Evidence map›Paper›PMID 42339249›Full record

ReviewFrontiers in cognition2025

Music as a social instrument: a brief historical and conceptual perspective.

Nicholas Bannan, Alan R Harvey

Abstract readReview
In one paragraph

Review in Frontiers in cognition, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
2citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

2 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Review
  2. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

2 authors.

Nicholas BannanConservatorium of Music, The University of Western Australia, Perth, WA, Australia.
Alan R HarveyConservatorium of Music, The University of Western Australia, Perth, WA, Australia.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

This article addresses the origins and purpose of communal music-making, including dance, and its role in human sociality. It accords special significance to the adapted nature of human vocalization, and the sensorimotor discrimination that allows the prediction and then generation of musically relevant, coordinated and simultaneous movements. Commencing with a historical survey of the development of ideas about the evolutionary importance of music in human social behavior, this mini-review then sets out to define and explore key issues involved in an evolutionary explanation. These include: acquisition and control of parameters required for vocal production (synchronization of pitch, timbre, duration and loudness); the exchange and transmission of pitched utterances in unison as well as in harmony; the roles of natural and sexual selection in shaping human musical abilities; the nature of cooperative behavior, and the consequences for social bonding of such interaction throughout life; transmission of such behaviors across generations, and the interaction between genes and culture that drives the evolution of complex social behavior in

Indexed as

cooperationdanceevolutionmusicrewardsocialitysynchronization

Identifiers

PMID42339249
PMCPMC13281057

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.