Is rock music dangerous?

Last Saturday the first edition of Noorderslag Science was held, during a sold-out Noorderslag in Groningen, NL. Noorderslag Science is a seminar on pop music, the music industry and related topics (such as music cognition) that gives researchers an opportunity to present their work to a wide audience.

Tom ter Bogt (professor of popular music at the University of Utrecht), with whom I co-organized the event, presented work on fame and (early) death in pop music. Next to a review of the empirical work of e.g. Mark Bellis (“pop artists die younger”), he presented his own research on the question whether Gothic rock has a (bad) effect on adolescent behavior.*

Based on large dataset on adolescents’ musical taste, he found a correlation between the liking of Gothic Rock and suicidal thoughts (up to ten percent of the group interviewed). Interestingly, a similar effect was shown for several other genres as well, suggesting that music —in general— is more appreciated in this particular age period.

While the relation is correlational and not causal, it suggests that without music these episodes of depressive thought might be far more dangerous for these adolescents (since the actual suicide rate is, luckily, far below the ten percent mentioned above). A striking example of the importance of music and its comforting role, in this case —apparently— a fact of life and death.

* Mulder, J., Bogt, T.t., Raaijmakers, Q., Vollebergh, W. (2007). Music Taste Groups and Problem Behavior. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 36(3), 313-324. DOI: 10.1007/s10964-006-9090-1

Too catchy a tune ? (Part 2)

Below the fragment belonging to the blog entry of two weeks ago on the earworm:

Is beat induction special? (Part 3)

The Dutch TV program Boeken introduced the Cockatoo-video as the most fun and intriguing video of the year. Tijs Goldschmidt (a biologist and writer known from, e.g., Darwin's Dreampond) tells about the phenomenon of beat induction and why it is so relevant to cognitive scientists (see also an earlier blog).



In his upcoming book called Music, Language and the Brain, Ani Patel chose beat induction — referring to it as ‘beat-based rhythm processing’— as a key area in music-language research. He proposes it an important candidate in demonstrating "that there is a fundamental aspect of music cognition that is not a byproduct of cognitive mechanisms that also serve other, more clearly adaptive, domains (e.g. auditory scene analysis or language)." (Patel, 2008).

I couldn't agree more: beat induction could well turn out to be a key cognitive process in the evolution of music, and arguably central to the origins of music.*

With regard to the video mentioned above: Patel’s group is currently systematically filming the Cockatoo for analyses.

P.S. Yet another item from Dutch TV on beat induction:


*1994 demo on beat induction.

In Amsterdam at the end of the year?

As an unrelated yet musical blog entry, today a plug for my brother. Since I will be spending time, like most of you, with friends and family, I might well share the event that I look forward to. In the pop-temple Paradiso —on December 29— three groups will perform a wide variety of music ranging from electro (Wired Paradise), Schubert (Mulder & Honing) to Orient (Rima Khcheich Group). You might like it.

Too catchy a tune? (earworm)

It’s a well-known phenomenon in media land that once you contributed to a TV item on a compelling —general interest— question, people will return to you with the same question over and over again, and, basically, wanting you to redo the same answer :-)

It happened to me a few years ago when I was asked to contribute to a Dutch TV item on the question why some melodies stick in your mind. My first answer was: we do not know. Since, if we knew, an ‘earworm’-generating computer program would exist that can generate melodies that are guaranteed to stick in people’s mind for days. In this particular case however, I’m sure nobody would mind. Unfortunately, now —four years later— still little is understood of the phenomenon. [And yes, again on Dutch TV]

What we do know —mainly from questionnaire-style research— is that most people suffer from the ‘earworm’ phenomenon (also referred to as brainworm, cognitive itch, or musical imagery repetition), females slightly more than males. And that the tunes that spontaneously pop-up in one’s mind are generally not the most striking compositions. Actually, they are commonly reported as being simply irritating (see examples on link below).

Why does this happen? And what does it tells us about our cognition? And why does it happen with music, and significantly less with text or images? What is in the musical structure of that particular fragment that makes it spontaneously pop-up from memory? PhD-students in cognitive science looking for an exciting relatively unexplored topic in music (neuro)cognition, jump on it!

Dutch webpage on this topic.

[Dutch] Doe je mee?

[This item is in Dutch. Next week it will be in English again.]

Muziekcognitie krijgt de laatste jaren meer en meer aandacht in wetenschappelijk onderzoek. In dit vakgebied staan vragen centraal als: Waarom raakt muziek ons zo direct? Wat maakt een ritme spannend, sloom of saai? Waarom blijven sommige liedjes in je hoofd steken? Of, kan je een machine leren luisteren? Kortom: muziek bekeken vanuit het gezichtspunt van de luisteraar.

Half januari wordt bekend of MCG door mag naar de tweede ronde van de Academische Jaarprijs, onder het motto 'zonder luisteraar geen muziek'.

Gezocht: twee master, of gevorderde bachelor studenten die ons team willen versterken.

Ben je geïnteresseerd? Stuur dan voor 10 januari a.s. een e-mail naar battle@musiccognition.nl met een korte motivatie en een prikkelende onderzoeksvraag die volgens jou iets duidelijk maakt over het luisteren naar muziek. Je wordt dan in ieder geval uitgenodigd voor de kick-off bijeenkomst in de laatste week van januari. De twee geselecteerde studenten krijgen —behalve eeuwige roem— een deel van het vrij te besteden prijzengeld.

We kijken uit naar jullie reactie!

Henkjan Honing & Olivia Ladinig

Is music mere play?

