Interested in a challenging postdoc position in Amsterdam?

MCG in November 2024.

We are currently looking for a postdoc researcher that likes to work on the intersection of music cognition, biology, and the cognitive sciences. If you are excited about doing this kind of research in an interdisciplinary environment, with a team of smart and friendly colleagues, then you may want to join us. 

More information, including details on how to apply, will be made available soon at our website.

Deadline for applications : 1 December 2024. 

 

 

Was Darwin right? (New book, translated in German and Italian)

Aap slaat maat (Nieuw Amsterdam), translated as The Evolving Animal Orchestra (MIT Press),  Der Affe schlägt den Takt (Henschel Verlag), and Il scimmia batte il tempo (Carocci editore).

Appraisal of The Evolving Animal Orchestra (MIT Press):

"In 1871 Charles Darwin argued :

The perception, if not the enjoyment, of musical cadences and of rhythm is probably common to all animals.

Henkjan Honing has tested this eminent reasonable idea, and in his bookhe reports back. He details his disappointment, frustration and downright failure with such wit, humility and a love of the chase that any young person reading it will surely want to run away to become a cognitive scientist." 

–– Simon Ings in NewScientist.

"Honing’s new book provides a succinct, informal though rigorous overview of what we know of cross-species musicality. [..] Most science happens as a tiresome journey, and what the public sees is only the splendidness of arrival – that's not the case of this book. This is a popular science book, intriguing and entertaining." 

–– Andrea Ravignani in Current Biology. 

"Originally published in 2018 in the Netherlands, the new English translation by Sherry MacDonald has been eagerly awaited by students and scholars who are curious about music’s place beyond the strictly human. I believe they will not be disappointed, for Honing’s book offers a number of insights for both the amateur and the scientist in a readable prose style." 

–– Rachel Mundy in Psychology of Music.

For more endorsements, see here.
For related podcasts, see HedgehogandtheFox and BigBiology.
For related documentaries, see CBC, Sky Tv and here.
For links to all the books, see here.

Was Darwin wrong?

The artists of the animal kingdom –  A recent episode of the BBC Earth Podcast series is about exploring whether animals can dance to a beat and, if so, why? Presented by Emily Knight. 

The podcast can be found here.

Where did music come from?

Credit: Erikacarreraph/Shutersttock

Where Did Music Come From? Did humans evolve to sing and dance? Or did we invent our musical pastimes? Asks Cody Cottier in Discovery Magazine:

'Look anywhere and you’ll find music. Without a single exception, every culture produces some form of it. Like language, it’s a universal trait in our species, and over the millennia it has bloomed into a diverse and stunning global symphony. Yet its origin remains one of the great secrets of human history. 

The oldest known instruments are 42,000-year-old bone flutes discovered in caves in Germany. Vocal music surely predates these, but the problem, according to University of Amsterdam musicologist Henkjan Honing, “is that music doesn’t fossilize and our brains don’t fossilize.” With little hard evidence, scientists still debate what evolutionary purpose music serves. And because its purpose is obscure enough to warrant debate, some skeptics question whether it serves any purpose at all.'

Opening text of a recent article in Discovery Magazine.

Empirical support for the GAE hypothesis?

Yesterday PNAS published a study by Yuko Hattori and colleagues entitled Rhythmic swaying induced by sound in chimpanzees. The study presents further support for the GAE-Hypothesis (see a detailed description in The Evolving Animal Orchestra, 2019, MIT Press, Chapters 4 and 5):

"Rereading and reinterpreting the recent literature culminated in the formulation of what we called the “gradual audiomotor evolution (GAE)” hypothesis. Admittedly, it is not the most inspired name, but we based our hypothesis on the existing neurobiological literature, which suggests that the neural networks that enable beat perception in humans are absent or less developed in rhesus macaques (figure 4.1). In humans, this network connects the auditory system (hearing) with the motor system, which controls the movements of our limbs and mouth, such as clapping, dancing, or singing. Even if you leave test subjects lying motionless in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner and let them listen to metrical and nonmetrical rhythms, activity is still visible in the motor cortex as a result of the metrical, beat-inducing rhythms. Clearly, an information exchange takes place between the auditory and motor systems.

