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Background: There is evidence that major depressive disorder (MDD) comes with multiple cognitive impairments including deficits in perception and memory. Music cognition is one of the least explored cognitive functions in relation to MDD, with some studies pointing to mild amusic deficits. These findings, however, are derived only from performance-based tests. Our objectives were to explore differences in music perception and memory between individuals with MDD and a control group, in both performance test and self-report of amusic dysfunction, and to assess the correlation between these measures. Method: We recruited 62 participants, including MDD individuals (n = 34) diagnosed with the Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview and controls (n = 18). All the participants were evaluated with the Montreal Battery for Evaluation of Amusia (MBEA) and the Amusic Dysfunction Inventory (ADI). Results: None of the assessed dimensions from the MBEA or the ADI showed statistical differences between groups. Some significant associations were found between ADI's Vocal Production and the MBEA's three tests of the melodic dimension (Scale, Contour and Interval) and between MBEA's Scale and Memory, Meter and ADI's Melodic Perception, and tests of Memory from each respective instrument. Conclusion: Results suggest that perception and memory of basic music stimuli are not among the cognitive deficits within MDD, however, they may be indirectly affected by other cognitive phenomena common to this psychopathology, such as poor sustained concentration due to mental fatigue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Timbre is a central aspect of music that allows listeners to identify musical sounds and conveys musical emotion, but also allows for the recognition of actions and is an important structuring property of music. The former functions are known to be implemented in a ventral auditory stream in processing musical timbre. While the latter functions are commonly attributed to areas in a dorsal auditory processing stream in other musical domains, its involvement in musical timbre processing is so far unknown. To investigate if musical timbre processing involves both dorsal and ventral auditory pathways, we carried out an activation likelihood estimation (ALE) meta-analysis of 18 experiments from 17 published neuroimaging studies on musical timbre perception. We identified consistent activations in Brodmann areas (BA) 41, 42, and 22 in the bilateral transverse temporal gyri, the posterior superior temporal gyri and planum temporale, in BA 40 of the bilateral inferior parietal lobe, in BA 13 in the bilateral posterior Insula, and in BA 13 and 22 in the right anterior insula and superior temporal gyrus. The vast majority of the identified regions are associated with the dorsal and ventral auditory processing streams. We therefore propose to frame the processing of musical timbre in a dual-stream model. Moreover, the regions activated in processing timbre show similarities to the brain regions involved in processing several other fundamental aspects of music, indicating possible shared neural bases of musical timbre and other musical domains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Musical engagement can be conceptualized through various activities, modes of listening and listener states. Recent research has reported that a state of focused engagement can be indexed by the inter‐subject correlation (ISC) of audience responses to a shared naturalistic stimulus. While statistically significant ISC has been reported during music listening, we lack insight into the temporal dynamics of engagement over the course of musical works—such as those composed in the Western classical style—which involve the formulation of expectations that are realized or derailed at subsequent points of arrival. Here, we use the ISC of electroencephalographic (EEG) and continuous behavioural (CB) responses to investigate the time‐varying dynamics of engagement with functional tonal music. From a sample of adult musicians who listened to a complete cello concerto movement, we found that ISC varied throughout the excerpt for both measures. In particular, significant EEG ISC was observed during periods of musical tension that built to climactic highpoints, while significant CB ISC corresponded more to declarative entrances and points of arrival. Moreover, we found that a control stimulus retaining envelope characteristics of the intact music, but little other temporal structure, also elicited significantly correlated EEG and CB responses, though to lesser extents than the original version. In sum, these findings shed light on the temporal dynamics of engagement during music listening and clarify specific aspects of musical engagement that may be indexed by each measure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From 2012 to 2023, the American Psychological Association served as publisher of Psychomusicology: Music, Mind, and Brain. Annabel Cohen and Mark Schmuckler were the successive editors-in-chiefs during this time. As the journal is ceasing publication, the two editors reflect on the development and progress of the journal in the context of the history of psychology and publication trends. They present their review in 10 short movements each with a unique musical emotional expressivity: overture, amabile, vivace, elegy doloroso, sforzando, capriccio, con brio, pendolo, agilmente, and finale risonante, ending on a very upbeat note! Early on, Psychomusicology offered a much-needed research forum for the psychology of music. More recently, the recognized importance of music psychology to almost all areas of psychology has led to increasing numbers of outlets for publication. During the 12 recent years under APA's stewardship, the journalmore than doubled the number of articles published