ArticlePhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2015
The origins of music in auditory scene analysis and the roles of evolution and culture in musical creation.
Article in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 37 papers.
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Who cites it
37 citing papers in PubMed.
- Expressing emotions through music.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2026Review
- Critical Review on the Development and Evolution of Beat Perception.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2026Review
- Behavioral and Subjective Music Perception and Appreciation in Adults with Hearing Aids, Cochlear Implants, and Typical Hearing.Audiology research · 2026Article
- Development of auditory and spontaneous movement responses to music over the first postnatal year.eLife · 2026Article
- Timing-induced illusory percepts of pitch.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Human newborns form musical predictions based on rhythmic but not melodic structure.PLoS biology · 2026Article
- Affective priming through Indian ragas: influence on perception of ambiguous visual stimuli and creativity.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- The role of musical pitch in long-distance defensive signaling.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2025Review
- Recording artist career comparison through audio content analysis.Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- The cultural evolution of distortion in music (and other norms of mixed appeal).Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- The perception of emotion in music by people with hearing loss and people with cochlear implants.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Review
- Music as an Evolved Tool for Socio-Affective Fiction.Emotion review : journal of the International Society for Research on Emotion · 2024Article
- Spontaneous emergence of rudimentary music detectors in deep neural networks.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Melodic contour supersedes short-term statistical learning in expressive accentuation.PloS one · 2024Article
- Early social communication through music: State of the art and future perspectives.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2023Review
- Universality, domain-specificity, and development of psychological responses to music.Nature reviews psychology · 2023Article
- Testosterone, oxytocin and co-operation: A hypothesis for the origin and function of music.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- Nocturnal selective pressures on the evolution of human musicality as a missing piece of the adaptationist puzzle.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- Collective dynamics support group drumming, reduce variability, and stabilize tempo drift.eLife · 2022Article
- Higher empathy is associated with stronger social bonding when moving together with music.Psychology of music · 2022Article
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Abstract
Whether music was an evolutionary adaptation that conferred survival advantages or a cultural creation has generated much debate. Consistent with an evolutionary hypothesis, music is unique to humans, emerges early in development and is universal across societies. However, the adaptive benefit of music is far from obvious. Music is highly flexible, generative and changes rapidly over time, consistent with a cultural creation hypothesis. In this paper, it is proposed that much of musical pitch and timing structure adapted to preexisting features of auditory processing that evolved for auditory scene analysis (ASA). Thus, music may have emerged initially as a cultural creation made possible by preexisting adaptations for ASA. However, some aspects of music, such as its emotional and social power, may have subsequently proved beneficial for survival and led to adaptations that enhanced musical behaviour. Ontogenetic and phylogenetic evidence is considered in this regard. In particular, enhanced auditory-motor pathways in humans that enable movement entrainment to music and consequent increases in social cohesion, and pathways enabling music to affect reward centres in the brain should be investigated as possible musical adaptations. It is concluded that the origins of music are complex and probably involved exaptation, cultural creation and evolutionary adaptation.
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