Wat weten we nog niet over muziek en muzikaliteit? [Dutch]

Tot 1 mei a.s. kan iedereen via onderstaande website een vraag stellen aan de wetenschap. De overheid is voornemens de komende jaren zo'n 40 tot 50% van haar onderzoeksbudget aan deze vragen besteden. Er staan momenteel echter nog nauwelijks vragen over muziek tussen. Dat moet beter kunnen, toch?

Wat je daaraan kunt doen: a) Formuleer een wetenschappelijke vraag die naar jouw inschatting in de huidige wetenschappelijke literatuur nog niet (of nog niet goed genoeg) is beantwoord. b) Voeg een motivatie / toelichting toe (max. 200 woorden, alsook enkele kernwoorden: muziek, cognitie, hersenen, onderwijs, cultuur, etc). c) Upload je vraag naar: https://vragen.wetenschapsagenda.nl/.

Interested in a PhD at the Faculty of Science?

The Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC) currently has a PhD position available at the Faculty of Science (4 years full-time) starting on 1 September 2015. 

Research at ILLC is interdisciplinary, and aims at bringing together insights from various disciplines concerned with information and information processing, such as logic, mathematics, computer science, linguistics, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, musicology and philosophy. Applications are invited from excellent candidates wishing to conduct research in a research area within ILLC that fits naturally in the Faculty of Science. For more information, see here. 

Deadline for applications is 05 May 2015.

Interested in the science of rhythm?

Only a few places left. See www.move.vu.nl/rppw15

Do an MA in Music Studies in Historic Amsterdam?

Do you want to become a Master in Music Studies at the University of Amsterdam? Find out more on our Music Studies website and go to the registration page. Deadline: 1 April 2015.

Can we borrow your ears?

The Music Cognition Group is continuously looking for participants in their experiments. See our website if you want to contribute.

Without it no music?

Cover picture of the March issue of  Philosophical Transactions B.

A short entry to announce a theme issue on Musicality in Philosophical Transactions B (celebrating this year its 350th anniversary). Online 2 February 2015 and in print on 19 March 2015.

Honing H, ten Cate C, Peretz I, & Trehub SE (2015, in press). Without it no music: cognition, biology and evolution of musicality Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B, 370 (1664). 10.1098/rstb.2014.0088

SMART Cognitive Science: the Amsterdam Conference

The SMART Cognitive Science Conference will be hosted by the University of Amsterdam from March 25-28th, 2015. It will consist of 6 exciting workshops (each 2 full days, with 3 in parallel) on the cognitive science of music, language, communication and art, and a common evening program with debates and plenaries, and will be free to attend.

For more information and free registration see smartcs.humanities.uva.nl. 

N.B. There are also some interesting pre-conference events, such as an ABC lecture by Tecumseh Fitch (Vienna) on The Syntax of Mind: Dendrophilia and Human Cognition.

Difference between the GAE and VL hypothesis?

Summary diagrams of vocal systems in songbirds, humans, monkeys, and mice. 
(Figure 1 from Petkov & Jarvis in Ackermann et al., 2014).

Today a commentary was published in BBS in which the gradual audiomotor evolution (GAE) hypothesis (Honing & Merchant, 2014) is proposed as an alternative interpretation to the auditory timing mechanisms discussed in the target article by Ackermann et al. (2014).

While often a link is made between vocal learning (VL) and a species' auditory timing skills (e.g., 'entrainment'), the GAE and VL hypotheses show the following crucial differences.

First, the GAE hypothesis does not claim that the neural circuit that is engaged in rhythmic entrainment is deeply linked to vocal perception, production, and learning, even if some overlap between the circuits exists.

Second, the GAE hypothesis suggests that rhythmic entrainment could have developed through a gradient of anatomofunctional changes on the interval-based mechanism to generate an additional beat-based mechanism, instead of claiming a categorical jump from non-rhythmic/single-interval to rhythmic entrainment/multiple-interval abilities.

