How Deaf People Experience Music
For many people, accessing and listening to music is a very simple and easy process. We can hear music on the radio, over speakers in the supermarket, and on street corners when musicians play. For people who are deaf, there is a common misconception that they cannot enjoy music. This is not the case. The way that they experience music is different than the way hearing people experience music, but they can still enjoy it in a full capacity.
This article will cover what sound is, how deaf people interpret sound and music, which parts of the brain process sound and music, and how we can help the deaf community experience music more fully.
To start things off, here’s a quick video of a person who is deaf explaining how she experiences music.
A very important thing to remember when talking about this topic is that there are so many levels of deafness. It can range anywhere from some hearing loss to complete deafness where the person cannot hear anything. It’s a complete spectrum and everyone is different (2).
Sound and Music
To understand how someone who is deaf experiences music, we first must understand sound.
Everything that we hear is creating sound. From the ticking of a clock to the cars we hear outside our windows.
This sound reaches our ears because it makes a wave or vibration. This wave cuts through the air (or another substance) to be picked up by our ears. The speed of that wave dictates whether or not our ears will pick it up.
Hertz is the measurement used for sound waves. Everything that makes sound is making sound because it is vibrating in one way or another. Lower sounds come from slow, long waves whereas higher sounds come from fast, short waves.
Humans can hear from 20 to 20,000 hertz (hz). Below 20 hz is infrasound and above 20,000 hz is ultrasound. Some examples of infrasound are supersonic aircraft, earthquakes (what you would hear is infrastructure around you breaking), severe storms, and the Northern Lights (yes you read that right) (11).
So how does this play into music?
Music is organized sound and a combination of those sounds that have pitch. Pitch is the quality of the sound, making it high or low. When these pitched sounds combine, they make music (3 & 4).
Deaf Experiences
Since people who are deaf lack one of the five senses, their other senses, through brain plasticity, work together to make up for the loss of hearing. For example, Hauser (2011) studies what cognitive processes in the brain do not change and which can adapt due to brain plasticity. He also wants to know how deafness can affect these processes (5). We know that the brain processes different parts of music (pitch, beat, timbre, etc.) in different parts of the brain (6) but that in hearing and deaf people, these places are the same (7).
As we can see, all these different parts of the brain play into experiencing music, but I’ve pointed out a few places that I would like to discuss more in depth.
Sensory Cortex
This is the part of the brain that recognizes tactile, or touch, feedback. The image specifically points out this tactile feedback while playing an instrument or while dancing. This can also occur while at a concert or a club and the speakers play so loud that the whole building shakes and you can feel the vibrations in your body. When this occurs, you are feeling the low frequency vibrations that occur in the music. In relation to people who are deaf, this would be the case. Often when hearing is damaged, it is more difficult for a person to hear higher pitches and softer sounds. So when music can be recognized through touch, feeling the vibrations, it is that much more pleasing to those that are deaf or hard of hearing (2).
Nucleus Accumbens, Amygdala, and Cerebellum
These three parts of the brain all work together to form a person’s emotional attachment and reaction to music. When we think of our favorite songs, they are most likely something that we have a positive memory of. The opening notes of a song that is easily recognizable to us immediately brings up some sort of emotion. People who are deaf can have this same sort of emotional connection to music, it would just be recognized from the bass notes or beat of the song rather than the (usually) higher pitched melody.
Auditory Cortex
Finally, the auditory cortex is involved in listening to sounds (in music or otherwise) and the perception and analysis of the sounds that we hear. This is probably the most important part of the brain in recognizing music. When the body encounters music, the ears (for people who are not deaf) and/or the body (for people who are or are not deaf) sense the sound (the vibrations) which are then translated into neural messages that are sent to and processed by the brain, specifically, the auditory cortex (8).
So, you may be wondering how the deaf brain can process music in the same part of the brain that the hearing brain can. After all, someone who is deaf is not going to get neuronal messages from the ears to the auditory cortex.
Surprisingly, however, this will occur. Neuronal messages will be sent to the auditory cortex, but not necessarily from the ears.
Remember that mention earlier about how the brain takes over for the sense it has lost? In the deaf brain, the auditory cortex becomes responsible for touch as well (9). Imagine going to a concert and only being able to feel the bass that is booming through the speakers and vibrating the floor that you are standing on and seeing the artist up on stage. Now think about how it would be if you went to a concert the artist performed a song that you did not know and so were not familiar with the bass line and beat. How would you know what song it was? You could not hear what they said to announce the song, and chances are, there would be no one around you that could sign what they said. Well, in the following video, there is a solution to this problem. Amber Galloway Gallego is an ASL interpreter, but she specifies in music. She has a whole channel on YouTube where she posts videos of her interpreting songs, and she is well known in the deaf community for her energetic and in depth interpretations.
If you want more information on Amber, there’s a more in depth article on what she does below.
In all, sound is made up of vibrations. When those vibrations are organized and given a pitch, they become music. The brain processes this sound in many different areas, but the main parts are: the sensory cortex, the nucleus accumbens, amygdala, and cerebellum, and the auditory cortex. Each of these parts plays a key role in how people experience music, deaf or hearing. These parts just adapt in the brain of a person who is deaf to interpret sound and music in a way other than through messages from the ears. Everyone can make the experience of music that much better for people who are deaf through support of interpreters like Amber Galloway Gallego.
If you learned one thing from this article, I hope that it was that everyone is different and that everyone deserves to experience music fully.
References
(1) DITSignLanguageSoc. (2011). How do deaf people experience sound. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvuYTDhi0t0
(2) ASL Stew. (2015). Deaf people can hear music? Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQac5B7rHN8
(3) Discovery of Sound in the Sea. (2016). What sounds can we hear? Retrieved from: http://www.dosits.org/science/soundmeasurement/soundshear/
(4) Hollis, B. (2016). The method behind the music: Physics of sound. Retrieved from: https://method-behind-the-music.com/mechanics/physics/
(5) Livadas, G. (2011). Unlocking the mysteries of the deaf brain. Rochester Institute of Technology. Retrieved from: http://www.rit.edu/research/feature/november-2011/unlocking-mysteries-deaf-brain
(6) Baker, D. J. (2015). Unlocking the mysteries of music in your brain, Dr. Daniel Levitin public lecture. Psychomusicology: Music, Mind & Brain, 25(4), 455–456. doi:10.1037/pmu0000126
(7) Neary, W. (2001). Brains of deaf people rewire to ‘hear’ music. Retrieved from: http://www.washington.edu/news/2001/11/27/brains-of-deaf-people-rewire-to-hear-music/
(8) Good, A., Reed, M. J., & Russo, F. A. (2014). Compensatory plasticity in the deaf brain: Effects on the perception of music. Brain Sci, 4, 560–574. doi:10.3390/brainsci4040560
(9) Karnes, C. M., Dow, M. W., & Neville, H. J. (2011). Altered cross-modal processing in the primary auditory cortex of congenitally deaf adults: A visual-somatosensory fMRI study with a double-flash illusion. Journal of Neuroscience, 32(28), 9626–9638. doi: :10.1523/JNEUROSCI.6488–11.2012
(10) NMP Talent. (2014). Amber Galloway Gallego — Diversity and ASL culture lecturer — promo video. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wap79E-BfA4
(11) Neuro Research Project. (2013). Infrasound can mess with your head. Retrieved from: https://neuroresearchproject.com/2013/02/19/1289/