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DTux5249 t1_ixkkup7 wrote

Reply to comment by unskilledplay in ELI5: Why do humans like music? by [deleted]

Eeeeehhhhh releasing dopamine is how 'liking things' works in general; I don't know if that really counts as explaining why our body's would come to reinforce that behavior.

For example, your brain releases dopamine on an full stomach, because it wants to reinforce that behavior, but that's not a 'why' as much as it is a 'how'. The 'why' there would be more related to the fact that from a survival POV, it's important that you eat as much as you can when you can.

We don't really have a compelling reason as to 'why' music creates a dopamine response, unless I missed something in your post.

There was a quick snippet at the end about a speculation that the same networks in your brain that can learn speech are necessarily receptive to music; which if so would be an interesting quirk in evolution that makes sense as to why it's seemingly connected to complex vocalizations. But from what I understand, that was labeled expressly as a speculation.

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unskilledplay t1_ixkpuzl wrote

Give that podcast a listen if you are interested. Speculation wasn't the right word to use. Behavioral and cognitive evolution is very real, but also very fuzzy.

The strong relationship between language and music in the human brain has been long established in neuroscience through a number of experiments.

What I found to be uniquely interesting about this theory is that where we already knew that our ability to understand music is deeply related to our ability to understand language there is now a theory that explains how this relationship evolved and why that relationship has to be so.

The dopamine response to song provides a clear evolutionary benefit. For birds that benefit seems to be limited to mating. Humans are a eusocial or prosocial species. Both the ability to positively regulate the mood of other members of a society and the ability to have your mood positively regulated by others is an extremely beneficial adaptation. Extreme isn't a strong enough word. These abilities are likely hard requirements for intelligent prosocial species. Selection pressure for cooperative and affinitive behavior would have been immense. Humans have developed prosocial abilities in many ways. Ability to enjoy music is an example of one of those abilities

Understanding music would then be something that just comes with the ability to learn vocalizations, speech and language. As we evolved speech and language abilities, the ability to understand music just came with it. Enjoying music as opposed to just comprehending it is an exceptionally beneficial adaptation for a member of a prosocial species.

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Reimalken t1_ixlodhm wrote

Just my thoughts...

Consider the way we speak to new born children when encouraging speech, whether we mean to or not we incorporate musicality and melody into it. I think this makes a good case for music being a fastener for accurate recall and repetition and subsequent language use. The first words children use are often thusly musical, like dada or mama etc.. Since that is an evolutionarily valid reason for doing it it may be that it is encouraged, and as a side effect we are receptive to, and rewarded by that same melody/music even removed from speech and communication.

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