The evolutionary origin of pitch centre recognition

The ability to recognize a pitch centre in sound sequences belongs to the basic mental tools which are intuitively used by humans when they listen to music. It is also one of the abilities used by listeners in order to establish a tonal hierarchy. The organization of pitches around a pitch centre is one of the most ubiquitous syntactic rules observed in music of all cultures. As far as we know, there is nothing similar to this rule in other human sound expressions nor in animals' vocal communication. Thus, the recognition of pitch centricity seems to be the unique and species-specific ability of Homo sapiens, which suggests its evolutionary origin. It is proposed in the article that in the course of hominine evolution, the ability of pitch centre recognition became an adaptive innovation which enabled a more effective social consolidation. It is also suggested that the origin of this ability has its roots in the Baldwin effect' which led to the emergence of a predisposition to join three originally separate abilities - the implicit recognition of the frequency of pitch occurrence, working memory and the emotional assessment of predicted stimuli - into a new mental tool.