Process Theology & the Musical Brain
"While forming the music, I'm constantly
being formed by the music I'm forming."
- Dennis Plies
being formed by the music I'm forming."
- Dennis Plies
"Whenever a person engages with music--when a piano student practices a scale, a jazz saxophonist riffs on a melody, a teenager sobs to a sad song, or a wedding guest gets down on the dance floor--countless neurons are firing. Playing an instrument requires all of the resources of the nervous system, including cognitive, sensory, and motor functions. Composition and improvisation are remarkable demonstrations of the brain's capacity for creativity. Something as seemingly simple as listening to a tune involves mental faculties most of us don't even realize we have.
Larry S. Sherman, a neuroscientist and lifelong musician, and Dennis Plies, a professional musician and teacher, collaborate to show how our brains and music work in harmony. They consider music in all the ways we encounter it--teaching, learning, practicing, listening, composing, improvising, and performing--in terms of neuroscience as well as music pedagogy, showing how the brain functions and even changes in the process. Every Brain Needs Music: The Neuroscience of Making and Listening to Music (Columbia UP, 2023) draws on leading behavioral, cellular, and molecular neuroscience research as well as surveys of more than a hundred musical people. It provides new perspectives on learning to play, teaching, how to practice and perform, the ways we react to music, and why the brain benefits from musical experiences.
Written for both musical and nonmusical people, including newcomers to brain science, Every Brain Needs Music is a lively and easy-to-read exploration of the neuroscience of music and its significance in our lives."
Melek Firat Altay is a neuroscientist, biologist and musician. Her research focuses on deciphering the molecular and cellular mechanisms of neurodegenerative and neurodevelopmental disorders.
Larry S. Sherman, a neuroscientist and lifelong musician, and Dennis Plies, a professional musician and teacher, collaborate to show how our brains and music work in harmony. They consider music in all the ways we encounter it--teaching, learning, practicing, listening, composing, improvising, and performing--in terms of neuroscience as well as music pedagogy, showing how the brain functions and even changes in the process. Every Brain Needs Music: The Neuroscience of Making and Listening to Music (Columbia UP, 2023) draws on leading behavioral, cellular, and molecular neuroscience research as well as surveys of more than a hundred musical people. It provides new perspectives on learning to play, teaching, how to practice and perform, the ways we react to music, and why the brain benefits from musical experiences.
Written for both musical and nonmusical people, including newcomers to brain science, Every Brain Needs Music is a lively and easy-to-read exploration of the neuroscience of music and its significance in our lives."
Melek Firat Altay is a neuroscientist, biologist and musician. Her research focuses on deciphering the molecular and cellular mechanisms of neurodegenerative and neurodevelopmental disorders.
Larry S. Sherman is a professor of neuroscience at the Oregon Health and Science University. An enthusiastic piano player since age four, he has published widely on brain development, aging, and disease, and given lectures on music and the brain throughout the world.
Dennis Plies, who was for many years a music professor at Warner Pacific University, has been involved with music for his entire life. Starting at the age of seven, he played marimba for audiences and on television, and he has recorded albums in genres including gospel, classical, and jazz.
Dennis Plies, who was for many years a music professor at Warner Pacific University, has been involved with music for his entire life. Starting at the age of seven, he played marimba for audiences and on television, and he has recorded albums in genres including gospel, classical, and jazz.
How Your Brain Benefits from Music
Larry Sherman
Interview with the Authors
of Every Brain Needs Music
"Whether you are a professional musician or music enthusiast, prepare to meet your new favorite book on the neuroscience of music! We discuss the science of effective practice; the intricate and distinct neurological processes utilized for musical composition, improvisation, practice, and performance; and the profound impact of music on brain development. As the conversation unfolds, listeners gain a profound understanding of how music ignites creativity and enhances cognitive functions, offering a thought-provoking journey into the remarkable intersection of music and neuroscience."
Mindy Peterson, host of podcast Enhance Life with Music
Mindy Peterson, host of podcast Enhance Life with Music
Theological Musings
Process Theology & the Musical Brain
- Music as Evolutionary Emergence. “Music” is the outcome of an ongoing evolutionary process, emerging over time through biological, cultural, and experiential developments, and taking form as organized sound and silence shaped in acts of listening, performing, and participation.
- Music and Brain Flourishing. Music helps us flourish, in part, by benefiting the brain—strengthening neural pathways, enhancing integration, fostering creativity, deepening emotional and relational capacities, and sometimes delaying mental decline.
- The Experiencing Self. The “we” who experience music are neither identical with our brains nor separate from them; as subjects of our lives, we are the living wholes of our embodied neural activity—experiencing, feeling, and responding from first-person perspectives of our own. We are the ones who enjoy the music—with help from our brains.
- Reciprocity of Mind and Brain. Our minds and brains are reciprocally related: neural processes give rise to experience, and experience feeds back to reshape the brain. This relationship is not one-way but circular and ongoing, involving multiple interacting systems rather than a single center. Our thoughts, feelings, intentions, and practices—including musical ones—help re-pattern neural activity over time.
- The Value of Music. The music we create and enjoy is valuable for two reasons: it is enjoyable in its own right, enabling us to experience beauty, deepen feeling, and participate in the richness of life; and it is also inherently social, creating shared fields of feeling in which individuals are drawn into relational harmony without losing their uniqueness. It is a form of distributed subjectivity—an emergent, collectively felt field of experience.
- Music and the Living Whole . As both individually enjoyable and socially connective, music is one way we touch and are touched by the living whole of the universe—a whole with its own first-person perspective, often addressed in prayer as God. “God” is a name for the Consciousness in the presence of which the universe lives and moves and has its being.
- God as Cosmic Lure and Co-Composer. This living whole is continuously influential in the world as a non-controlling cosmic lure, present within each sentient being as an innermost lure to flourish in response to the possibilities of each moment. Thus God can be imagined as a co-composer of the universe, all loving but not all-powerful.
- God as Deep Listener. The divine composer is also a deep listener. As our minds are to our brains, so God is to the universe: a living whole that feels, receives, and responds to all that occurs within it. God receives and feels everything that happens in the world—including the music we make and the lives we live—and weaves it into an ever-growing harmony.
- Improvisation—Human and Divine. All musical experience is improvisational, requiring a fresh synthesis in each moment rather than mere repetition. Human life is improvisational as well, shaped by freedom, constraint, memory, and possibility. In this ongoing improvisation, God also participates—not by controlling outcomes, but by luring each moment toward richer forms of harmony. Divine and human improvisation unfold together, co-creating the music of the world.
- Music and Beloved Community. Music can help nurture what has been called the beloved community—a form of shared life rooted in justice, compassion, and mutual care. In making and sharing music, people learn to listen, respond, and create together, honoring both individuality and harmony. In this way, music can become a practice of communal flourishing, helping to form communities in which all can participate in the richness of life.