Memory and Melody

In most people there coexists, along with a powerful procedural representation of the grammar of their native language, a weaker declarative representation of it. The two may easily be in conflict, so that a native speaker will often instruct a foreigner to say things he himself would never say, but which agree with the declarative “book learning” he acquired in school sometime. The intuitive or chunked laws of physics and other disciplines mentioned earlier fall mainly on the procedural side; the knowledge that an octopus has eight tentacles falls mainly on the declarative side.

In between the declarative and procedural extremes, there are all possible shades. Consider the recall of a melody. Is the melody stored in your brain, note by note? Could a surgeon extract a winding neural filaments from your brain, then stretch it straight, and finally proceed to pinpoint along it the successively stored notes, almost as if it were a piece of magnetic tape? If so, then melodies are stored declaratively. Or is the recall of a melody mediated by the interaction of a large number of symbols, some of which represent tonal relationships, others of which represent emotional qualities, others of which represent rhythmic devices, and so on? If so, then melodies are stored procedurally. In reality, there is probably a mixture of these extremes in the way a melody is stored and recalled.

It is interesting that, in pulling a melody out of memory, most people do not discriminate as to key, so that they are as likely to sing “Happy Birthday” in the key of F-sharp as in the key of C. This indicates that tone relationships, rather than absolute tones, are stored. But there is no reason that tone relationships could not be stored quite declaratively. On the other hand, some melodies are very easy to memorize, whereas others are extremely elusive. If it were just a matter of storing successive notes, any melody could be stored as easily as any other. The fact that some melodies are catchy and others are not seems to indicate that the brain has a certain repertoire of familiar patterns which are activated as the melody is heard. So, to “play back” the melody, those patterns would have to be activated in the same order. This returns us to the concept of symbols triggering one another, rather than a simple linear sequence of declaratively stored notes or tone relationships.


Göedel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid - Douglas R Hofstadter


Publicado no Facebook em 15 de Agosto, 2017