Is music cognition?

Many studies on the evolution of music concern the question of what defines music. Can birdsong, the song structure of humpback whales, a Thai elephant orchestra, or the interlocking duets of Gibbons be considered music?

The answer is of course a simple ‘yes’. A definition of music can easily be stretched to include all types of sound, noises and even plain silence. As such it makes the discussion of what is and what is not music one of the most noticeable pitfalls in the study of music and evolution. An alternative is to separate between the notions of ‘music’ and ‘musicality’, with musicality as a natural, spontaneously developing trait based on and constrained by our cognitive system, and music as a social and cultural construct based on that very musicality.

Of course this definition of musicality is still too general to be useful. The challenge is to define what precisely makes up this trait we call musicality. What are the cognitive mechanisms that are essential to perceive, make and appreciate music? Only when we have identified these fundamental mechanisms are we in a position to see how these might have evolved. In other words, the study of the evolution of music cognition is conditional on a characterization of the basic mechanisms that make up musicality.

Furthermore, it is important to separate between the biological (or genetic) and cognitive (or functional) aspects that might contribute to musicality. While it is common to assume that there is a mapping between specific genotypes and specific cognitive traits, more and more studies show that genetically distantly related species can show similar cognitive skills; skills that more genetically closely related species fail to show. For example, more and more studies show that humans and certain bird species share their musicality up to a certain level, whereas humans and chimpanzees do not.

de Waal, F., & Ferrari, P. (2010). Towards a bottom-up perspective on animal and human cognition Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 14 (5), 201-207 DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2010.03.003

Honing, H., & Ploeger, A. (submitted). Cognition and the evolution of music: pitfalls and prospects. Topics in Cognitive Science (TopiCS).

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Geeft het hoofd de geest? [Dutch]

Aardig promotiefilmpje met de titel 'Cognitie: het hoofd dat de geest geeft' over cognitieonderzoek, gemaakt in het kader van het bètacanon initiatief...

What's new on music and the brain?

The North-American Library of Congress organized an interesting series on Music and the Brain with lectures, conversations and symposia about the explosion of new research at the intersection of cognitive neuroscience and music. The podcasts can be accessed via their website.

Muziek maakt slimmer? [Dutch]

Net zoals in de jaren negentig in de VS blijft het idee dat muziek slimmer maakt opduiken in de - op zich zeer te prijzen - lobby om muziek te promoten in het onderwijs. Zo ook het recente Nederlandse initiatief Muziek Telt. 
Het is echter nogal een zwaktebod om het belang van muziek aan te willen tonen door te benadrukken dat muziek een andere menselijke kwaliteit positief beïnvloedt. En wel een kwaliteit die we kennelijk belangrijker vinden. In dit geval: intelligentie. Het bevestigt in wezen het idee van muziek als tweederangs activiteit (nog los van het feit dat er geen enkele evidentie is dat muziek inderdaad slimmer maakt; het zgn. ‘Mozart-effect’) [zie eerdere blogs] Ik ondersteun het initiatief van harte, maar daag de initiatiefnemers uit om vooral het intrinsieke belang van muziek voor het voetlicht te brengen.

Is iedereen muzikaal? [Dutch]

Vanaf begin september is er elke maandag op Radio 4 een rubriek over muziekcognitie. Elke week wordt een antwoord gegeven op een actuele vraag. Voor de aflevering van week 38 - Zijn musici seksueel aantrekkelijk? - zie uitzending gemist.

Whats happening at the ICMPC?

Every two years the international conference on music perception and cognition (ICMPC) is organized. This year it is in Seattle, US. If you like to know what is happening in the field, Victoria Williamson reports on it in a daily review on a selection of papers presented the previous day. Later this week more reports from this conference.

Feel like I-dosing?

A few months ago my facebook friends in the US started mentioning it. Only a few weeks later it appeared in the news in Europe, generating a lot of noise in Belgium last week when I-dosing or ‘binaural beats’ were condemned as a form of narcotics.

The phenomenon of ‘binaural beats’ was first described in 1839 by Heinrich Wilhelm Dove. It is the sensation of hearing interference beats when two slightly different frequencies are played separately to each ear. The rate of the ‘perceived’ beats were claimed to modulate ones brain waves. However, little or no evidence has been brought forward since then. The few studies that seriously studied the effect could not support this claim (e.g., Owens et al., 1998), except that that it might have some effect on attention and arousal. Quite understandable, if you listen to one of the examples (see link).

