What’s real and what’s in our heads?

How perception can shape our reality.

After a recent trip to the Museum of Nature and Science, I picked up a new book from the gift shop: This Is Your Brain on Music, The Science of a Human Obsession by Daniel J. Levitin.

To some, this might seem like a dull topic, but it jumped out at me. I’ve always been fascinated by music and its transformative properties. How could I remember a song, including all its lyrics, from 10 + years ago, or be transported to an instantaneous moment in time after 3 notes of a particular melody? The correlation between learning, memory and music has long been a topic of interest in the realm of neuroscience and evolutionary biology (think songbirds and how the intricacy of a song could correlate to memory of food stores).

But why should you care about songbirds? Other than the fact that science, and nature are really neat, the concept and reality of music brings up an important topic – what’s actually real and what’s in our heads.

The beauty of music is that everyone interprets it differently. A certain song or melody or even a note can evoke a range of emotions depending on the listener. But how? First we have to understand music a little more. A note, or tone, you hear is an actually physical, tangible thing –  a certain frequency or vibration, so to speak, of the air molecules it compresses and shifts, as the sound moves through space and enters your ear. Your interpretation of this frequency is a hearing a certain tone or note. These two things – tone and frequency – are closely related, but distinctly different.

Tone – is entirely in our heads. Although the perception of a note, and tone, is produced by something real, and measurable – its frequency - tone is a construct, created by our minds to interpret the real and external world. Throughout evolution our ability to interpret a frequency as a certain tone and associate it with ‘good’ (think of a cat purring) or ‘bad’ (a high octave call alerting of danger) is useful and has only grown more complex. Music has an incredible quality to transport us to a particular moment in time, and illicit emotions simply by hearing a certain melody. We are constantly creating stories and realities in our heads. Our sense of self-worth, belonging and community can be dictated by how many ‘likes,’ comments, or impressions we get on single snapshots posted online. Is this real? It sure feels real in the moment, and we can draw conclusions from these feelings. Emotions in general aren’t necessarily real but are also taken from external stimuli – our brain can just transform them into sometimes overwhelming grief, happiness or anger.

I’m left marveling at the complexities of the human brain, yet also wondering – is everything in our heads? How much does perception shapes our realities from the moment our brain starts processing something as simple as a single note?