Neurological Correlates

Humans and birds are the only animals who appreciate the Back Street Boys (that I’m aware of, and probably more so in birds than humans):

Why is this?
Although Mr. Timberlake may be extremely attractive to the avian crowd, this post is not limited to ’90s boy bands, but rather is about music, vasopressin and sex.

Anyway.

According to new research out of Finland, the land so obviously well known for it’s melodious population (??), genes associated with human bonding and affiliative behavior are associated with musical ability. The study examined Finnish families of professional musicians for selected genetic alleles (dopamine, serotonin, etc. see the paper), and found that particular arginine vasopressin receptor allelic variants are most strongly associated with various measures of musical ability. (More on Finland here).

Birds and humans have a natural tendency to associate music with affiliative behavior. Snowball, the dancing and singing sulfer-crested cockatoo in the video, was found to move in rhythmic synchrony with music — not just as an artifact or randomly. The avian version of vasopressin is vasotocin, and bird songs are the avian version of texting for social behavior, like sex or aggression. Bird brains are fairly plastic with seasonal rewiring for mating or aggression or nesting or hatching eggs (depending on the climate, apparently).  Accordingly, birdsongs are different in different times of year. (This fits well with my current hypothesis, “when the weather’s hot so are the people”).(Nothing personal Finlanders).

With humans, arginine vasopressin receptor alleles are involved in social behaviors, like mate bonding (or cheating on your mate). Particular alleles are also associated with other creative endeavors, like creative dance.  Music, dance, vasopressin. . . . there must be at least a dotted line to courtship.. . .or just sex.

Perhaps one may find exemplars of this in the Los Angeles ecosystem. For example, the Rainbow on Sunset ecosystem, habitat of   ’80s big hair bands,  provided the ecologically coordinated resources of recreational drugs, heavy metal music and mating behavior described in the nature documentary,  “Women of The Sunset Strip” .

From Ukkola et al., citations omitted, full cite below:

Interestingly, AVPR1A has been known to modulate social cognition and behavior (see the recent review by Donaldson and Young ) making it a strong candidate gene for music perception and production. Several features in perceiving and practicing music, a multi-sensory process, are closely related to attachment . Based on animal studies Darwin proposed in 1871 that singing is used to attract the opposite sex. Furthermore, lullabies are implied to attach infant to a parent and singing or playing music together may add group cohesion. Thus, it is justified to hypothesize that music perception and creativity in music are linked to the same phenotypic spectrum of human cognitive social skills, like human bonding and altruism both associated with AVPR1A. It is of notice that both altruism (also called pathological trusting), and intense interest towards music and relatively sparse language skills are the characteristic features of Williams-Beuren syndrome (WBS), a neurodevelopmental syndrome with elfin facial features, supravalvular aortic stenosis, hypercalcemia and scoliosis . AVPR1A is also associated with autism, an opposite phenotype withpoor social communication skills .

Ukkola LT, Onkamo P, Raijas P, Karma K, Järvelä I, 2009 Musical Aptitude Is Associated with AVPR1A-Haplotypes. PLoS ONE 4(5): e5534. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0005534