Interested in a Summer School on Musicality?

From 14-24 June 2021 an impressive cast of international lecturers (click on poster on the left), from a wide range of disciplines, will try to unravel our capacity for music. Students will, next to attending lectures, work groups and online social events, work in groups with a designated tutor on a research project, within the broad topic of musicality, which they will present towards the end of the Summer School. 

The ABC Summer School will be taught online (Zoom); The closing ABC Symposium will be hybrid. 

Credits: 4 ECTS. Tuition: €275. N.B. This fee will be waived for all students registered at a Dutch university.

Detailed information can be found at mcg.uva.nl/summerschool.

Interested in doing a postdoc on rhythm cognition in Amsterdam?

The Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC) at the University of Amsterdam (UvA) now invites applications from excellent candidates wishing to conduct postdoctoral research on the computational and (neuro)cognitive underpinnings of rhythm cognition. 

For details on the 2-year position and information on how to apply, see UvA-webpage.

Deadline: 31 December 2020.

How different are these hypotheses?

An overview comparison of the Action Simulation for Auditory Prediction Hypothesis (ASAP) and the Gradual Audiomotor Evolution Hypothesis (GAE). 

 

This week a mini review paper appeared in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience (Proksch et al, 2020), comparing two complementary hypotheses for the neural underpinnings of rhythm perception: The Action Simulation for Auditory Prediction hypothesis (ASAP; Patel and Iversen, 2014) and the Gradual Audiomotor Evolution hypothesis (GAE: Merchant and Honing, 2014), In addition to interpreting work under both hypotheses as converging evidence for the predictive role of the motor system in the perception of rhythm, the paper reviews recent experimental progress supporting each of these hypotheses. 

Honing, H., & Merchant, H. (2014). Differences in auditory timing between human and non-human primates. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 27(6), 557–558. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X13004056

Proksch, S., Comstock, D. C., Médé, B., Pabst, A., & Balasubramaniam, R. (2020). Motor and Predictive Processes in Auditory Beat and Rhythm Perception. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 14. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2020.578546

What makes us musical animals?

The question that will be central in an (invitation-only) workshop that starts next week, will be: What makes us musical animals? The meeting, that is co-organised with Carel ten Cate (Leiden U), Tecumseh Fitch (U Vienna), Isabelle Peretz (U Montréal), and Sandra Trehub (U Toronto), took quite some of my attention in the weeks leading up to it and hence didn't write blog entries for a while... However, if you want to read some exiting new stuff see the references below. These are just a few examples of many recent papers that address what could be the basic components of musicality. More later.

Patel AD (2014). The evolutionary biology of musical rhythm: was darwin wrong? PLoS Biology, 12 (3) PMID: 24667562

Fitch, W. (2013). Rhythmic cognition in humans and animals: distinguishing meter and pulse perception Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience, 7 DOI: 10.3389/fnsys.2013.00068

Trehub, S. (2013). Music processing similarities between sleeping newborns and alert adults: cause for celebration or concern? Frontiers in Psychology, 4 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00644

See also some recent media attention related to this topic (In Dutch):

1. AMC Magazine (april 2014) | Govert Schilling [Issuu]
2. De Psycholoog (april 2014) | Geertje Kindermans [pdf]
3. NRC Handelsblad (januari 2014) | Hendrik Spiering [pdf]

Differences in rhythm perception between human and non-human primates

[Press Release University of Amsterdam]  Despite their genetic proximity, human and non-human primates differ in their capacity for beat induction, which is the ability to perceive a regular pulse in music or auditory stimuli and accordingly align motor skills by way of foot-tapping or dancing.

Also referred to as ‘rhythmic entrainment’, this ability is specific to humans and certain bird species, but is surprisingly enough not obvious in non-human primates. These are the findings of researchers from the University of Amsterdam and the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), whose new hypothesis, the ‘gradual audiomotor evolution hypothesis’, was recently published in the scientific journal Frontiers in Neuroscience.

Gradual audiomotor evolution hypothesis

The gradual audiomotor evolution hypothesis accommodates the fact that non-human primates’ (i.e., macaques) performance is comparable to humans in single interval tasks such as interval reproduction, categorisation and interception, but show differences in multiple interval tasks such as rhythmic entrainment, synchronisation and continuation. The hypothesis is also in line with the observation that macaques can apparently synchronise in the visual domain, but show less sensitivity in the auditory domain. Finally, while macaques are sensitive to interval-based timing and rhythmic grouping, the absence of strong coupling between the auditory and motor system of non-human primates might explain  why macaques cannot rhythmically entrain in the way humans do.

