Wednesday, June 17, 2020

Music in our genes?

© ILLC Blog, Illustration by Marianne de Heer Kloots


 

 
"In 1984, a curious study on musicality in animals was published. The researchers from Portland, Oregon trained pigeons to distinguish two pieces of music – one by Bach, the other by Stravinsky. If the birds got it right, they were rewarded with food. Afterwards, the same pigeons were exposed to new pieces of music from the same composers. Surprisingly, they were still able to determine which piece was composed by which composer.

This finding confronted researchers with a new set of questions. To what extent are animals musical? What does it even mean for an animal to be musical? And what can this teach us about musicality in humans?" 

(From Music in our genes, ILLC Blog).

The interview is based on an episode of the podcast “Talk that Science” – an initiative started by students from the University of Amsterdam.

• Listen to the episode here (in Dutch);
• Link to the English transcript can be found here.

Tuesday, June 16, 2020

Interested in becoming an SA at MCG?

www.mcg.uva.nl

The Music Cognition Group (MCG) searches for an enthusiastic and well-organized student assistant / P.A. acting as a first point of contact with people from both inside and outside MCG, starting 1 September 2020 (0.2 fte). Deadline for applications is 15 July 2020.

N.B. You have to be registered as a bachelor or master student at the University of Amsterdam (UvA).

For more information, and detailed instructions on how to apply, see here.