This essay offers a novel theoretical perspective on the evolution of music. At present, a number of adaptationist theories posit that the human capacity for music is a product of natural selection, reflecting the survival value of musical behaviors in our species’ past (e.g., Wallin et al., 2000). In sharp contrast, a prominent nonadaptationist theory of music argues that music is a human invention and is biologically useless (Pinker, 1997). I argue that research on music and the brain supports neither of these views. Contrary to adaptationist theories, neuroscientific research suggests that the existence of music can be explained without invoking any evolutionary-based brain specialization for musical abilities. And contrary to Pinker’s claim, neuroscience research suggests that music can be biologically powerful. By biologically powerful, I mean that musical behaviors (e.g., playing, listening) can have lasting effects on nonmusical brain functions, such as language and attention, within individual lifetimes. Music is thus theorized to be a biologically powerful human invention, or “transformative technology of the mind.”

The past decade has witnessed a rapid rise in cognitive and neuroscientific research on music. This has led to renewed interest in evolutionary questions about music, which originate with Darwin’s discussion of the topic in The Descent of Man (1871). There are now several adaptationist theories arguing that musical behaviors originated via biological evolution due to their survival value for human ancestors. In contrast, nonadaptationist theories propose that musical behaviors are a human invention. The most prominent such theory, that of Steven Pinker (1997), regards music as a pleasure technology built from pre-existing brain functions (such as language, emotional vocalization, etc.), and posits, “As far as biological cause and effect are concerned, music is useless” (p. 528).

Pinker’s idea that music is an invention built from existing brain functions provides a useful null hypothesis for evolutionary debates over music. His assertion that music is biologically useless, however, is problematic. While Pinker was likely referring to music’s impact on human biology over evolutionary time, as opposed to within the lifetime of individual humans, his writing does not make this distinction. Furthermore, the metaphors he uses to describe music (e.g., “auditory cheesecake,” or “recreational drugs”) imply a view of music as having little biological significance at either evolutionary or individual timescales.1

A central point of this essay is that discussions of the biological significance of music should conceptually distinguish music’s effects over evolutionary time from its effects within individual lifetimes. The need for this distinction is driven by evidence from neuroscience. Neuroscientific research suggests that music is an invention that builds on diverse, pre-existing brain functions, rather than a trait that originated via processes of natural selection. This is consistent with Pinker’s thesis. However, growing evidence from neuroscience also suggests that music is biologically powerful, meaning that it can have lasting effects on nonmusical abilities (such as language or attention) during the lifetime of individual humans. Importantly, these effects can be observed not only in trained musicians but also in ordinary individuals who engage regularly with music. Thus, I believe that music should be regarded as a biologically powerful human invention or “transformative technology of the mind.” (For brevity, henceforth I refer to this idea as TTM theory.)

This essay is organized as follows. Section 2 introduces the evolutionary puzzle of music. Section 3 explains why neuroscience research suggests that music is an invention rather than a biological adaptation. Section 4 provides examples of the biological power of music. Section 5 suggests why music can have lasting effects on nonmusical brain functions. Section 6 provides a non-genetic explanation for why music is so pervasive in human culture. The essay concludes with a brief discussion of the relevance of a Darwinian perspective for the modern biological study of human music.

It is worth clarifying some points regarding TTM theory’s claim that music can shape brain function. It is obvious that engaging in any humanly-invented activity (e.g., kite flying) changes the brain within individual lifetimes, because learning and memory are instantiated by changes in neural networks, e.g., in the pattern of synaptic connections between neurons. Thus, TTM theory does not simply claim that musical behaviors change the brain. (This is trivially true: even learning a simple tune involves changing brain networks in some way in order to store the memory of the tune.) Nor does TTM theory simply claim that learning music results in lasting structural changes to the brain. (This claim would hardly be novel, given the growing evidence of experience-dependent changes in brain structure caused by learning a musical instrument, e.g., Hyde et al., 2009.) Rather, TTM theory claims that music is a human invention that can have lasting effects on such nonmusical brain functions as language, attention, and executive function, and is concerned with explaining the biological mechanisms underlying these effects.

The qualification of “lasting” effects is important, because this distinguishes TTM theory from theories concerned with the short-term effects of music on other cognitive abilities (e.g., Thompson et al., 2001). That is, TTM theory is concerned with musically driven neurobiological changes that impact other brain functions over the course of months or years, not over the course of a few minutes. In this regard, TTM theory has some parallels to neurobiological theories of reading, another human invention with salient impact on the brain within individual lifetimes (Dehaene and Cohen, 2007). Indeed, reading can be considered another transformative technology of the mind, because it is a human invention built from existing brain systems (such as those supporting visuospatial cognition and language) that impacts a variety of mental abilities (Mar et al., 2008; Patel, 2008:400; Dehaene, 2009).

