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From: curry@hpl.hp.com (Bo Curry)
Subject: Re: What's innate? (Was Re: Artificial Neural Networks and Cognition
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Date: Fri, 27 Jan 1995 19:09:04 GMT
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: curry@hpl.hp.com (Bo Curry) wrote:

: > There's considerable evidence that songs/tunes are handled
: > by completely separate brain structures than is language.

jerrybro@uclink2.berkeley.edu wrote:
: You may be right, but I find this surprising.  Perhaps I should
: take issue with the apparent claim that certain brain structures
: handle language all by themselves, independently of the rest of
: the brain.  That "completely separate" part seems to express
: a highly debatable view of the brain.

Uh, don't take "completely separate" too literally. What I mean
is just that (a) neural respiration activity is concentrated in
different brain regions while singing and while speaking prose,
(b) lesions can destroy the capability of articulate speech while
leaving singing intact, and vice versa, and (c) neurons whose
artificial stimulation evokes mental tunes, and those which
evoke "heard" speech, are in different regions. Obviously,
there are connections between them - presumably the semantic
interpretation of songs is handled in the same regions as is
semantic interpretation of speech. But there's a lot more
to our ability to remember and reproduce songs than their
semantic content. I, for example, can sing "Hava Nagila"
all the way through with resonable fidelity, though I understand
not a word of Hebrew. I'm pretty sure it would be impossible for
me to memorize a random list of Hebrew words with the same
information content, or even the actual lyrics if they
were unaccompanied by music.

Bo
