Music is kind of a bid deal to us humans. But is it just a bi-product of our evolution, or did it influence it?
A new study has identified many genes linked with musical ability. They seem to be under the influence of positive selection.
In other words, from an evolutionary point of view, they are kind of a big deal.
Finnishing the study
This study examined the musical ability of 150 Finnish people. And then sequenced their genome. Because we live in the future and can do that.
They then looked to see what genes were correlated with musical ability and under the influence of positive evolutionary selection. In other words, they gave our ancestors a benefit, spreading throughout the population. If music is just a "hobby" of humanity this cross-reference should turn up nothing (or just a bunch of weird junk). But it didn't. In fact, it found 46 parts of the genome that matched this criteria (many containing several genes).
And that's about it for the methods. I just really wanted to make a Finnish joke.
Music and language
Many of the genes this study identified were already known to be linked to language. Which doesn't seem like that much of a surprise given how similar the two behaviours are.
For example, one of the "musical" genes this study found was which (like it's more famous sibling ) also seems to be involved in language development. Being able to comprehend speech seems like a key gene to have if you want to sing. Or the less famous VLDLR which is linked with the fine control over muscles needed to do stuff like talking. And presumably singing.
However, some researchers argue that music and language aren't just similar. They're fundamentally intertwined. In fact, some claim that language may well have started out as singing; only later specialising into "proper" language.
This hypothesis is based around the fact that a more "musical" language would require relatively little evolution to start yet could still convey a lot of information. Thus it would prove evolutionary beneficial and continue being refined until you wind up with the language we all know and love.
Evidence for the ease with which this sort of language could start comes from various comparative primate studies; which find most other species can produce a range of vocalisations with varying pitch, rhythm, etc. The fact that these abilities are so common seems to indicate that it's something we would likely have inherited from our more ancestors. Babies also provide evidence for this, being able to make a relatively wide range of sounds at very primitive stages of development. They also provide evidence for the fact a lot of information can be encoded in "musical" speech. Babies are able to pick up on a lot of different variables in "baby talk", showing how information can be conveyed by seemingly simple language.
The fact that the two systems share so many genes (and those genes have been evolving) provides some pretty strong evidence for that hypothesis. So the next time you imagine a caveperson going "ugg ugg"; maybe you should imagine them singing it.
Music and our body
Given the similarity between singing and language, it's easy to see how they're intertwined. But this research also identified some genes that seem to be linked to music, not language.
These include some pretty interesting (but perhaps predictable) genes. Those associated with hearing, for example, seem to be linked with musical ability. What's most notable about these genes is that they also seem to be pretty important in songbirds. In fact, ~5% of the genes this study linked with human singing have also been linked to birdsong. GPR98, for example, is expressed in the bit of the brain that controls a zebra finch's birdsong.
The authors of this research suggest that these similarities might be the result of evolutionary conservation. They hypothesise that these genes are critical for communication and hearing (and of course singing) so any mutation would be disastrous. Thus they haven't changed much in millions of years, explaining why they're doing a similar thing in two distant groups of animals. Alternatively this could be a case of convergent evolution. Both humans and birds want to sing, so similar genetic changes happen in both. The authors don't really consider this option, but I don't think it can be ruled out yet.
As well as these fascinating birdsong genes, they also found some genes linked with music that were unexpected. In particular, several genes associated with the reward system were found to correlate with musical ability. OK, I tell a lie, this was kind of expected (although I had no idea it was coming).
Researchers had found that listening to music increased the expression of certain genes associated with dopamine and the brains reward system. However, this study found these genes were also correlated with musical ability. So not only do we get a special kind of pleasure from listening to music, but from playing it as well. And again, showing my ignorance here, apparently this had been speculated about for some time.
tl;dr
Genes for music (or at least correlated with musical ability) were found. These included some also linked with language, rewards, and birds.
References
Liu, X., Kanduri, C., Oikkonen, J., Karma, K., Raijas, P., Ukkola-Vuoti, L., Teo, Y.Y. and Järvelä, I., 2016. Detecting signatures of positive selection associated with musical aptitude in the human genome. Scientific reports, 6.
Masataka, N., 2009. The origins of language and the evolution of music: A comparative perspective. Physics of Life Reviews, 6(1), pp.11-22.
