Can you recall a song or the way a loved one speaks to you? Do you hear it in their voice? Do you notice the instruments? Have you ever gone for a walk or a jog while listening to music through your headphones? If you can remember or “hear” the songs in your mind, why rely on external tools to generate the sounds – can it be that it takes effort to focus, feels hard to sustain (is energy consuming) and even then it does not always eliminates all the other noise, however when using an external source for the music it helps to clear our the noise and improve focus?
Although most people can mentally recall sounds – voices, instruments, and other sounds – these internal representations are typically unfocused, merged with other sensory impressions, mental imagery, or cross-modal information (like smell, taste and such). An external auditory source can sharpen this process and attenuate distractions. More precisely, monotonous or repetitive sounds provide grounding and enhance focus by establishing stable patterns of neural activation, thereby reducing some of the stochastic background activity. Consequently, music emphasizing rhythm has a more robust focusing effect: it introduces minimal novel information per beat, generating entrained patterns that suppress extraneous neural firing. In contrast, melodic progressions continuously introduce new information, permitting broader, more distributed patterns of brain activity.
- What is melody
- Melody is the singable tune of a piece – the memorable series of notes that rise and fall in pitch, like the vocal line in a song or the part you hum. Unlike rhythm, which organizes time through patterns of beats and note durations (the pulse you clap along with), melody organizes sound through variation in highness and lowness. This movement of pitch creates emotional expression: ascending notes typically feel hopeful or exciting, descending notes sound melancholic or calming; small steps between pitches feel smooth and intimate, while large leaps generate tension or drama. In essence, rhythm provides music’s temporal framework, while melody provides its expressive character that listeners emotionally connect with.
- Inner monologue / Inner speech / Inner voice
- Inner monologue is the externally silent, verbal thinking that runs through your mind. There are at least 3 variations of this skill in people:
– No inner monologue at all. No internal sounds/voices of any kind that you can recall and hear.
– No sounds/voices of any kind, but just the idea of a word/sentence/”thought”. For example – if you try to say something, but just before the sound is actually generated by your vocal cords, you stop – you have the idea of what you want to say, but no sound was produced – either externally or internally. That’s the no-voice monologue.
– The ability to recall/produce sounds – one or more voices, and/or sounds of instruments or objects.
What it means to have no inner monologue or anything like that? For instance, when you talk really fast (describing something, being in a hurry and similar, like the “Oops” you say on some accidental action) you had no time to “hear”/prepare what you want to say first, right? The talking comes so fast that most of the time it’s the first time you form that thought.
Individuals without an inner monologue are often highly focused and less prone to self-distraction. In contrast, those with an active “inner monologue” may struggle to maintain focus, especially as the inner sounds becomes more pronounced. This constant stream of quasi-external auditory information can lead to overstimulation, making concentration more challenging.
Critically, the inner monologue is not experienced uniformly across individuals; rather than a single voice, some report a polyphonic internal dialogue comprising multiple perspectives or agendas simultaneously vying for attention. This multiplicity of internal voices can fragment cognitive resources further, as each ‘participant’ in the internal conversation may represent competing priorities, emotional states, or hypothetical arguments.
How and why sound affects us
Apart from the cells having mechanosensitivity structures (channels like Piezo1, Piezo2, TRP family channels, and a few others), and unlike photons, which travel without a medium, sound spreads by physically disturbing particles. Each affected particle transfers this energy to its neighbors (though with every interaction some energy is lost, causing the vibration to gradually weaken and eventually die off) – affecting everything inside the cell.
(an example of a research paper on effects of sound on cells: https://www.athensjournals.gr/sciences/2022-9-3-1-Brun.pdf)
Organisms naturally try to collect as much external information as possible so they can react appropriately for survival or other goals. It therefore makes sense that processing auditory information provides significant benefits. Additionally, since this is a mechanical interaction that cannot be stopped (without a dedicated mechanism) that directly affects cells – whether beneficial or detrimental – organisms need to detect these effects to be able to respond.
Unlike sight, which only gives us indirect information about how photons interact with objects, sound emanates directly from the objects themselves – carrying information about their internal processes and movements. This makes visual data relatively superficial: whether a stone is gray or red has little functional relevance; it’s still an impassable stone. Sound, by contrast, reveals essential properties – silence often indicates something is not alive. Yet modern society overvalues visual appearance despite its limited utility. Visual characteristics are easily altered and rarely affect functionality – a painted door remains a door, while a painted stone never becomes one. So compared to something that we value a lot – sight, sound and its affects on us are much more valuable.
So why has melody diminished?
As discussed in the sensory recall paper, these abilities are highly taxing. Even though people rely on them constantly (as it has become a habit), they take a significant toll – on both energy and focus. As our environment grows increasingly rich with colors, dialogue, actions, experiences and more – all the variety of external sources of stimuli, it is only natural that people seek a relief from it. As noted earlier in the article, introducing new information through melody does little to alleviate this burden and even does the opposite; rhythm, however, helps by pruning brain activity – by stimulating repetitive groups of neurons and glia cells, which prevents other, “random” ones, from becoming active, and thereby reducing neural activity chaos and overall energy demand.
[TODO] SOCIAL DANCING