Center for the Biology of Creativity, Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90024, USA.
Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2006 Dec;1(3):235-41. doi: 10.1093/scan/nsl029.
The ability to create and enjoy music is a universal human trait and plays an important role in the daily life of most cultures. Music has a unique ability to trigger memories, awaken emotions and to intensify our social experiences. We do not need to be trained in music performance or appreciation to be able to reap its benefits-already as infants, we relate to it spontaneously and effortlessly. There has been a recent surge in neuroimaging investigations of the neural basis of musical experience, but the way in which the abstract shapes and patterns of musical sound can have such profound meaning to us remains elusive. Here we review recent neuroimaging evidence and suggest that music, like language, involves an intimate coupling between the perception and production of hierarchically organized sequential information, the structure of which has the ability to communicate meaning and emotion. We propose that these aspects of musical experience may be mediated by the human mirror neuron system.
创作和欣赏音乐的能力是人类普遍具有的特质，在大多数文化的日常生活中都扮演着重要的角色。音乐具有独特的能力，可以触发记忆、唤醒情感，并增强我们的社交体验。我们不需要接受音乐表演或欣赏的训练就能从中受益——即使是婴儿，也能自然而然、毫不费力地与音乐产生共鸣。近年来，神经影像学对音乐体验的神经基础进行了大量研究，但音乐的抽象形状和模式如何能对我们产生如此深远的意义，仍然难以捉摸。在这里，我们回顾了最近的神经影像学证据，并提出音乐与语言一样，涉及到对层次化、有组织的序列信息的感知和产生之间的紧密结合，其结构具有传达意义和情感的能力。我们认为，音乐体验的这些方面可能是由人类镜像神经元系统介导的。
