This is your brain on Christmas music
It starts with a small jump up, then back down, a major second followed by a major sixth. Sol - la - sol - mi, sol - la - sol - mi. Whether sung by Mariah Carey or Dean Martin, the four notes are instantly recognizable as the opening to “Silent Night.”
“You hear it in one key, you hear it in another key, you know it's the same melody -- just in different keys,” said Brian Rabinovitz. “That’s because you have a memory for that particular tonal structure. You are able to instantly recognize it, even if it’s in a key you've never heard before, sung by a singer you haven't heard before.”
Rabinovitz is a neuroscientist who focuses on how the brain processes music. He’s currently serving as a visiting lecturer in William & 玛丽’s Department of Psychological Sciences and will be teaching a course on musical cognition this spring.
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So instead of pairing a 200-hertz note with a 400-hertz note, he paired a 233.08-hertz note with a 246.94-hertz note, playing a B flat 3 and B3 respectively. The result was painfully bad music. Rabinovitz said composing it was not really much of a challenge.
“It was actually very easy,” he said. “A lot of people do it even when they're not trying to.”
In the spring semester, Rabinovitz will provide W&M students a deeper look into music and memory through his course "Neuroscience of Musical Cognition.” He says the focus will be on giving students a clear picture of musical processing, so they can understand how their brains respond to music.
“The goal is to give people a better appreciation for the amazing complexity and depth of what is going on when you're engaging in a process that seems so natural and effortless,” Rabinovitz said.