The absence of a strong connection between the auditory cortex and the motor cortex in most nonhuman primates may well be the reason why humans do and other nonhuman primates do not (or only to a lesser degree) have beat perception. We also proposed that this connection would likely be present in rudimentary form in chimpanzees, and therefore that chimpanzees would probably have beat perception in an embryonic form. If what we proposed was true, then we could date the origin of beat perception in primates to the time of the common ancestor of chimpanzees and humans, some five to ten million years ago. No study could be found to support this part of the hypothesis. It was therefore purely speculative."

Thanks to Yuko Hattori this idea is now much less of a speculation. Thanks for all the hard work!

See also, Science Magazine, The Guardian and NRC:

Hattori, Y., Tomonaga, M. (2019) Rhythmic swaying induced by sound in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). PNAS. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1910318116.

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 ]

Sind Tiere musikalisch? [German]

Rezensionsnotiz zu Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 07.12.2019:

"Rezensentin Melanie Wald-Fuhrmann findet Henkjan Honings Wissensdrang ansteckend [..] ein sehr gelungenes Beispiel für Wissenschaftskommunikation." (from: Perlentaucher.)

"Das Buch ist ein ausnehmend geglücktes Beispiel für das, was gerade wieder als Wissenschaftskommunikation von der Politik angemahnt wird: Geschrieben von einem genuin wissbegierigen und dabei vollkommen uneitlen Forscher, blendet es nicht einfach mit spektakulären Ergebnissen, sondern macht – empirische – Wissenschaft als Prozess und als gemeinsame Anstrengung eines Kollektivs erfahrbar. Es zeigt, wie Beobachtung, Theoriebildung, Überprüfung und Ergebnisinterpretation aufeinander aufbauen, wie viel Ehrlichkeit mit sich selbst, Geduld, Frustrationstoleranz und Wahrheitsliebe es dafür braucht. Es macht mit einer Reihe von Methoden der Neuro- und Kognitionswissenschaft und Verhaltensbiologie vertraut und bricht dabei ganz nebenbei auch eine Lanze für gelebte Interdisziplinarität." (from: Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung.)

For a podcast review see here.

Does musicality have a biological basis?

Participants of the Adacemy Colloquium on Musicality and Genomics, held on 20 and 21 June 2019 at the Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) in Amsterdam | © www.miletteraats.nl

While there is still quite some debate on the cultural and biological origins of music, there is a growing consensus that musicality has deep biological foundations, based on an accumulation of evidence for the involvement of genetic variation. Recent advances in molecular technologies provide an effective way of investigating these biological foundations. In particular, genome-wide genotyping offers a promising route to capture the polymorphic content of large phenotyped population samples. These approaches provide complementary evidence to recent knowledge gained from examining clustering in families and co-occurrence in twins of extreme levels of musical ability. However, the success of molecular genetic studies of musical ability is critically dependent on robust, objective, and reliable measures of musicality phenotypes. 

The colloquium, that was held on 20 and 21 June 2019 in Amsterdam, aimed to 1) evaluate existing measures of musicality, such as the GOLD-MSI, PROMS, AMMA, MET, Karma, Seashore, etc., and 2) discuss the opportunities to administer these standardized aptitude tests online on a large scale, especially using web-based and engaging gaming techniques. The latter will provide an important step towards 3) the design of high-powered genome-wide screens to be able to effectively analyse musical phenotypes (Gingras,Honing, Peretz, Trainor, & Fisher, 2018). Lastly, 4) a key goal was to initiate an international and truly interdisciplinary consortium aimed at identifying the genetic bases of musicality. More information can be found at www.mcg.uva.nl/musicality2019/.