Musical Interaction Reveals Music as Embodied Language

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Musicology
• Neuroscience
• Social Sciences
• Evolutionary Biology

Background:

• Life and social sciences emphasize music's social character, with evolutionary hypotheses focusing on sexual selection, parent-infant bonding, and group cohesion.
• Neurobiology has extensively studied the neural and hormonal basis of musicality for over two decades.
• Existing research views music as an interactive communicative process rather than just sound patterns.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose a framework of music as an embodied language, emphasizing its social interactive nature.
• To integrate embodied music cognition, predictive processing, and neural underpinnings within this framework.
• To present experimental evidence supporting the proposed framework of musical interaction.

Main Methods:

• Literature review of concepts defining joint musical action, focusing on embodied music cognition and predictive processing.
• Analysis of neural underpinnings related to musical interaction.
• Summarization of three laboratory experiments investigating musical interaction in dyads, from basic actions to complex musical performances.

Main Results:

• A novel framework conceptualizes music as an embodied language, rooted in culturally adapted brain structures.
• The framework integrates embodied and predictive features, centered on the concept of joint agency.
• Experimental findings support the interpretation of musical interaction through the lens of embodied language and predictive processing.

Conclusions:

• Music, when conceived as an embodied language, offers a pathway to understanding social interaction and communication.
• The proposed framework provides a comprehensive view of musical interaction, applicable from simple rhythmic coordination to complex musical improvisation.
• This approach bridges cognitive musicology and neuroscience, highlighting the fundamental role of musicality in human social cognition.