Of course, music is much older and far more widespread than reading and appeals to humans from infancy. Also, unlike reading skills, basic musical abilities develop without any special instruction (Bigand and Poulin-Charronatt, 2006). These facts make the claim that music is a human invention seem odd. Yet other theories view ancient and universal human communication systems as inventions. For example, Tomasello (2008) has proposed that language originated as an invention based on communicative interactions between primates who had a special socio-cognitive ability for sharing actions and goals with others (“shared intentionality”; see also Lee et al., 2009). In common with such “language as invention” theories, TTM theory proposes that a complex and universal human trait can originate as an invention rather than as a biological adaptation. However, to my knowledge, all “language as invention” theories leave open the possibility that language, once invented, led to co-evolutionary changes in the brain that were aimed at supporting the acquisition of language (cf. Deacon, 1997). Indeed, the idea that our brains have been modified over evolutionary time to support the acquisition of language is favored by at least ten converging lines of evidence (Patel, 2008:358-366). TTM theory, in contrast, posits that there has been no evolutionary modification of our brains specifically aimed at facilitating musical abilities. Instead, music is viewed as a technology that is learned anew by each new generation of human minds. This view is congenial to the tremendous diversity of musical practices that have been described by ethnomusicologists (e.g., Titon, 1996; Nettl and Stone, 1998) and to the seemingly endless growth and development of music as a human art form (Ross, 2007). It is important to note, however, that TTM theory does not amount to the claim that humans are musical blank slates. Since music is theorized as building on preexisting brain functions (such as language and auditory scene analysis2), processing predispositions relevant to these other functions are likely to be reflected in the structure and processing of human music (cf. Reynolds, 2005; Dehaene and Cohen, 2007).

A final conceptual point about TTM theory concerning the fundamental question of why humans are drawn to musical behaviors merits discussion here. TTM theory claims that music can have lasting effects on nonmusical brain systems, but it does not propose that humans engage in music in order to produce these effects. Rather, as discussed in section 6 below, TTM theory posits that people are drawn to music because of its emotional power and because of its efficacy for ritual and memory. The lasting effects on nonmusical abilities are thus a consequence of how music engages the brain, not a cause of musical behavior. A better understanding of how and why these effects occur is of interest both for basic brain science and for designing musical activities to address problems in nonmusical domains, i.e., in scientifically-based music therapy (Leins et al., 2009).

Like language, music is a human universal that reaches deep into our species’ past (Nettl, 2000). Recent excavations have revealed bone flutes dating to the late Pleistocene era (~40,000 ybp, Conard et al., 2009). Cross-cultural and developmental research indicates that listening to and/or making music has a profound appeal to most members of our species, starting early in life (Blacking, 1973; Trehub, 2003). Thus, one can predict with some confidence that the few remaining uncontacted tribes of humans, when finally described by anthropologists, will have music as part of their behavioral repertoire.

For those interested in the evolutionary foundations of human behavior, such observations are puzzling. Musical activities lack any obvious survival value. Why then is music so pervasive in human life? Are we musical today because music helped our ancestors survive? Has the human mind been shaped by natural selection for music? Darwin (1871) was the first to wrestle with these questions, noting that “as neither the enjoyment nor the capacity of producing musical notes are faculties of the least direct use to man in reference to his ordinary habits of life, they must be ranked among the most mysterious with which he is endowed” (p. 1207).

In The Descent of Man, Darwin offered an adaptationist theory of music’s origins based on principles of sexual selection (see Kivy, 1959, for a discussion of these ideas in a larger historical framework). For the next century, scholarly discussion of music and evolution was relatively sparse but began to stir again with the rise of cognitive studies of music (e.g., Roederer, 1984). Interest in the topic has grown considerably in the past decade, reflecting the explosion of cognitive neuroscience research on music (Peretz, 2006). Indeed, since 2000, two scientific volumes of essays have been devoted to the evolution of music (Wallin et al., 2000; Vitouch and Ladinig, 2009), and the topic has been addressed in many other books and scholarly articles (e.g., Pinker 1997; Hauser and McDermott, 2003; Mithen 2005; Fitch, 2006, 2010; Hagen and Hammerstein, 2009; Kirschner and Tomasello, in press). Several adaptationist and nonadaptationist proposals are now in existence; some of the more prominent ones are reviewed below.

