Language and Music: Gary Marcus

In Gary Marcus’s presentation he opens are mind and explains how our rewards system is referenced to music. He proposes his theory of music evolving as social glue. He first talks about our language and how language has evolved tremendously through all these years. Why language has evolved? Well it has evolved because it expresses a huge advantage in social cohesion, as well as, it helps us attract mates. Descent with modification is one way we can perceive the evolution of language. As our ancestors over time acquired the skill of language, they then passed it down to their offspring’s as a trait considerably for the fittest to survive.  Although language has many benefits to it, Gary Marcus does consider it to be a “kluge”. In his presentation he discuses evolutionary inertia, which is an evolutionary system, once moving in a particular direction, tends to continue in that direction. Therefore, no major changes can be made in this system. Language is created of large structures that are composed of smaller structures, and people often remember the gist of what they hear. If someone states a sentence, you will not be able to state back that same sentence word for word, but you will only obtain the general meaning that is trying to be conveyed to you.  We as humans are vulnerable to extraneous information such as memorizing a list, or parse syntactic analysis. We lack the right kind of memory because human brains are bound by something called binding protein, and we don’t have enough binding memory to represent an entire syntax tree.   We also learn through much practice, and aren’t good at one-trail things. With much practice we can remember a telephone number that we dialed many years ago, a numerous amount of times, as opposed to the last random number we may have dialed an hour ago.

It is due to language that music has evolved so quickly. Language is like and instinct where as music is like a technological advancement. Culture affects music as well as evolution has had an influence on how music works. Music has evolved and adapted quite rapidly in the past 1000 years. Back then people didn’t know that they could say the same word in many different notes. Gary Marcus did a great job explaining how are our brains are rewarded in a familiarity sense, as in music we get a feeling of reward as we listen to it. 

            I have for many years now played the piano and enjoy it greatly. Not only playing the instrument but also listening to the radio station brings much joy to many individuals. When it is a song I hear on the radio that is one of my favorites at the moment, I automatically raise the volume in my car. This shows my reward system kicking in as I hear something I like to listen to; I automatically increase the volume and sing along in a happy tone.