Do music and mathematics go together?
Daniel Levitin, a cognitive pscyhologist who runs the Laboratory for Music Perception, Cognition and Expertise at McGill University, is conducting a study comparing autistic persons with those with Williams syndrome, a rare genetic disorder causing low intelligence and high levels of musical ability. Levitin’s research on how music affects the emotions is the subject of his book This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession and is described in the December 31st New York Times. Levitin questions the frequently made correlation between music and mathematics:
Dr. Levitin’s work has occasionally undermined some cherished beliefs about music. For example recent years have seen an explosion of “Baby Mozart” videos and toys, based on the idea — popular since the ’80s — that musical and mathematical ability are inherently linked.
But Dr. Levitin argued that this could not be true, based on his study of people with Williams syndrome, a genetic disorder that leaves people with low intelligence.
……….
Yet people with Williams possess unusually high levels of musical ability. One Williams boy Dr. Levitin met was so poorly coordinated he could not open the case to his clarinet. But once he was holding the instrument, his coordination problems vanished, and he could play fluidly. Music cannot be indispensably correlated with math, Dr. Levitin noted, if Williams people can play music. He is now working on a study that compares autistics — some of whom have excellent mathematical ability, but little musical ability — to people with Williams; in the long run, he said, he thinks it could help shed light on why autistic brains develop so differently.
I find Levitin’s questioning of the music/mathematics connections particularly of interest. Charlie is working on identifying his numbers (20 and up) and slowly, slowly, slowly moving towards pre-arithmetic. He has always been drawn to music, seems to have some musical ability (at the piano), seems to rely mostly on his ears to speak, and has particular preferences for some types of music over others: Charlie asked for Jimi “Hendricks” was who Charlie wanted to hear on the “wadeyoh” tonight.
(I would hope that Charlie’s good ears would make him able to resist the lure of any pied piper of autism.)
I am curious to know about Levitin’s music of the hemispheres.
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POSTED IN: Music, Neuroscience, Psychology, Science
4 opinions for Do music and mathematics go together?
Daisy
Dec 31, 2006 at 12:24 pm
“Baby Mozart” and others are exploiting actual research and taking it out of context. Frances Rauscher and Gordon Shaw conducted meticulous research connecting the brain patterns in math to the brain patterns in music, and also determining the limitations of such connections. It’s fascinating and very, very real. Sorry, I don’t have a link at this time.
Dr. Levitin, like those who jumped on the Mozart bandwagon, needs to do his homework thoroughly before he jumps to conclusions.
Someone
Dec 31, 2006 at 1:01 pm
There are a lot of people going around (or at least there used to be) saying that Williams Syndrome is the opposite of autism; it isn’t at all, though.
Besides why is this guy overgeneralizing autistics? There are a LOT of autistic people who are very bad at math.
Paula
Jan 28, 2008 at 12:46 pm
I am a (paid) musician.
I also have a math learning disability.
Learning tricky rhythms is a pain. They seem like math to me, probably because I need to divide the measure into little (sometimes teensy) segments.
Kristina Chew, PhD
Jan 28, 2008 at 1:32 pm
What instrument do you play, if I may ask?
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