Subject: Re: Innate responses/ auditory-motor interactions From: Robert Zatorre <robert.zatorre@xxxxxxxx> Date: Fri, 23 May 2008 10:56:06 -0400Greetings, list With respect to the following point raised by Dr. Flax: > > If you are interested in physical responses due to the auditory environment, it would be a nice idea to read about how the higher auditory centres wire themselves to the movement centres ... an obvious example would be why we a programmed to dance or move to music ! > Whilst dance styles are most surely nurture, the impetus to move is most likely nature ... however there are a lot of examples and ideas you can brainstorm yourself apart from dancing ... some innate and some not. and at the risk of being accused, accurately, of self-promotion, I would steer interested readers to a recent review we wrote on just this topic: Zatorre, R.J., Chen, J.L., and Penhune, V.B. (2007) When the brain plays music. Auditory-motor interactions in music perception and production. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 8, 547-558. Eben if you don't agree with the ideas we present, at the very least it should serve as a useful list of references on the many good studies on this topic of auditory-motor interactions. Whether this has anything whatsoever to do with the thorny (not to mention hoary) question of innate responses, I would not venture to say, however. Best wishes Robert