Colwyn Trevarthen

Musicality and the Intrinsic Motive Pulse: Evidence from Human Psychobiology and Infant Communication

Musicality in human motives, the psycho-biological source of music, is described as a talent inherent in the unique way human beings move, and hence experience their world, their bodies and one another. It originates in the brain images of moving and feeling that generate and guide behaviour in time, with goal-defining purposefulness and creativity. Intelligent perception, cognition and learning, and the potentiality for immediate sympathy between humans for expressions of intrinsic motives in narrative form (linguistic and non-linguistic), depend on this spontaneous, self-regulating brain activity. It is proposed that evolution of human bipedal locomotion and the pressure of social intelligence set free a new polyrhythmia of motive processes, and that these generate fugal complexes of the Intrinsic Motive Pulse (IMP), with radical consequences for human imagination, thinking, remembering and communicating. Gestural mimesis and rhythmic narrative expression of purposes and images of awareness, regulated by, and regulating, dynamic emotional processes, form the foundations of human intersubjectivity, and of musicality. Acquired musical skill and the conventions of musical culture are animated from this core process in the human mind. Research on the dynamics of protoconversations and musical games with infants elucidates the rhythmic and prosodic foundations of sympathetic engagement in expressive exchanges. Developments in the first year prove the importance of the impulses of natural musicality in the emergence of cooperative awareness, and show how shared participation in the expressive phrases and emotional transformations of vocal games can facilitate not only imitation of speech, but interest in all shared meanings, or conventional uses, of objects and actions. Disturbances of early communication attributable to emotional unavailability of a depressed mother, or those due to sensory, motor or emotional handicap that causes a child to fail to react in an expected normal way, both confirm the crucial function in the development of intelligence and personality of sympathetic motives shared between adult and child in a secure and affectionate relationship, and offer a way of promoting development by supporting these motives. These facts establish that the parameters of musicality are intrinsically determined in the brain, or innate, and necessary for human development. Through their effects in emotional integration and the collaborative learning that leads to mastery of cultural knowledge, cultural skills, and language, they express the essential generator of human cognitive development.

Metacontrol of hemispheric function in human split-brain patients.

Four commissurotomy patients were tested for ability to match tachistoscopically presented stimuli with pictures in free vision, according to either structural appearance or functional/conceptual category. Patients were given ambiguous, structural, or functional instructions on any given run to trials with simultaneous double stimulus input to the two cerebral hemispheres. With ambiguous instructions, appearance and function matches were performed by the right and left hemispheres, respectively. When instructions were specific, appearance instructions tended to elicit appearance matches and right-hemisphere control. When function instructions were given, left-hemisphere control and function matches tended to be elicited. In three of the four patients, however, there was a significant number of dissociations between controlling hemisphere and strategy of matching.

The Dance of Wellbeing: Defining the Musical Therapeutic Effect

Music making is a human activity that communicates motives – the underlying impulses for action, by which experience is gained, and which are accompanied by feelings. Music evokes narratives of experience, based on our innate ability to share the passing of expressive ‘mind time’, an ability that may be called ‘musicality’. which is inseparable from the impulse to move with anticipation of rhythmic sensory consequences and varied emotional evaluations. Communicative musicality is the source of the music therapeutic experience and its effects. An inborn musicality is clearly uncovered in acoustic analyses of parent/infant vocal interactions, where, independent of verbal communication, a shared sense of time and the shaping of jointly-created pitch contours describe phrases and narrative cycles of feeling. There is new evidence that the communication of motives and experience is supported by systems of ‘sympathy neurones’ in the regulatory core of the brain, and by the ‘vitality affects’ they generate. The music therapy relationship seeks a dance of human passion and well-being by fundamentally intuitive means. Its verbal/cognitive regulation is necessary for the cultivation and recording of its technique, but not the origin of its immediate power 1. Keywords: musicality - therapy - infants - movement - emotion - timing - communication

Brain development, infant communication, and empathy disorders: Intrinsic factors in child mental health

Disorders of emotion, communication, and learning in early childhood are considered in light of evidence on human brain growth from embryo stages. We cite microbehavioral evidence indicating that infants are born able to express the internal activity of their brains, including dynamic “motive states” that drive learning. Infant expressions stimulate the development of imitative and reciprocal relations with corresponding dynamic brain states of caregivers. The infants mind must have an “innate self-with-other representation” of the inter-mind correspondence and reciprocity of feelings that can be generated with an adult.Primordial motive systems appear in subcortical and limbic systems of the embryo before the cerebral cortex. These are presumed to continue to guide the growth of a childs brain after birth. We propose that an “intrinsic motive formation” is assembled prenatally and is ready at birth to share emotion with caregivers for regulation of the childs cortical development, on which cultural cognition and learning depend.The intrinsic potentiality for “intersubjectivity” can be disorganized if the epigenetic program for the infants brain fails. Indeed, many psychological disorders of childhood can be traced to faults in early stages of brain development when core motive systems form.