Given the debates over the evolutionary status of music, it is parsimonious to adopt the null hypothesis that there has been no natural selection for musical abilities in our species and then ask if there is enough evidence to seriously challenge this null hypothesis. When this strategy is applied to language, there appears to be enough evidence to refute the null hypothesis, as reviewed in Patel (2008: 358-366).

What of music? To some, the universal and ancient nature of human music may imply that it originated as a biological adaptation. The danger of such an assumption is illustrated by another remarkable human trait, namely the control of fire. This trait extends deep into our species’ past and is found in every human culture, yet few would dispute that it arose as an invention rather than a biological adaptation. The universality of the trait can be explained by the fact that it provides things that are universally valued by humans, including the ability to cook food, keep warm, and see in dark places. The example of fire-making teaches us that when we see a universal and ancient human trait, we cannot simply assume that it has been a direct target of natural selection (Patel, 2008: 356).6

It is tempting to think that brain specialization for certain aspects of music cognition (Peretz, 2006) and the existence of genetically-based deficits of music perception (Drayna et al. 2001; Peretz et al., 2007) point to natural selection for music. Yet upon closer examination, these facts provide no compelling support for adaptationist theories. Here, reading and writing provide useful analogies. These are indisputably human inventions, probably no more than about six thousand years old, making them too young to be associated with any evolutionary brain specialization for these abilities. Yet brain imaging studies of literate individuals have shown that certain aspects of reading, e.g., recognizing written characters, are associated with functional specializations in specific brain regions (Dehaene and Cohen, 2007; cf. Stewart et al., 2003). This specialization is clearly a product of experience-dependent neural plasticity, i.e., long-lasting changes in neurons and brain networks driven by experiences within an individual lifetime (Dehaene, 2009). Furthermore, certain reading disorders have a genetic component (Fisher and Franks, 2006), even though one can be confident that humans have not undergone natural selection for reading abilities. That is, specific genes can influence brain circuits that happen to be important for a complex human ability without any implication of natural selection for that ability.

The examples of fire-making and reading show that the evolutionary null hypothesis for music is not challenged by music’s universality, age, association with some degree of brain specialization, or its influence by specific genes. Challenges to the null hypothesis thus must come from other sources. Patel (2008: 367-400) reviewed a wide range of evidence in this regard, including data from neuroscience, infant studies, and animal studies, and argued that at present the null hypothesis for music could not be rejected.

Rather than rehearse those arguments here, sections 3.1 and 3.2 below take a different approach and illustrate two lines of research that support the idea of music as an invention. These studies illustrate a comparative approach to the evolutionary biology of music (McDermott and Hauser, 2003; Justus and Hutsler, 2005). The basic logic of this approach is as follows: If one can show that an aspect of music cognition is rooted in other, nonmusical human brain functions or is shared with other species, then it is parsimonious to assume that this aspect has not been shaped by natural selection for music. This approach is particularly powerful when applied to aspects of music which seem domain-specific, i.e., not related to other types of cognition, such as tonality processing and synchronization of movement to a musical beat (Peretz and Coltheart, 2003; Bispham, 2006).

Challenges to the most prominent nonadaptationist theory of music (Pinker, 1997), which views music as a “biologically useless” invention, come from studies showing that regular engagement with music can result in lasting changes to nonmusical brain functions. Importantly, such studies concern individuals who are not professional musicians. There has been a good deal of research on structural brain differences between professional musicians and non-musicians (e.g., Elbert et al., 1995; Schneider et al., 2002; Bengtsson et al., 2005; Stewart, 2008), with recent research supporting the idea that many such differences can be explained by experience-dependent neural plasticity (e.g., Hyde et al., 2009; Schlaug, Forgeard et al., 2009). The current focus, however, is on evidence that regular engagement with music can exert lasting effects on brain functions in a wider range of individuals (e.g., Sacks, 2007; Dalla Bella et al., 2009; Bradt et al., in press).

Before discussing neurological studies, it is worth saying a few words about the effect of regular music lessons on the cognitive abilities of children, a topic of great public interest. This issue has been explored experimentally by Schellenberg (2004). He conducted a study in which six-year-old first-graders were randomly assigned to weekly keyboard lessons, voice lessons, drama lessons, or no lessons for one year. Each child was tested twice on a standardized intelligence test: once before entering first grade, and once in the summer after first grade. This test had twelve subtests measuring a variety of nonmusical cognitive skills. Children in all groups showed IQ increases over time, as expected due to attending first grade, but those receiving music lessons gained significantly more IQ points than those taking drama or no lessons.9 Based on the fact that the IQ gains in the music groups were seen across a majority of the twelve subtests, Schellenberg argued that music training influences a variety of non-domain-specific skills (e.g., memorization, fine motor skills) or general mental processes relevant to many different cognitive tasks, such as executive function (the ability to organize mental tasks, control impulses, etc.) and abstract reasoning (see Schellenberg, 2006, for further details).10 Schellenberg’s findings support the view that regular engagement with music influences a variety of nonmusical brain functions.

