Interested in music and biology?

In this episode of Big Biology, entitled Beasty Beats: The Origins of Musicality, Art Woods and Marty Martin talk with Henkjan Honing about the biology of musicality:

"He started as a musician but eventually found his way to the science of music. Among diverse species, he and his collaborators now study how and why some animals perceive elements of music but others do not. We also discuss the earliest known examples of human musical instruments and the possible adaptive value of music."

Apple podcast here | Spotify podcast here | Stitcher podcast here.

Why do we value music so much; Are there biological or social explanations for this?

Below a recording of a recent, one hour+ edition of BètaBreak –made by Frank Gelens, Rianne Verhaegh, and hosted by Spui25– about what musicality entails, what its biological underpinnings in the brain are, and why we all have musical abilities.

"The ability to perceive rhythm, tones and beats, key components of musicality, seems to be universal across humans and manifests itself already from a young age; something that this edition’s guest endorses (Honing, 2018). Is there an underlying mechanism in our brain that makes this possible? Could our preferences in music have a biological explanation? Furthermore, is musicality also present in other species or is it a human trait?"

Honing, H. (2018). On the biological basis of musicality. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences (The Neurosciences and Music VI: Music, Sound and Health). doi: 10.1111/nyas.13638.

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For another episode of BètaBreak/Spui25 with Frans de Waal on the topic of beauty, see here (with snippets on music/ality too).

Wat is het geheim van de cello? [Dutch]

Eerste aflevering van de podcastserie De Ontroering - Op zoek naar het geheim van de cello. Podcastserie van de Cello Biënnale Amsterdam, het grootste cellofestival ter wereld, met gesprekken, achtergrondreportages en natuurlijk muziek. 

De podcast werd gemaakt door Mirjam van Hengel en Frans van Deursen.

Interested in developing a Music Related Citizen Science Infrastructure?

Are you looking for a challenging job in a dynamic interdisciplinary team? The Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC) is looking for an enthusiastic and experienced back-end engineer, contributing to the development of a flexible and sustainable infrastructure for MUSic-related Citizen Science Listening Experiments (MUSCLE). The project is funded by a PDI-SSH grant awarded to the Music Cognition Group (MCG) at the ILLC. 

More information on how to apply for the position (3 years, 0.5 fte) can be found here. 

Deadline for applications is 15 February 2022.