Pinker

Steven Pinker, a cognitive psychologist best known [blank] his book "The Language Instinct," has called music "auditory cheesecake, an exquisite confection crafted to tickle the sensitive spots [blank] at least six of our mental faculties." If it vanished from our species, he said, "the rest of our lifestyle would be virtually unchanged." Others have argued [blank] , on the contrary, music, along with art and literature, is part of what makes people human; its absence would have a brutalizing effect. Philip Ball, a British science writer and an avid music enthusiast, comes down somewhere [blank] the middle. He says that music is ingrained in our auditory, cognitive and motor functions. We have a music instinct as much as a language instinct, and could not rid ourselves of it if we tried.