The preceding section provided two examples of the lasting effects of music on nonmusical cognitive abilities. I suspect that in the coming years, more and more evidence will accrue for the lasting effects of music on diverse aspects of human brain function. Thus, it is important to begin thinking about why music sometimes has these effects. That is, what mechanisms underlie these effects? A firm answer to this question requires a large set of empirical studies from which to draw inductive conclusions. In the meantime, however, it is possible to set forth some hypotheses that may help guide future work.

I hypothesize that one set of mechanisms involves the neuroendocrine system, i.e., the regulation of hormones by the brain. Music appears to have a strong influence on the human limbic system (Peretz, 2010; Koelsch, 2010), an emotional regulation system with diverse subcortical (e.g., hippocampus, amygdala, cingulate) and cortical (e.g. orbitofrontal cortex) components, which is influenced by many descending inputs from wide regions of the cerebral cortex (Damasio, 1994). The mechanisms by which music influences the limbic system remain to be understood and may revolve in part around music’s ability to emulate emotionally significant vocal sounds (Juslin and Laukka, 2003; Snowdon and Teie, 2009), though this is clearly only part of the story. For the current purposes, the crucial point is that the limbic system projects to the hypothalamus, which in turn regulates the release of a broad range of hormones from the brain and various peripheral glands (e.g., oxytocin, cortisol, etc.). Hormones are blood-borne chemical messengers that can have long-lasting effects on a range of brain structures that have hormone receptors. For example, the hippocampus and amygdala have cortisol receptors, and chronically elevated cortisol (e.g., due to prolonged stress) can influence neuronal morphology and activity in these brain structures, as well as the birth of new cells in the adult hippocampus (Sapolsky, 2000). Since there is empirical evidence that listening to music can transiently reduce cortisol levels in adults and infants (Trehub and Nakata, 2002; Khalfa et al., 2003; Suda et al., 2008), this suggests one pathway by which regular musical listening may have lasting effects on the brain (cf. section 4.1 above). Of course, cortisol is just one hormone regulated by the brain, and it seems likely that many hormones (e.g., testosterone, vasopressin, etc.) are potentially influenced by music (Fukui et al., 2008). In all such cases, the critical point is that hormones can have long-lasting effects on the cells that they influence. Thus, neuroendocrine effects on the brain are conceptually and mechanistically distinct from transient neurotransmitter effects, e.g., the release of dopamine associated with musical chills (“goosebumps”) (Blood and Zatorre, 2001; Salimpoor et al., 2009).

Of course, the fact that hormones can have long-lasting effects on brain structure or function does not mean that they always do have such effects. The degree to which neuroendocrine effects result in lasting changes to the brain likely depends on the state the brain is in when such effects occur. Rapidly changing nervous systems (e.g., the brains of healthy infants or of older adults in the period soon after a brain injury) may be particularly sensitive in this regard. Furthermore, there may be genetic factors (including variation in hormone receptor density) that influence tissue sensitivity to hormones.

Apart from neuroendocrine effects, I hypothesize that another way music can have lasting effects on nonmusical abilities is via mechanisms of neural plasticity, i.e. via use-dependent functional or structural changes in brain circuitry. (In contrast to neuroendocrine mechanisms, which can be activated by passive listening to music, plasticity-based mechanisms are likely to be driven by active engagement with music, e.g. via regular singing or playing of a musical instrument.) Modern neuroscience has shifted from a view of the brain as plastic only during early developmental periods to a view that recognizes a substantial degree of plasticity throughout the lifespan (Edelman, 1987; Draganski and May, 2008). The “permanent plasticity” of the brain means that the networks involved in our cognitive functions are malleable throughout life (though the degree of malleability in many brain areas may be substantially higher during early sensitive periods of development). According to TTM theory, music engages processing mechanisms shared with a wide range of cognitive domains, such as language, attention, auditory scene analysis, and so forth. Hence, music has the opportunity to influence these domains by driving plasticity in brain networks that it shares with these domains.