Lateral Asymmetries in Infancy: Implications for the Development of the Hemispheres

Cerebral asymmetry of cognitive processing of stimulus information is commonly viewed as a neocortical phenomenon. However, a number of lines of evidence give innate asymmetry of brainstem motivating systems, which anticipate experience, a key role. Spontaneous asymmetries of gesture and emotion can be observed in infants, who entirely lack language and visuo-constructive skills. Motives for communication in early life may direct subsequent development of complementary cognitive systems in left and right hemispheres. In split-brain monkeys, lateralized motive sets, intentions for manipulation by one hand, can determine which hemisphere will see and learn. Evolutionary antecedents of cerebral asymmetry appear to affect motivation, social signalling and bimanual coordination, with secondary effect in perceptual processing and learning. The hemispheres of adult humans differ in links with neurochemical system that regulate motor initiatives, exploration and attention, and the approach/withdrawal balance in social encounters. Asymmetries in emotional and communicative behaviour in infancy support evidence that an Intrinsic Motive Formation emerging in the embryo human brain stem regulates asymmetries in development and in functioning of the cerebral cortex.

Are deconnected cerebral hemispheres independent channels? A preliminary study of the effect of unilateral loading on bilateral finger tapping

Abstract After hemispheric deconnection, patients, whose tapping movements with one index finger at a time are nearly normal, can synchronize or alternate right and left finger tapping only at markedly decreased rates as compared to controls. One callosectomized subject tapped with her index fingers while performing verbal tasks. Moderately difficult tasks disrupted right index tapping only; concentration on more difficult tasks and confusion arrested both index fingers. The deconnected hemispheres have partial but not total independence. Concurrent activities maximally compete when programmed in the same hemisphere; but both hemispheres draw upon the limited and still unified attentional resources of the brain as a whole.

The musical art of infant conversation: Narrating in the time of sympathetic experience, without rational interpretation, before words

Infants, like adults and many animals, move with rhythmic gestures that express motive states and changes of emotion and mood. But the communications of babies have a special creativity and message power. Infants are ready at birth to take turns in a “dialogue” of movements with a loving parent. They are attracted to extended engagement with human gestures, and sympathetic to many emotions — resonating to the impulses and qualities of movement; imitating, seeking to play an active part in proto-conversations or playful duets of agency (Trevarthen, 1999). When the expressive forms are examined in detail, infant and partner are found to be sharing a subtle “musicality” of communication (Malloch, 1999). Very soon the early musical games become the habits or conventions of a mini-culture, improvised creations of meaning for each pair, of the kind that Maya Gratier calls a “proto-habitus” (Gratier, 2007). They become treasured memories of a special relationship.

Signs of Motivation for Speech in Infants, and the Nature of a Mother’s Support for Development of Language

In our studies of communication and play between infants and their mothers we have described signs of developing motives in the infant for cooperation with the mother. These motives lead mother and infant to share emotional states, exploratory orientations and experiences, and finally, the using of objects as instruments for particular purposes (Trevarthen, 1974a, b, 1977, 1979a, b, 1982, 1983a; Trevarthen and Hubley, 1978). We have not been directly studying the vocalizations that develop into speech in any detail, and not trying to resolve issues in the theory of language.

The Intersubjective Psychobiology of Human Meaning: Learning of Culture Depends on Interest for Co-Operative Practical Work–and Affection for the Joyful Art of Good Company

Cultures depend on a ceaseless, highly creative learning process, which is not just an acquiring of information transmitted by instructing the young. It is motivated by an innate human talent for companionship in experience, which is mediated by an intersubjective transfer of intentions, interests, and feeling in conversations of rhythmic motor activity. All achievements of technique and art depend upon the affections and shared enthusiasms of interpersonal relationships. Research on how infants communicate with parents has revealed the natural process by which this learning grows and how it may recover from traumatic events. Brain science confirms that the proprio-ceptive regulations of intentions can be shared by sympathetic “altero-ception,” so that creative actions and experiences may be cooperative. Both language and rational thought rest upon this dynamic intersubjective coordination of conscious activity. Individual personalities and self-consciousness grow in relationships and come to recognize traditional beliefs and practices of the community.

What young children give to their learning, making education work to sustain a community and its culture

The policies and administration of early education and support for social development constantly need re-defining, or re-inspiring, by taking into account the perspective of a young child. They must acknowledge the intuitive abilities and values, and growing initiatives that are present in the child from birth and that motivate learning. Innate impulses of human imagination, with strong aesthetic and moral feelings, make sharing of experience and building of meaningful memories possible for a young person. They also determine the suffering that follows if they are not respected. Economists advise that this creativity of early childhood as a resource in itself – government and business, policymakers and managers need to understand what healthy and confident young human beings, if they are treated fairly, will contribute to future industry, prosperity and well-being in society (Heymann et al. 2006; Sinclair 2007; RAND Corporation 2008). Well-trained and experienced teachers of young children are also major contributors to social and cultural health of the community. They know, in practice, what inventive and helpful intelligence children have to offer. Unfortunately this creativity of young children is often outside the imagination of those who are preoccupied with managing the complex artefacts and routine structures of the adult world, and who deal with the problems of adult society and its employments.