bridge between music andlanguage; multiple levels of structure from brain to behavior to culture; the semantics of internaland external worlds and the role of emotion; and the evolution and development of language. The bookoffers specially commissioned expositions of current research accessible both to experts acrossdisciplines and to non-experts. These chapters provide the background for reports by groups ofspecialists that chart current controversies and future directions of research on eachtheme.

The book looks beyond mere auditory experience, probing the embodiment thatlinks speech to gesture and music to dance. The study of the brains of monkeys and songbirdsilluminates hypotheses on the evolution of brain mechanisms that support music and language, whilethe study of infants calibrates the developmental timetable of their capacities. The result is aunique book that will interest any reader seeking to learn more about language or music and willappeal especially to readers intrigued by the relationships of language and music with each otherand with the brain.

Contributors:Francisco Aboitiz, Michael A.Arbib, Annabel J. Cohen, Ian Cross, Peter Ford Dominey, W. Tecumseh Fitch, Leonardo Fogassi,Jonathan Fritz, Thomas Fritz, Peter Hagoort, John Halle, Henkjan Honing, Atsushi Iriki, Petr Janata,Erich Jarvis, Stefan Koelsch, Gina Kuperberg, D. Robert Ladd, Fred Lerdahl, Stephen C. Levinson,Jerome Lewis, Katja Liebal, Jônatas Manzolli, Bjorn Merker, Lawrence M. Parsons, Aniruddh D. Patel,Isabelle Peretz, David Poeppel, Josef P. Rauschecker, Nikki Rickard, Klaus Scherer, GottfriedSchlaug, Uwe Seifert, Mark Steedman, Dietrich Stout, Francesca Stregapede, Sharon Thompson-Schill,Laurel Trainor, Sandra E. Trehub, Paul Verschure