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Volume 6 Issue 7, July 2003

Music is a universal feature across all human societies, both ancient and modern. Yet the 'biological' function of music remains largely mysterious and much debated. Research on how the brain processes music is interesting in its own right, but it is also beginning to have an impact on more general questions in neuroscience, such as how genes and the environment interact to produce distinct cognitive abilities and how complex motor sequences are organized and learned. This month's special focus highlights this emerging research. (pp 661–695). Cover image: "Musicians and Dancers Performing" by Coco Masuda.

Volume 6 Issue 7

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Editorial

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Book Review

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News & Views

  • Languages may all share and be constrained by a universal grammar. A new study shows that Broca's area (long thought to participate in grammatical aspects of language) becomes increasingly active as participants acquire rules from a foreign language, but not as they acquire comparable rules that are inconsistent with real languages. Could Broca's area be a neural substrate for universal grammar?

    • Gary F Marcus
    • Athena Vouloumanos
    • Ivan A Sag
    News & Views

  • During neuromuscular synapse development, clustering of acetylcholine receptors requires Agrin/MuSK signaling. The non-receptor tyrosine kinases Abl1 and Abl2 are now suggested to be the signals downstream of MuSK leading to receptor clustering.

    • Steven J Burden
    • Christian Fuhrer
    • Stevan R Hubbard
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  • Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) is best known as a regulator of brain development and plasticity. New evidence suggests that BDNF is also a component of the hypothalamic melanocortin pathway that controls body weight in adults.

    • Brent E Wisse
    • Michael W Schwartz
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  • Sighted people devote much their cortex to visual processing, but in the blind, 'visual' areas are recruited for other senses. A paper in this issue now reports that V1 in the blind is also activated by a verbal memory task, without any sensory input.

    • Christian Büchel
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Obituary

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Introduction

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Brief Communication

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Article

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Focus

  • Music is a universal feature of human societies, but its adaptive function remains mysterious. These six Reviews discuss how the brain processes music, and how this research influences our understanding of cognition.

    Focus
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