Ani Patel, Professor of Psychology at Tufts University, delivers his lecture on the neuroscience of music and the evolution of musicality Friday in the Amphitheater.
Ani Patel began his work in the field of music and the human brain when the discipline was “somewhat in its embryonic stage.” It started during his undergraduate years at the University of Virginia, and it also started with a dream and a problem: Despite being a biology major, he harbored a deep love for music.
“I didn’t study music as a degree, but I had a deep connection,” Patel said. “I played music. One day, wandering through the (University of Virginia’s) grounds late at night, not far from the rotunda, it dawned on me — maybe I could use the tools of biology to study how the brain processes music.”
Now a professor of psychology at Tufts University, where he studies the cognitive, neural and evolutionary foundations of musicality, Patel closed the Week Six Chautauqua Lecture Series theme of “Exploring the Transformative Power of Music with Renée Fleming” Friday morning in the Amphitheater. Shedding light on the intersection of music, brain function and evolution. Patel’s discussion highlighted the potential of music as a complementary treatment for neurological disorders and explored the deep evolutionary roots of musicality.
When Patel began his graduate studies at Harvard University’s Museum of Comparative Zoology, music was far from the focus.
“Music was not exactly on the radar in that department. Studying fish would have been good,” he said. “Also, the tools for doing it weren’t well-developed. We are now lucky to have things like MRI, but that technology had not been invented when I started graduate school in the late 1980s.”
In a department where music was a “non-entity,” Patel took the only logical path. He started studying ants. After all, E.O. Wilson, Patel’s mentor, was a renowned expert in ants and evolution, including human evolution.
“Studying ants in the field in Australia, I realized that to pursue my passion for music and the brain, I needed to change direction,” Patel said.
With Wilson’s support, Patel worked in various labs, learning techniques like EEG, which measures brain waves in response to music.
“At that time, the study of music in the brain was a small field,” he said. “It was uncertain whether this would pan out as a career.” Despite the uncertainty, his public school music education and a dedicated band director fueled his passion.
Fast forward to 2024, the field has grown significantly. From just a handful of researchers, his scientific community has expanded to around 250 people — “but we are still a young field.”
“Exploring the transformative power of music from a neurological perspective, we all know music can transport us in the moment,” Patel said, setting the stage for discussing music’s lasting effects on the brain. One of his notable studies involves nonfluent aphasia, a condition where people struggle with speech but can sing fluently.
“This was my entry point into considering specialized brain areas for music,” he said.
While early visits to the Boston Veterans Affairs Hospital involved combing through research on microfiche, “we can now see which brain areas are active during singing and speaking using modern imaging.”
A key breakthrough was Melodic Intonation Therapy, which “creates song-like versions of speech using two pitches. It leverages brain plasticity to help patients regain speech, and a neurologist at Harvard Medical School found that “singing therapy strengthens the brain’s right hemisphere pathways to compensate for damaged left hemisphere pathways.”
Beyond therapy, music has profound social and rehabilitative potential. In Canada, a project called Sing Well focuses on group singing for people with communication disorders.
“It combines basic research with community impact,” Patel said
Further, “singing can help people with neurological disorders like Parkinson’s disease,” and rhythmic music can initiate and sustain movement in patients with movement disorders.
“One patient’s transformation through music therapy was astounding,” Patel said, but there’s still need for further research to understand individual variations. “We need to understand why it doesn’t work for everyone and how to optimize it.”
On a broader scale, music enhances speech processing in healthy brains.
“Playing an instrument or singing can improve understanding of speech in complex auditory environments,” he said.
The Opera Hypothesis offers a framework: “Overlap, Precision, Emotion, Repetition, and Attention — all these factors contribute to enhanced brain processing.”
Music also has a profound connection to memory, and in dementia patients, music can even reactivate memories. In essence, “music can be a form of mental time travel.”
“For people with dementia, when their memory starts to degrade, memory is not just a unified thing — it has many components,” he said. “Sometimes a memory degrades faster than others. It turns out the memory from music tends to persist, from memories to other things … In the brain, research has shown that music is tightly married to memory.”
Moving forward, Patel emphasized the need for a cohesive approach that combines basic research with clinical applications to understand how music can aid in medical settings.
The evolutionary aspects of music have been debated since the time of Charles Darwin, who theorized that music might have evolved for courtship purposes, similar to birdsong. Patel contrasted this with the views of psychologist William James, who regarded music as a cultural invention rather than an evolved trait. But the discovery of a 40,000-year-old bone flute in Germany, predating the advent of agriculture and written language, suggests that music has been an integral part of human culture for millennia.
Humans aren’t the only animals that process music. Patel highlighted studies showing that humans have specialized brain mechanisms for musical tasks like beat synchronization, an ability not commonly found in other species. For instance, while dogs can perform intricate routines in canine freestyling competitions, they struggle to keep time with music. In contrast, certain birds, like parrots, can synchronize with a beat, as demonstrated by a dancing cockatoo named Snowball.
The implications of Patel’s research are profound, particularly in understanding how music can be harnessed to enhance brain function and treat neurological disorders. He concluded with a call for more rigorous studies to explore these possibilities.
“I think we are at a turning point, because this 150-year-old question can now be addressed with tools with brain imaging and also genetics,” he said. “Are humans an inherently musical species? We might be able to get to that answer in the next couple of decades which, for me, is extremely exciting.”