The recent media attention for this phenomenon seems to be successfully bootstrapped by a new company selling mp3’s with titles like ‘Quick Hit Simulations’ describing their product with statements like ‘binaural beats will synchronize your brainwaves and help you achieve a quick hitting simulated drug simulation.’ Prices around twenty dollar. This one's for free :-)

Owens, J. et al. (1998). Binaural Auditory Beats Affect Vigilance Performance and Mood. Physiology & Behavior, 63 (2), 249-252. DOI: 10.1016/S0031-9384(97)00436-8.

Dunning, Brian. "Binaural Beats: Digital Drugs." Skeptoid Podcast. Skeptoid Media, Inc., 31 Mar 2009. Web. 31 Jul 2010. link.

Looking for a PhD position in Music Cognition?

This week a brief entry to announce a job opportunity at the University of Amsterdam. See for detailed information and how to apply here. Deadline for applications: 1 September 2010.

Standardization cause of poor reproducibility?

In the last few years Web-based experiments have become an attractive alternative to lab-based experiments. Next to the advantages of versatility and the ecological validity of the results, Web-based experiments can potentially reach a much larger, more varied and intrinsically motivated participant pool. Especially in the domain of music perception and cognition it is important to probe a wide variety of participants, with different levels of training and cultural backgrounds.

Nevertheless, to get research published that takes advantage of the Internet is not straightforward. An important reason for the conservatism held by some journals in publishing results obtained with Web-based experiments is the issue of replicability. Especially in the fields of experimental psychology and psychophysics there are serious concerns about the (apparent) lack of control one has in Web experiments as opposed to those performed in the laboratory. Where in the lab most relevant factors, including all technical issues, are under control of the experimenter (i.e. have a high internal validity) it is argued that Web experiments lack this important foundation of experimental psychology. As a result of the first issue, it often proves to be problematic to convince University Review Panels to give permission when there is little insight in the environment in which participants tend to do these experiments. As a result of the second issue, some high-impact journals made it a policy decision not to publish Web-based studies, as such discouraging Web experiments to be performed (cf. Honing & Ladinig, 2008; Honing & Reips, 2008). Nevertheless, it is important to stress that if an effect is found - despite the limited control in Web-based experiments over the home environment and the technological variance caused by the Internet - then the argument for that effect and its generalizability is even stronger.

The latter issue was recently discussed in an issue of Nature Methods by researchers from the Universities of Giessen and Münster, Germany (see reference below and [modified] figure above). In fact, the authors make the opposite argument! They argue that standardization should be seen as a cause of, rather than a cure for, poor reproducibility of experimental outcomes. Their study showed that environmental standardization can contribute to spurious and conflicting findings in the literature. Würbel and colleagues conclude that to generate results that are most likely going to be reproducible in other laboratories, the strategies to standardize environmental conditions in an experiment should be minimized.

As such the variance caused by Web-based setups (as discussed above) might actually amount to experimental results with a much higher external validity than thought before.

Richter, S., Garner, J., Auer, C., Kunert, J., & Würbel, H. (2010). Systematic variation improves reproducibility of animal experiments. Nature Methods, 7 (3), 167-168. 10.1038/nmeth0310-167


Honing, H., & Reips, U.-D. (2008). Web-based versus lab-based studies: a response to Kendall (2008). Empirical Musicology Review, 3 (2), 73-77.


Honing, H., & Ladinig, O. (2008). The potential of the Internet for music perception research: A comment on lab-based versus Web-based studies. Empirical Musicology Review, 3 (1), 4-7.

Complex nonlinguistic auditory processing?

Quite an impressive phrase, not? It was quoted in a recent interview with Ani Patel in the New York Times, and attributed to one of the most prominent researchers in the neuroscience of music:

"Robert Zatorre never used the word music in a grant application. He knew it would get turned down automatically because people thought this was not scientific. Instead, he used terms like 'complex nonlinguistic auditory processing.' Luckily, in recent years, it’s become O.K. to say: I study music and the brain." 

Still, these days it is not uncommon that reviewers of ambitious research proposals request a description of the implications of the proposed research beyond music. As an example, I was recently urged by a (high profile) reviewer to explain the potential impact of my proposal to the domain of linguistics (and language in general). This as an important validation of the research programme... I look forward to the time that a language researcher will be asked to state what the implications are of his/her research programme for the science of music :-) Until that time we need people like Robert Zatorre and Ani Patel as ambassadors of the field. They do a great job!

Zatorre, R. (2005). Music, the food of neuroscience? Nature, 434 (7031), 312-315 DOI: 10.1038/434312a