The Neurology of the Etymology of Everything or, Meaning of Life

As a serious, committed and fundamentalist athiest, I am always looking out for the neuro-something explanation for everything. Not that we non-believers not believe in the quotidian, the joyous, the inexplicable sorrows, the FEE-EElings, you know. Often times when I drum, I enter a zone - a space, hard to describe, what a line of cocaine must feel like? what sleep feels like? a transportation where only fingers and sound matter. Mind you, I am not a great drummer but I have rhythm inside me. But, out of an inexplicable fear, I retract from this endless space and enter a drone and then stop entirely and wrap up the drumming. I found this interesting piece of news by Dr Barry Bittman (see Here), a neurologist practicing alternative healing medicine together with traditional medicine. He and his colleagues conducted several clinical studies on drummers and measured plasma stress hormones - cortisol. He found drops in cortisol, as well as heightened immune responses with no change in normal parameters (Inetrleukin 2, etc.) But, this describes "wellness", what a good run would do. What I experinece is something, well, more profound, a trance like state.

But, if I put on my scientist hat, does even this wellness thing really mean much? As a previous boss used to say: "Absence of Evidence is not evidence of absence". To paraphrase it, "Evidence of Presence is not presence of evidence". So, now even findings by Dr. Bittman are doubted by Steven Pinker. (see Here)

I am quoting Dr. Pinker entirely:
None of that impresses MIT's Steven Pinker. "I think people who argue that music is an adaptation have confused theeveryday meaning of the term - meaning something that is beneficial or salubrious - with the biological meaning of the term,which is something that causally increases the rate of reproduction or survival," he says. "Now, it's not enough just to showthat something is correlated with reproduction. Wearing a linen suit or driving a Porsche might help you find a sex partner,but that doesn't mean it's an adaptation. What you need to do is show, on sheer engineering grounds and in terms of causeand effect, that some particular trait would lead to an adaptive outcome".

The "trance state" on drumming is beautifully described in a non-scientific book - but a beautifully written experiential book, The Shamanic Drum , by Michael Drake, now on Google Books. It describes the altered states adrummer can enter, allowing her to be malleable, transform and experience a state rarely touched upon, all this with no faith or belief chnages. This I can relate to.