Psychomusicology

The similarities between music and language are often remarked upon. For this reason, many thinkers fall into a linguistic bias in music analysis. Both are unique products of the human mind serving the purpose of expression, although they do not coincide entirely. Meanings conveyed musically and linguistically differ due to physical, conceptual and formal limitations. A closer study of their creation points to the common root of linguistic and musical production, consisting in the human affinity for symbolic transformation of experience, stemming from evolutionary adaptation to the changing environment. Symbolisation not only allows the human being to internally conceive the reality which surrounds them, but also to represent objects and concepts in absentia. This faculty prompted the elaboration of systems of communication and artistic creation, a virtually ludic activity reflecting the inherent cerebral processes.

Reviews the book, "The Expressiveness of Perceptual Experience: Physiognomy Reconsidered" by Martin S. Lindauer (2013). The Expressiveness of Perceptual Experience: Physiognomy Reconsidered reviews, summarizes, and seeks to synthesize the author’s four decades of research investigating this topic. Lindauer belongs to a vanishing breed of generalists in a time of ever-increasing specialization and narrowly defined research agendas in cognitive psychology and neuroscience. Because of its broad scope and survey of relevant and related literature, his recent book is suitable as a supplementary text for courses on the psychology of emotion and psychological aesthetics encompassing, as it does, not just perception, but cognitive, aesthetic, and social aspects of expressive perceptual experience. The nine chapters of this rich and far-ranging monograph are organized under four headings: “Part 1: Background,” “Part 2: Physiognomy and the arts,” “Part 3: A perceptual framework for physiognomy,” and “Part 4: Answers and questions.” Though Lindauer enthusiastically provides the reader with a rich and informative panorama of sources, empirical findings, and ideas, his book does not forge a unified conceptual framework that links physiognomic perception with an empirically testable science of physiognomics.

Page 1. 1 Copyright 2011 by Psychomusicology DOI: 10.5084/pmmb2010/21/xxx Psychomusicology: Music, Mind & Brain 2010, Vol. 21, No. 1 & No. 2, xxx-xxx abstract—Research is reviewed on singing, health and well-being from the perspective of health psychology. ...

Participants The participants for the research (baseline and post-intervention evaluation) were drawn from eighty-one schools located across England. The schools were in major cities and adjacent population centres across the South-East (Greater London), East have not witnessed before. It is the most elemental form of music making, and is within the grasp of all of us, whatever our ability. It is a powerful community activity binding individuals and community together.'

Understanding the lyrics of many songs, not just contemporary songs, is sometimes difficult. Watching the talker's face improves speech understanding when the speech is degraded by noise or by hearing difficulty. To explore whether the face can be similarly ...

This study investigates the effects of musical training on brain activity to violations of rhythmic expectancies. We recorded behavioral and event-related brain potential (ERP) responses of musicians and non-musicians to discrepancies of rhythm between pairs of unfamiliar melodies based on Western classical rules. Rhythm deviations in the second melody involved prolongation of a note, thus creating a delay in the subsequent note; the duration of the second note was consequently shorter because the offset time was unchanged. In the first melody, on the other hand, the two notes were of equal duration. Musicians detected rhythm deviations significantly better than non-musicians. A negative auditory cortical potential in response to the omitted stimulus was observed at a latency of 150-250 ms from where the note should have been. There were no significant differences of amplitude or latency between musicians and non-musicians. In contrast, the N100 and P200 to the delayed note after th...

Research has established that there is a cognitive link between perception and production of the same movement. However, there has been relatively little research into the relevance of this for non-expert perceivers, such as music listeners who do not play instruments themselves. In two experiments we tested whether participants can quickly learn new associations between sounds and observed movement without performing those movements themselves. We measured motor evoked potentials (MEPs) in the first dorsal interosseous muscle of participants' right hands while test tones were heard and single transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) pulses were used to trigger motor activity. In Experiment 1 participants in a 'human' condition (n=4) learnt to associate the test tone with finger movement of the experimenter, while participants in a 'computer' condition (n=4) learnt that the test tone was triggered by a computer. Participants in the human condition showed a larger increase in MEPs compared with those in the computer condition. In a second experiment pairing between sounds and movement occurred without participants repeatedly observing the movement and we found no such difference between the human (n=4) and computer (n=4) conditions. These results suggest that observers can quickly learn to associate sound with movement, so it should not be necessary to have played an instrument to experience some motor resonance when hearing that instrument.