Neuroscientists identified specific neurons in the brain that respond to singing — but not other types of music, suggesting evolution plays a role. Credit: McGill, via Flickr/CC BY-NC 2.0Scientists on Tuesday announced they had found an unexpected response to singing in the brain, suggesting particular groups of neurons appear to respond selectively to these particular sound.
In a Current Biology journal article, a team of scientists in the United States report that they made their discovery by recording electrical activity in the brains of 15 participants, each of whom had electrodes inserted inside their brains to monitor epileptic seizures before undergoing surgery.
The team recorded electrical activity in response to 165 different sounds, including pieces of instrumental music and speech, then processed them using an algorithm. Combined with results from fMRI brain scans collected from 30 different individuals, they mapped the location of patterns in the brain.
Data gives insight into singing and the brain
“fMRI is one of the workhorses of human cognitive neuroscience, but it is very coarse,” says Dr. Samuel Norman-Haignere, a co-author of the study who is based at the University of Rochester. “Intracranial data is much more precise but has very poor spatial coverage.”
