Monkey Studies
Love Music More · hosted by Luke F. Walton · Solo episode
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Topics discussed
Host note
Last week I asked whether a newborn can already predict music, on What Babies Listen To. This one stays with that question and aims it at rhythm, then at monkeys. The factory-default version is: how much musical expectation do we show up with?
Winkler and colleagues, in 2009, played rhythmic patterns to babies a few days old. Their brains reacted hard to downbeats. I put that next to James Brown and the one: hit the one and people have something to dance to. Wheels on the Bus works the same way. The newborns were not only memorizing a string of noises. Inside a short phrase they were building a picture of where the pattern should go, and an unexpected move lit the brain up. I had thought that arrived later. I will not make the same claim for pitch. I have not found a newborn study with a clear equivalent for an out-of-key note. Timing shows up. What counts as pleasant may still be the cultural part.
A friend, Jordan, did this kind of work in a neuroscience program and said the monkeys were the worst coworkers. Some days they did not want to come in. That is the right caution for the rhesus macaque result. Two animals showed sensitivity to unexpected timing. That is not a sweeping evolutionary proof. They might be savants. It is still interesting if a basic auditory system is already keeping a statistical model of sound, the way a footstep has a when. Speech, culture, and a life of listening turn that seed into what we call music.
I do not want to call it innate and stop. The missing piece is what the baby had already heard: the mother's voice, speech rhythms, the heartbeat. Prenatal sound might be the first training set. From there, early humans are easier for me to picture around a fire, drumming, than as a cave painting, because I have been at that fire. If there is alien music, it is probably ordered frequencies over time too, even if their ears are not ours. We cannot know. It is still a good door to leave open.
Selected moments
- How much expectation do we arrive with? 1:04 I frame the episode as the factory-default question: how much musical expectation is already there.
- Winkler, 2009, and the downbeat 1:50 I stay on rhythm: Winkler and colleagues, babies a few days old, brains reacting to downbeats.
- James Brown and the one 2:26 I connect the downbeat finding to the one, and to children's songs that land the stress where you expect it.
- A phrase, not a string of noises 3:07 I argue the newborns are organizing the pattern, the same statistical move as the earlier study.
- Surprise is louder 4:19 I treat an unexpected entrance, a jump-scare horn, as part of the composer's palette, and I stop short of claiming newborns hear that.
- The worst coworkers 6:14 I tell Jordan's lab story, then turn to rhesus macaques and unexpected timing.
- Two animals is not a theory of evolution 7:05 I refuse the sweeping claim. Two macaques might be savants. A statistical model of sound might still be the seed.
- What did the baby already hear? 8:26 I hold the innate reading back. Heartbeat, voice, and speech rhythm may be the first training set.
- Drums around the fire, and aliens 9:52 I picture early humans playing before I picture a cave painting, then leave the door open for alien music.
Selected excerpts
How much do we come with in terms of musical expectation?
The interesting finding was essentially the baby's brains reacted very strongly to downbeats.
The James Brown thing is all about the one.
Surprise is louder than not surprise in the same way like a jump scare works.
He said that they were the worst coworkers because just like humans, some days they didn't want to go to work.
We cannot know. But it's fun to at least think about some level of predisposition for music.
It's honestly one of the easiest ways for me to think about early humans is to think about them playing music.
FAQ
Do newborns already respond to rhythm?
On the study I talk through here, yes for timing. Winkler and colleagues, in 2009, played rhythmic patterns to babies a few days old, and the brains reacted strongly to downbeats. I do not make the same claim for an out-of-key pitch. I have not found a newborn result that clear.
Do monkeys have rhythm?
The rhesus macaque result I am using is small. Two animals showed sensitivity to unexpected timing. I will not turn that into a theory of how music evolved. A friend who worked with monkeys in a neuroscience program also said they were awful coworkers, which is its own kind of data.
Is musical expectation innate?
I do not know, and I say so on the episode. A newborn may already be organizing a short pattern, and prenatal sound, the heartbeat, a voice, speech rhythm, may have trained that before birth. Culture does the rest. The door is open. The proof is not.
These pages are host notes, not a full transcript. An automatic transcript is on the Spotify episode.