Why would music drive plasticity in these networks? One idea is that music is often more exacting than other domains in terms of the degree of precision that it demands. For example, music and speech both involve the control of pitch, but music demands a higher degree of precision for both the control and perception of pitch than does ordinary speech (Patel, 2008, Ch. 4). Thus, musical experience may sharpen cortical and subcortical pitch processing mechanisms shared by music and language, leading to the observed superior processing of linguistic pitch contours by musicians (Wong et al., 2007; Patel and Iversen, 2007). Similar arguments may help explain why musically trained individuals show superior perception of speech in noise (Parbery-Clark et al., 2009) and other nonmusical auditory processing benefits.

Apart from the demands of high-precision processing, another factors that may promote music’s ability to drive plasticity is the fact that musical behaviors are often frequently repeated (e.g., frequently singing or playing a particular piece) and often involve heightened emotion. Repeatedly engaging in high-precision processing in the context of heightened emotion seems likely to promote functional and structural changes to the brain.

Thus far, this essay has argued that music is an invention. Yet if it is an invention, why is it universal in human culture? Section 3 pointed out that human cultural universals can originate as inventions, as illustrated by the control of fire. TTM theory posits that music resembles fire-making in being an ancient invention that has become universal because it provides things that are universally valued by humans. In the case of fire, these things include the ability to cook food, keep warm, and see in dark places. In the case of music, I suggest that the valued things it provides are mental rather than physical: namely, emotional power, ritual efficacy, and mnemonic efficacy.

Evolutionary discussions of music originate with Darwin, so it is fitting to end this essay with a comment on the relevance of Darwin’s thinking to the current proposal. TTM theory proposes that music is an invention that builds on a diverse range of brain functions and has the ability to shape those functions. Thus, TTM theory, unlike Darwin’s theory of music, is nonadaptationist. Yet it is thoroughly Darwinian in its focus on comparative biological research. As illustrated by section 3 (“Music as a human invention”), TTM theory grows from studies comparing music processing to brain processing in other domains (such as language) and studies comparing music processing to auditory processing in other species. TTM theory is thus committed to using Darwinian research methods to explore the neurobiological foundations of human music.

Before closing, it is worth asking what distinguishes TTM theory from the concept of exaptation, or a trait whose evolutionary origin is not related to its current use (Gould and Vrba, 1982). Feathers are an oft-cited example of an exaptation, as it has been theorized that these structures originated in the context of thermoregulation and were only later put to use (and directly shaped by natural selection) for flight (Gould and Vrba, 1982). Since TTM theory views music as an invention based on diverse nonmusical brain functions, each of which may have been shaped by natural selection, it considers music a type of exaptation. However, exaptation is not a specific enough term to capture the idea of a transformative technology. This is because exaptation (a term coined before our modern understanding of neural plasticity) does not connote the power of a novel trait to shape the biological systems from which it arose (cf. Lewontin, 2000). Furthermore, exaptation allows the notion of secondary adaptation (as in the feather example above), whereas TTM theory holds that that there has been no evolutionary modification of the brain aimed at supporting musical behavior.

Darwin himself was not an ultra-adaptationist; that is, he did not believe that every characteristic of an organism was a product of natural selection. (He differed from his contemporary Alfred Russell Wallace in this regard [Gould, 1980].) For example, in The Descent of Man, Darwin wrote that “many cases could be advanced of organs and instincts originally adapted for one purpose, having been utilized for some distinct purpose” (p. 1208). That is, he implicitly recognized the concept of exaptation long before the term was coined by later evolutionary biologists. What Darwin did not foresee, however, was that human inventions could substantially influence the structure and function of the brain, albeit within the course of a lifetime. This remarkable fact lays the foundation for a biological approach to music and other human cultural phenomena (Wilson, 1998; Becker, 2004; Edelman, 2006; Smail, 2008). Understanding the biology of human inventions involves understanding how our evolved neural organization shapes those inventions and how our inventions in turn shape our brains within individual lifetimes. In exploring this fascinating dialectic, music is a particularly promising area of research.

Supported by Neurosciences Research Foundation as part of its research program on music and the brain at The Neurosciences Institute, where ADP is the Esther J. Burnham Senior Fellow. I am grateful to the following individuals for their insightful comments: Jennifer Burton, John Iversen, Sebastian Kirschner, Richard Lewontin, Bruno Repp, Oliver Sacks, Robert Sapolsky, Thom Scott-Phillips, Daniel Smail, Lauren Stewart, William Forde Thompson, and Ellen Winner. I also thank Melissa Bailar for thoughtful editing, and Fred Moody for his prompt and helpful input throughout the publication process.

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