Toward a standard network model of musical improvisation
Sarah E. M. Faber · 2018
Music and language are sophisticated communicative mediums that share many commonalities in the brain. Both rely on acoustic cues, both have form and are bound by culturally-defined rules, and both are social behaviours. The neural correlates of music and speech perception have been extensively quantified. These correlates include an auditory processing network common to both behaviours, and analogous networks for parsing semantic and syntactic content. Researchers have now begun studying productive, spontaneous speech and music-making, adding networks for executive control and goal-directed movement to the perceptual foundation, but the field is far from consensus. This poster will present a new model of social music-making that includes its underlying neural correlates based on previous neuroimaging studies of the perception and production of language and music. I will make recommendations on future directions for the study of social music-making, including research with clinical populations, and discuss the challenges posed by such endeavours.