Timing networks in the primate brain

Functional imaging studies in humans have revealed that the motor cortico-basal ganglia-thalamo-cortical circuit (mCBGT) is not only involved  in sequential and temporal processing, but also in rhythmic behaviours such as music and dance, where auditory modality plays a critical role. The mCBGT circuit, however, seems to be less engaged in audiomotor integration in monkeys than in humans. While in humans different cognitive mechanisms are active for interval-based timing versus beat-based timing, with beat perception being dependent on distinct parts of the timing network in the brain, the anterior prefrontal CBGT and the mCBGT circuits in monkeys might be less viable to multiple interval structures, such as a regular beat.

Recent findings weaken the vocal learning hypothesis

The gradual audiomotor evolution hypothesis is an alternative to the well-known ‘vocal learning hypothesis’, which suggests that only species who can mimic sounds share the ability for  beat induction. Because recent empirical findings have challenged this hypothesis, an alternative was needed. 

Publication details

Merchant, H., & Honing, H. (2014; online). Are non-human primates capable of rhythmic entrainment? Evidence for the gradual audiomotor evolution hypothesis. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 7 (274) 1-8. doi 10.3389/fnins.2013.00274

Honing, H., & Merchant, H. (in press). Differences in auditory timing between human and non-human primates. Behavioral and Brain Science.

Wat gebeurt er met je hersenen als je muziek hoort? [Dutch]

Waarom ga je bijna vanzelf bewegen als je muziek hoort? Waarom kan muziektherapie bepaalde hersenproblemen oplossen? En hoe komt het dat je blijer wordt als je ouder wordt? VU-hoogleraar Erik Scherder vertelt het allemaal. (Een initiatief van de Universiteit van Nederland.)

Can we borrow your ears?

Fleur Bouwer, from the Music Cognition Group at the University of Amsterdam, traveled to Canada a few weeks ago to start-up an ambitious experiment on rhythm perception in collaboration with the group of Jessica Grahn, the Music Neuroscience Lab at Western University in London, Ontario. In preparation for a larger fMRI study she invites listeners to join an online pilot study. Interested?

The study involves listening to and rating rhythms online. The entire study will take up to 1 hour to complete and you can participate at a time and location of your convenience. You can also take the experiment in short blocks and take breaks in between. To participate, you need a computer with an Internet connection and loudspeakers or headphones.

The online experiment can be found at this link.

What's new on music, language and the brain?

From 8-12 May 2011 about forty researchers were asked to join a week of discussions in Frankfurt am Main, Germany in the context of the Ernst Strüngmann Forum.

The Forum can best be imagined as an intellectual retreat. A group of international experts are brought together for a week to identify gaps in knowledge; key questions are posed and innovative ways of filling these gaps are sought. To complete the communication process, the Ernst Strüngmann Forum publishes the results in partnership with MIT Press.

The 2011 Forum explored the relationships between language, music, and the brain by pursuing four key themes and the crosstalk among them: 1) song and dance as a bridge between music and language, 2) multiple levels of structure from brain to behavior to culture, 3) the semantics of internal and external worlds and the role of emotion, and 4) the evolution and development of language.

See more information on the resulting book at MIT Press.

Was Steven Pinker right after all? [Part 2]

At the end of the 1990s, cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker infamously characterized music as “auditory cheesecake”: a delightful dessert but, from an evolutionary perspective, no more than a by-product of language. But Pinker was probably right when he wrote: “I suspect music is auditory cheesecake, an exquisite confection crafted to tickle the sensitive spots of...our mental faculties.” Or, to express his idea less graphically: music affects our brains at specific places, thereby stimulating the production of unique substances that have a pleasurable effect on our mood. However, rather than a by-product of evolution, music or more precisely musicality is likely to be a characteristic that survived natural selection in order to stimulate and develop our mental faculties (cf. Honing, 2011).

Pinker’s idea may actually be a very fruitful hypothesis whose significance has wrongfully gone unacknowledged because of all the criticism it elicited. After all, the purely evolutionary explanations for the origins of music largely overlook the experience of music we all share: the pleasure we derive from it, not only from the acrobatics of making it but also from the act of listening to it.

Last week Science published a study (a follow-up of Salimpoor et al., 2011) in which Canadian researchers were able to show precisely that: Music can arouse feelings of euphoria and craving, similar to tangible rewards that involve the striatal dopaminergic system. They were able to show that intense pleasure in response to music can lead to dopamine release in the striatal system, most notably the nucleus accumbens. And, more importantly, the anticipation of an abstract reward can result in dopamine release in an anatomical pathway distinct from that associated with the peak pleasure itself.

