Sunday, May 16, 2021

Muzikaliteit bij dieren? [Dutch]

Redacteuren Mariƫl Doedens en Lianne Hooijmans spreken in een recente aflevering van Radio Swammerdam over het onderzoek naar deze vraag.

" 'Talking about music is like dancing about architecture”' wordt weleens gezegd. Toch is muziek iets waar mensen graag mee bezig zijn en dus ook graag (in een radio uitzending) over praten. Je hoeft geen conservatorium student te zijn om iets met muziek te hebben. De mens is een muzikale soort stelt. Maar zijn alleen wij mensen muzikaal en is dat iets wat ons uniek maakt of zijn dieren dat misschien ook? "

Wednesday, May 05, 2021

Unravelling the capacity for music?

We just heard that our research proposal "Unravelling our capacity for music" was granted by NWO SSH in the 2020 Open Competition!

In this  research project we will try to identify which set of music cognitive traits gives rise to our ability to perceive and appreciate music. We will approach musicality as a multicomponent phenomenon, aiming to decompose the capacity for music into its constituent components. The focus will be on melody and rhythm cognition, with special attention to their interaction with timbre. 

The research will result in a ‘phenomics of musicality’, providing a robust and relatively unbiased way of identifying the human capacity for music. Overall, the project serves as an important first step in a larger research programme, that has the aspiration to lay a new, interdisciplinary foundation for the study of musicality. 

See for more information about the research here.

Gingras, B., Honing, H., Peretz, I., Trainor, L. J., & Fisher, S. E. (2015). Defining the biological bases of individual differences in musicality. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences, 370(1664), 20140092. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2014.0092

Honing, H., ten Cate, C., Peretz, I., & Trehub, S. E. (2015). Without it no music: cognition, biology and evolution of musicality. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences, 370(1664), 20140088. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2014.0088