Third, since the cortico-basal ganglia-thalamic (CBGT) circuit has been involved in beat-based mechanisms in imaging studies, we suggest that the reverberant flow of audiomotor information that loops across the anterior pre-frontal CBGT circuits may be the underpinning of human rhythmic entrainment.

Finally, the GAE hypothesis suggests that the integration of sensorimotor information throughout the mCBGT circuit and other brain areas during the perception or execution of single intervals is similar in human and nonhuman primates.

Ackermann, H., Hage, S., & Ziegler, W. (2014). Brain mechanisms of acoustic communication in humans and nonhuman primates: An evolutionary perspective Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1-84 DOI: 10.1017/S0140525X13003099
 
Honing, H., & Merchant, H. (2014). Differences in auditory timing between human and non-human primates. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 27(6), 557-558 DOI: 10.1017/S0140525X13004056. [Alternative link: http://www.mcg.uva.nl/papers/Honing-Merchant-2014.pdf ]

 
Merchant, H., & Honing, H. (2014). Are non-human primates capable of rhythmic entrainment? Evidence for the gradual audiomotor evolution hypothesis. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 7 (274) 1-8. doi 10.3389/fnins.2013.00274 

Interested in a PhD position at the University of Amsterdam?

The Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC) at the University of Amsterdam (UvA) can nominate two candidates for a pre-selection procedure for the 2015 edition of NWO's PhDs in the Humanities programme. These could be internal UvA candidates from the MSc Brain and Cognitive Science, MA Musicology or any other relevant Master Programme, but excellent outside candidates will be considered as well. See our website for a detailed description of the (elaborate) procedure.

N.B. Deadline for pre-applications is 1 January 2015.

Hebben dieren ook muzikaal gevoel? (5/5) [Dutch]

Ken je Snowball al? De witte kakatoe dansend op de Backstreet Boys? Of Ronan, de headbangende zeeleeuw? Deze dieren lijken zeker maatgevoel te hebben. Is muzikaliteit dan niet alleen uniek bij de mens? Wat zegt dat over muziek in relatie tot onze evolutionaire ontwikkeling?Een college over het belang van onderzoek naar muziekcognitie in biologie.

Voor de andere lezingen zie hier.

Bronnen:

00:30 Mampe et al. (2009)
04:00 Honing (2012); Honing et al.(2014)
05:30 Winkler et al. (2009)
06:30 Honing et al. (2012)
11:00 Patel et al. (2009)
12:30 Cook et al. (2013)
15:00 Honing et al. (2015, in press)

 Mampe B, Friederici AD, Christophe A, & Wermke K (2009). Newborns' cry melody is shaped by their native language. Current biology : CB, 19 (23), 1994-7 PMID: 19896378
 
Honing, H. (2012). Without it no music: beat induction as a fundamental musical trait Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1252 (1), 85-91 DOI: 10.1111/j.1749-6632.2011.06402.x
 
Honing H, Bouwer FL, & Háden GP (2014). Perceiving Temporal Regularity in Music: The Role of Auditory Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) in Probing Beat Perception. Advances in experimental medicine and biology, 829, 305-23 PMID: 25358717
  
Winkler I, Háden GP, Ladinig O, Sziller I, & Honing H (2009). Newborn infants detect the beat in music. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 106 (7), 2468-71 PMID: 19171894
 
Patel AD, Iversen JR, Bregman MR, & Schulz I (2009). Experimental evidence for synchronization to a musical beat in a nonhuman animal. Current biology : CB, 19 (10), 827-30 PMID: 19409790
 
Cook, P., Rouse, A., Wilson, M., & Reichmuth, C. (2013). A California sea lion (Zalophus californianus) can keep the beat: Motor entrainment to rhythmic auditory stimuli in a non vocal mimic. Journal of Comparative Psychology, 127 (4), 412-427 DOI: 10.1037/a0032345
 
Honing, H., ten Cate, C., Peretz, I., & Trehub, S. (February 2015, in press). Without it no music: Cognition, biology, and evolution of musicality. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. Theme Issue on Musicality.