Salimpoor, V., van den Bosch, I., Kovacevic, N., McIntosh, A., Dagher, A., & Zatorre, R. (2013). Interactions Between the Nucleus Accumbens and Auditory Cortices Predict Music Reward Value Science, 340 (6129), 216-219 DOI: 10.1126/science.1231059

Salimpoor, V., Benovoy, M., Larcher, K., Dagher, A., & Zatorre, R. (2011). Anatomically distinct dopamine release during anticipation and experience of peak emotion to music Nature Neuroscience DOI: 10.1038/nn.2726

Honing, H. (2011) Musical Cognition. A Science of Listening. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers.

Interested in the relation between dance and music?

Larry Parsons

On Tuesday 16 April 2013  Larry Parsons (University of Sheffield and Centre de Neuroscience Cognitive, CNRS, Lyon, France) will give a CSCA Lecture with the title Neurobiological Basis of Musical Skills and Dancing. He will present functional neuroimaging data on the brain basis of call/response singing, harmonization, improvisational singing, sight-singing duets, music learning in non-musical adults, and the performance of memorized piano pieces. Also discussed will be the relation between neural systems for melodic and sentential generation, emotional musical experiences, and the brain basis of dancing.

For more information, see the website of the CSCA.

What about the what, how, and where of auditory perception?

The last few days the 2nd Auditory Cognition Summer School was held in Plymouth, UK. Thirty enthusiastic students from a variety of backgrounds spent time (and still do so until tomorrow afternoon)  attending lectures, work groups and demonstrations is this new, emerging field.

Personally, I was quite impressed by the presentation of prof. Sophie Kertu Scott (UCL) yesterday. She discussed her work on speech perception, as well as her recent work on the neurobiology of audition. While I know her work from quite a while ago (RPPW 1994), she since then emerged as a true expert in the neuroscience of speech perception, situating our understanding of speech, space and auditory objects in the context of the basic neuroanatomy of the primate auditory system.

See a relative recent paper below, one that emphasizes the putative directions of the ‘what’,‘where’ and ‘how’ streams of processing in the human brain.

Scott, Sophie K. (2005). Auditory processing — speech, space and auditory objects. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 15, 197-201. DOI: 10.1016/j.conb.2005.03.009

What's new in neuroscience and music?

Neurosciences and Music

The conference entitled The Neurosciences and Music-IV: Learning and Memory was held at the University of Edinburgh from June 9–12, 2011, jointly hosted by the Mariani Foundation and the Institute for Music in Human and Social Development, and involving nearly 500 international delegates. Two opening workshops, three large and vibrant poster sessions, and nine invited symposia introduced a diverse range of recent research findings and discussed current research directions. In the reference below (Altenmüller et al., 2012), the proceedings are introduced by the workshop and symposia leaders on topics including working with children, rhythm perception, language processing, cultural learning, memory, musical imagery, neural plasticity, stroke rehabilitation, autism, and amusia. The rich diversity of the interdisciplinary research presented suggests that the future of music neuroscience looks both exciting and promising, and that important implications for music rehabilitation and therapy are being discovered.

Altenmüller, E., Demorest, S., Fujioka, T., Halpern, A., Hannon, E., Loui, P., Majno, M., Oechslin, M., Osborne, N., Overy, K., Palmer, C., Peretz, I., Pfordresher, P., Särkämö, T., Wan, C., & Zatorre, R. (2012). Introduction to The Neurosciences and Music IV: Learning and Memory Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1252 (1), 1-16 DOI: 10.1111/j.1749-6632.2012.06474.x

Honing, H. (2012). Without it no music: beat induction as a fundamental musical trait Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1252 (1), 85-91 DOI: 10.1111/j.1749-6632.2011.06402.x

Does music matter?

The documentary "The Music Instinct" brings together scientists, scholars and musicians to explore the science of music:

Cleese explains it all

Zatorre R, & McGill J (2005). Music, the food of neuroscience? Nature, 434 (7031), 312-5 PMID: 15772648

Verslag symposium muziek en het brein [Dutch]

Muziek en het Brein - 22 juni 2011 from Coolpolitics on Vimeo.


Muziek en het Brein - 22 juni 2011 from Lokaalmondiaal on Vimeo.

Voor meer opnames zie hier.

