This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession

A branch of psychology that analyzes human behavior and cognition from an evolutionary perspective, evolutionary psychology aims to understand the reasons why certain behaviors and psychological characteristics developed in early humans. To do so, it examines what issues or problems the adaptations might have evolved to confront or ameliorate. Typical evolutionary science investigates the origin of physical adaptations or phenotypes linked to specific sequences of genes. Evolutionary psychology applies the same principles to behaviors and mental processes, enabling scientists to study traits that lack obviously direct links to specific genotypes in the same depth as those that do. Music is one such trait, and Levitin attributes its worth as an adaptation to its role in sexual selection.

A melody is an organized succession of notes forming a song. The melody of a piece of music is its main theme, which a vocalist or soloist often carries and to which the piece continually returns throughout its duration. A listener perceives a melody as a recognizable whole because of the relationship between its composite notes rather than through any innate characteristic of the individual notes themselves. Levitin discusses the recognition of melody as a primary element in how the brain processes music and generates schema.