Animal Behavior While Listening to Music and Doing Higher Brain Functions

The understanding of human higher brain function must involve behavioral and neurophysiological studies of higher brain function in other animals. This chapter thus investigates the varied and marvelous higher brain function capabilities of animals. The reliability of animal studies is not confounded by language-analytic reasoning or the cultural biases that can distort human studies. It is shown how both of these factors are important. The studies included in this chapter are limited to discussion of mammals and their response to human music, as well as studies of their higher brain functions. It also includes anecdotes, behavioral observations, and controlled studies. The experimental design is simple and portable and can be repeated in a more natural setting with several primates. Furthermore, in addition to examining group behavior, it is also common to do behavioral experiments with a single subject. The idea with a single subject is that the experiment can be done again and again under very controlled and reproducible conditions, thus single-subject studies can be extremely valuable.