Was Steven Pinker right after all?

At the end of the 1990s, cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker infamously characterized music as “auditory cheesecake”: a delightful dessert but, from an evolutionary perspective, no more than a by-product of language. But Pinker was probably right when he wrote: “I suspect music is auditory cheesecake, an exquisite confection crafted to tickle the sensitive spots of...our mental faculties.” Or, to express his idea less graphically: music affects our brains at specific places, thereby stimulating the production of unique substances that have a pleasurable effect on our mood. However, rather than a by-product of evolution, music or more precisely musicality is likely to be a characteristic that survived natural selection in order to stimulate and develop our mental faculties (cf. Honing, 2011).

Pinker’s idea may actually be a very fruitful hypothesis whose significance has wrongfully gone unacknowledged because of all the criticism it elicited. After all, the purely evolutionary explanations for the origins of music largely overlook the experience of music we all share: the pleasure we derive from it, not only from the acrobatics of making it but also from the act of listening to it.

In a recent study Canadian researchers were able to show precisely that: Music can arouse feelings of euphoria and craving, similar to tangible rewards that involve the striatal dopaminergic system. They were able to show that intense pleasure in response to music can lead to dopamine release in the striatal system. And, more importantly, the anticipation of an abstract reward can result in dopamine release in an anatomical pathway distinct from that associated with the peak pleasure itself.

Salimpoor, V., Benovoy, M., Larcher, K., Dagher, A., & Zatorre, R. (2011). Anatomically distinct dopamine release during anticipation and experience of peak emotion to music Nature Neuroscience DOI: 10.1038/nn.2726

Honing, H. (in press, 2011) Musical Cognition. A Science of Listening. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers.

Hearing the music, honing the mind?

In addition to last weeks entry, a citation from a recent article in Scientific American:

"Music produces profound and lasting changes in the brain. Schools should add classes, not cut them." 

See full article.

Kan luisteren de hersenen beïnvloeden? [Dutch]

This week a video entry with a clip of the Dutch tv program Vrije Geluiden: Last Sunday prof. Erik Scherder (Free University Amsterdam) explained some recent research (by, e.g., Hyde et al., 2009) on the influence of music performance and music listening on brain plasticity.

The full episode can be viewed here (N.B. no subtitles).

Hyde, K., Lerch, J., Norton, A., Forgeard, M., Winner, E., Evans, A., & Schlaug, G. (2009). Musical Training Shapes Structural Brain Development Journal of Neuroscience, 29 (10), 3019-3025 DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.5118-08.2009

What's new on music and the brain?

The Mariani Foundation for Paediatric Neurology just announced The Neurosciences and Music - IV: Learning and Memory, to be held in Edinburgh (Scotland, UK) from 9th to 12th June 2011. The conference is conceived as a continuation of the previous meetings on the relation between Music and the Neurosciences in which our Foundation participated: "The Biological Foundations of Music" (New York, 2000), "The Neurosciences and Music - I , Mutual interactions and implications of developmental functions" (Venice, 2002), "The Neurosciences and Music - II, From perception to performance" (Leipzig, 2005) and "The Neurosciences and Music - III, Disorders and plasticity". These conferences have been highly successful and have generated enormous excitement, both among established and new researchers. By providing the opportunity to present new results and exchange information, the meetings have contributed substantially to the growth of new research and collaborations in the neuroscience of music and to its visibility within the broader scientific community.

The central theme of Music and Neurosciences IV will be Learning and Memory. The conference programme will also be divided into 4 subthemes: "Infants and Children", "Adults: musicians and non musicians", "Disabilities and aging-related issues" and "Therapy and Rehabilitation". The conference will include Keynote Lectures, Symposia, Poster Sessions and a Workshop on child-oriented research design and new data acquisition and analysis techniques, to be held in the afternoon on 9th June. The conference will be of interest not only to neuroscientists, psychologists and students but also to clinical neurologists, clinical psychologists, therapists, music performers and educators as well as musicologists.

Edinburgh has been selected as a most appropriate setting because of the IMHSD - Institute for Music in Human and Social Development, established in 2005, which brings together music research, theory and practice from a wide range of disciplines, with an emphasis on learning and rehabilitation. The selected dates are immediately prior to the "Edinburgh International Film Festival" (EIFF), so delegates will have the opportunity to stay on in Edinburgh to attend this event. The EIFF was one of the world's first international film festivals, born alongside the Edinburgh International Festival in 1947, and places a longstanding emphasis upon new talent, discovery and innovation.

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.