Interested in human nature?

During a partner meeting yesterday evening at the residence of the Amsterdam municipality, the majority of the speakers list was released for the 2011 edition of the TEDxAmsterdam event. The speakers and the audience will enter the theme ‘Human Nature’ on an expedition to find out what it means to be human in a society that is increasingly dominated by technology and economical issues.

More than ever has there been a need for a vision that is based on human virtues and those that deserve the mark of ‘practical wisdom’. Dutch speakers who are confirmed for TEDxAmsterdam 2011 are among others prof. dr Eveline Crone (Leiden University), prof. dr Henkjan Honing (University of Amsterdam), Chief of the Netherlands Defence Staff Peter Van Uhm, dr David Lentink (bird and swift flight expert), journalist Joris Luyendijk (observes bankers in the City of London). Het Nationale Ballet will perform the opening act.

For the full speaker list see here.

Crone, E., & van der Molen, M. (2004). Developmental Changes in Real Life Decision Making: Performance on a Gambling Task Previously Shown to Depend on the Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex Developmental Neuropsychology, 25 (3), 251-279 DOI: 10.1207/s15326942dn2503_2

Lentink, D., Müller, U., Stamhuis, E., de Kat, R., van Gestel, W., Veldhuis, L., Henningsson, P., Hedenström, A., Videler, J., & van Leeuwen, J. (2007). How swifts control their glide performance with morphing wings Nature, 446 (7139), 1082-1085 DOI: 10.1038/nature05733

A history of music cognition?

One of the pioneers in the field that would come to be called music cognition was H. Christopher Longuet-Higgins (1923-2004). Not only was Longuet-Higgins one of the founders of the cognitive sciences (he coined the term in 1973), but as early as 1971 he formulated, together with Mark Steedman, the first computer model of musical perception. That early work was followed in 1976 with a full-fledged alternative in the journal Nature, seven years earlier than the more widely known, but, according to Longuet-Higgins, less precisely formulated, Generative Theory of Tonal Music of Lerdahl and Jackendoff. In a review in Nature in 1983 he wrote somewhat sourly:

‘Lerdahl and Jackendoff are, it seems, in favor of constructing a formally precise theory of music, in principle but not in practice.’

Although Lerdahl and Jackendorff’s book was far more precise than any musicological discussion found in the leading journals, the importance of formalization cannot be underestimated. Notwithstanding all our musicological knowledge, many fundamental concepts are in fact treated as axioms; musicologists are, after all, anxious to tackle far more interesting matters than basic notions like tempo, meter or syncopation, to name a few. But these axioms are not in actual fact understood, in the sense that we are not able (as yet) to formalize them sufficiently to explain them to a computer. This is still the challenge of ‘computer modelling’ (and of recent initiatives such as computational humanities) – a challenge that Longuet-Higgins was one of the first to take up [Excerpt from Honing, 2011].

Longuet-Higgins, H. C. (1983). All in theory — the analysis of music Nature, 304 (5921), 93-93 DOI: 10.1038/304093a0

Longuet-Higgins, H. C.  (1976). Perception of melodies Nature, 263 (5579), 646-653 DOI: 10.1038/263646a0
 
Honing, H. (2011). The illiterate listener. On music cognition, musicality and methodology. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

Do music lessons make you smarter?

As a follow-up of an earlier entry, announcing a lecture from Glenn Schellenberg at CSCA in Amsterdam, see this link for a recording of that event (UvA streaming video; Sorry, only visible for UvA-students and employees).

Cleese explains it all

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

Interested in doing research in cognitive and computational musicology?

A postdoc and PhD position are currently vacant in two collaborative research projects that cut across the boundaries between music cognition, musicology and computer science.

For more information, see here. Deadline for applications is 14 October 2011.


(For related vacancies at the e-Laboratory, see here.)

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.

Dirk Jan Povel

Today reached me the sad news that one of the Dutch pionieers in rhythm perception research, Dirk Jan Povel, has passed away after an incurable illness.

Povel made an important contribution to our understanding of the perception of rhythmic patterns reported in a number of highly cited studies. He retired from Radboud University and at the Nijmegen Institute for Information and Cognition (NICI) in November 2005. He taught a few thousand students and was deeply involved in theoretical and applied research in a number of fields. Most notably theoretical and applied research related to speech perception and speech production, the perception of temporal patterns and musical rhythms, and the production of serial motor patterns. More recently he has been doing research on the on-line processes of music perception to discover the perceptual mechanisms listeners use in coding music (see for more information here).

Povel, D. (1981). Internal representation of simple temporal patterns. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 7 (1), 3-18 DOI: 10.1037/0096-1523.7.1.3

What makes us musical animals? [Part 2]

This week a new essay came out in which I try to make a case for ‘illiterate listening’, the human ability to discern, interpret and appreciate musical nuances. We have known for some time that babies possess a keen perceptual sensitivity for the melodic, rhythmic and dynamic aspects of speech and music: aspects that linguists are inclined to categorize under the term ‘prosody’, but which are in fact the building blocks of music. Only much later in a child’s development does s/he make use of this ‘musical prosody’, for instance in delineating and subsequently recognizing word boundaries. We all share these musical skills, from day one, and long before a single word has been uttered, let alone conceived. It is the preverbal and preliterate stage of our development that is dominated by musical listening.

The Illiterate listener is available online for free.

Honing, H. (2011). The illiterate listener. On music cognition, musicality and methodology. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

What makes us musical animals?

This week a plug for my new book that just came out: Musical Cognition: A Science of Listening (Read fragments of it online at Google Books; currently available with more than 30% discount on the hardcover at Amazon and Barnes & Noble).

From the cover:

"Musical Cognition suggests that music is a game (or 'benificial play'). In music, our cognitive functions such as perception, memory, attention, and expectation are challenged; yet as listeners we often do not realize that the listener plays an active role in reaching the awareness that makes music so exhilarating, soothing, and inspiring. In reality, the author contends, listening does not happen in the outer world of audible sound but in the inner world of our minds and brains.

Recent research in the areas of psychology and neuro-cognition allows Honing to be explicit in a way that many of his predecessors could not. His lucid, evocative writing style guides the reader through what is known about listening to music while avoiding jargon and technical diagrams. With clear examples, the book concentrates on underappreciated musical skills — “sense of rhythm” and “relative pitch” — skills that make us musical creatures. Research on how living creatures respond to music supports the conviction that all humans have a unique, instinctive attraction to music.

Musical Cognition includes a selection of intriguing examples from recent literature exploring the role that an implicit or explicit knowledge of music plays when one listens to it. The scope of the topics discussed ranges from the ability of newborns to perceive the beat, to the unexpected musical expertise of ordinary listeners. The evidence shows that music is second nature to most human beings — biologically and socially."

Honing, H. (2011) Musical Cognition. A Science of Listening. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers. ISBN 978-1-4128-4228-0.

Winkler, I., Haden, G., Ladinig, O., Sziller, I., & Honing, H. (2009). Newborn infants detect the beat in music Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106 (7), 2468-2471 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0809035106

Why would anyone listen to sad music?

See also the San Francisco Classical Voice.

Huron, D. (2011). Why is sad music pleasurable? A possible role for prolactin Musicae Scientiae, 15 (2), 146-158 DOI: 10.1177/1029864911401171