Early this morning I was called by the Dutch radio for a daily question on science, and was confronted with the question: Why do we like music? (fragment). Since why-questions are generally almost impossible to answer, I was happy —just in time— to think of the idea of ‘music as play’. But because all of this went almost too quickly, I thought I would slightly eloborate on it in this blog...

The idea is that music, as a human phenomenon, can be seen as something that plays with our senses, our memory, our attention and our emotions, in the way young lions play, without any real threat. Music, generally, does not harm us, it also doesn’t make us less hungry, but it directly addresses our physiological and cognitive functions. For many music listeners this is a pleasant, rewarding, purposeful and sometimes even a consoling play.*

I like this idea of ‘music as play’ far better than the discussion of whether music is an adaptation or a mere evolutionary by-product of more important functions, such as those involved in language (Pinker, 1997). Also Geoffrey Miller’s alternative suggesting sexual selection to be the primary mechanism in the evolution of music is still lacking the proper arguments and evidence. ‘Music as play’ is far more attractive, because it might explain several of our strange behaviors, such as listening to ‘sad’ music when we are sad, to make us even more sad — we apparently know it will not really harm us!

The idea of ‘man as a player’ was brought forward by several authors, including Johan Huizinga who wrote Homo Ludens (‘Man the Player’) in the 1930s. It is the topic of the 2007 Huizinga lectureby Tijs Goldschmidt (a biologist and writer known from, e.g., Darwin's Dreampond). His lecture will be called Doen alsof je doet alsof (‘Pretend to pretend’). I'm sure he will say something about music too. [cf. pp. 20-21]

* See Dutch article on the idea of 'music as play'.

Is beat induction special? (Part 2)

Rhythmic behavior in non-human animals, such as chimpanzees, has been studied quite regularly. The video below is a nice illustration of how chimpanzees can use tools in a rhythmic, periodic fashion. Other researchers have shown that some apes are even capable of regularly tapping a drum. However, they seem unable to beat a drum—or rhythmically move or dance, for that matter— in synchrony to music, like a human would be able to do.



Hence the big surprise of the video below. A YouTube video that attracted quite some media attention in the US. What do you think? Evidence for beat induction (*) in animals?


The ultimate test is to do an experiment in which the speed (or tempo) of the music is systematically controlled for, to be able to answer the crucial question: will the Cockatoo dance slightly faster if the music is presented slightly faster?

I would be flabbergasted if that would be the case, since for a long time beat induction was considered a human trait, which I argued —along with some colleagues— to be essential to the origins of music in humans.

Currently, a North-American research group tries to find out. I'll keep you posted.

* Beat induction is the process in which a regular isochronous pattern (the beat) is activated while listening to music. This beat, often tapped along by musicians, is a central issue in time keeping in music performance. But also for non-experts the process seems to be fundamental to the processing, coding and appreciation of temporal patterns. The induced beat carries the perception of tempo and is the basis of temporal coding of temporal patterns. Furthermore, it determines the relative importance of notes in, for example, the melodic and harmonic structure.

Desain, P., Honing, H. (1999). Computational Models of Beat Induction: The Rule-Based Approach.. Journal of New Music Research, 28(1), 29-42.

In Barcelona this week?

CosmoCaixa, the new science museum in Barcelona, is organizing an exhibition with the title Física y música. Vibraciones para el alma (see impression). In this context the museum organizes on November 16 a full day of lectures with the title “Music, Neuroscience, Technology” for which a number of international researchers have been invited to present their work in music cognition and related areas.

The day opens with Isabelle Peretz and Robert Zatorre, well-known for their neuroscientific work - the first for her medical case-studies and research in amusia, the latter for his innovative brain imaging research in music and audition. The rest of the day will include presentations by Tecumseh Fitch (University of St Andrews, UK) who will look at music from an evolutionary perspective, Patrick Juslin (Uppsala University, Sweden) who will talk about music and emotion, Michel Thaut on music therapy (Colorado State University, USA), and Xavier Serra (Universidad Pompeu Fabra, Spain) on music technology. Finally, I will present some recent work on rhythm cognition as it was realized in the context of an EU-FP6 project on emergent cognition (see earlier blog). The latter project, EmCAP —a consortium of 6 research groups from 4 European universities—, will be reviewed this week in Barcelona as well. I look forward to it ...

Is beat induction special?

In the 1990s several researchers in cognitive science were concerned with trying to understand beat induction: the cognitive process of attributing a regular pulse to a musical fragment, the beat we're sometimes forced to tap our foot to.

I would like to argue that, from an evolutionary perspective, beat induction is one, if not the most fundamental aspect that made music possible. It allows us, humans, to synchronize, to dance, to clap, and to make music together, synchronizing to the beat of the music. Beat induction seems essential for all kinds of social and cultural activities, including rituals.

Interestingly, we do not share this capability with other animals. Researchers have, until now, unsuccessfully tried to have non-human animals —such as chimpanzees and elephants— synchronize to music. While non-human animals might show rhythmic behavior (like chimpanzees using tools) , they can not, for instance, play a drum in synchrony with the music, and consequently change it while the music changes tempo. However, some researchers, like Ani Patel of the Neuroscience Institute San Diego (see *), are optimistic.

For me, personally, there is no need to show that beat induction is solely a human trait, but it suggests that beat induction could have made a difference in the cognitive development of the human species.

* Patel, A.D. & Iversen, J.R. (2006). A non-human animal can drum a steady beat on a musical instrument. In: Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Music Perception & Cognition (ICMPC9), Bologna/Italy, August 22-26 2006, p. 477.