since the journal's inception in 1981. The entire corpus of almost 600 articles represents foundational and well-cited contributions to such current research areas as musical expectancy, performance excellence, musical development, neuroscience, emotion, preference, and film music, among others. Cohen and Schmuckler express deep gratitude to the authors, past editorial board members, and reviewers for their contributions to this corpus, and to the American Psychological Association Publications office and staff both for support and, importantly, for holding and making accessible in perpetuity the outstanding scholarship within the archives of Psychomusicology: MusicMind & Brain and Psychomusicology: A Journal of Music Cognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work reviews the growing body of interdisciplinary research on music cognition, using biomechanical, kinesiological, clinical, psychosocial, and sociological methods. The review primarily examines the relationship between temporal elements in music and motor responses under varying contexts, with considerable relevance for clinical rehabilitation. After providing an overview of the terminology and approaches pertinent to theories of rhythm and meter from the musical‐theoretical and cognitive fields, this review focuses on studies on the effects of rhythmic sensory stimulation on gait, rhythmic cues' effect on the motor system, reactions to rhythmic stimuli attempting to synchronize mobility (i.e., musical embodiment), and the application of rhythm for motor rehabilitation for individuals with Parkinson's disease, stroke, mild cognitive impairment, Alzheimer's disease, and other neurodegenerative or neurotraumatic diseases. This work ultimately bridges the gap between the musical‐theoretical and cognitive science fields to facilitate innovative research in which each discipline informs the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most listeners can determine when a familiar recording of music has been shifted in musical key by as little as one semitone (e.g., from B to C major). These findings appear to suggest that absolute pitch memory is widespread in the general population. However, the use of familiar recordings makes it unclear whether these findings genuinely reflect absolute melody-key associations for at least two reasons. First, listeners may be able to use spectral cues from the familiar instrumentation of the recordings to determine when a familiar recording has been shifted in pitch. Second, listeners may be able to rely solely on pitch height cues (e.g., relying on a feeling that an incorrect recording sounds "too high" or "too low"). Neither of these strategies would require an understanding of pitch chroma or musical key. The present experiments thus assessed whether listeners could make accurate absolute melody-key judgments when listening to novel versions of these melodies, differing from the iconic recording in timbre (Experiment 1) or timbre and octave (Experiment 2). Listeners in both experiments were able to select the correct-key version of the familiar melody at rates that were well above chance. These results fit within a growing body of research supporting the idea that most listeners, regardless of formal musical training, have robust representations of absolute pitch – based on pitch chroma – that generalize to novel listening situations. Implications for theories of auditory pitch memory are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research suggests that speaking a tone language confers benefits in processing pitch in nonlinguistic contexts such as music. This research largely compares speakers of nontone European languages (English, French) with speakers of tone languages in East Asia (Mandarin, Cantonese, Vietnamese, Thai). However, tone languages exist on multiple continents—notably, languages indigenous to Africa and the Americas. With one exception (Bradley, Psychomusicology, 26(4), 337–345, 2016), no research has assessed whether these tone languages also confer pitch processing advantages. Two studies presented a melody change detection task, using quasirandom note sequences drawn from Western major scale tone probabilities. Listeners were speakers of Akan, a tone language of Ghana, plus speakers from previously tested populations (nontone language speakers and East Asian tone language speakers). In both cases, East Asian tone language speakers showed the strongest musical pitch processing, but Akan speakers did not exceed nontone speakers, despite comparable or better instrument change detection. Results suggest more nuanced effects of tone languages on pitch processing. Greater numbers of tones, presence of contour tones in a language's tone inventory, or possibly greater functional load of tone may be more likely to confer pitch processing benefits than mere presence of tone contrasts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Linguistic research showed that the depth of syntactic embedding is reflected in brain theta power. Here, we test whether this also extends to non-linguistic stimuli, specifically music. We used a hierarchical model of musical syntax to continuously quantify two types of expert-annotated harmonic dependencies throughout a piece of Western classical music: prolongation and preparation. Prolongations can roughly be understood as a musical analogue to linguistic coordination between constituents that share the same function (e.g., 'pizza' and 'pasta' in 'I ate pizza and pasta'). Preparation refers to the dependency between two harmonies whereby the first implies a resolution towards the second (e.g., dominant towards tonic; similar to how the adjective implies the presence of a noun in 'I like spicy ... '). Source reconstructed MEG data of sixty-five participants listening to the musical piece was then analysed. We used Bayesian Mixed Effects models to predict theta envelope in the brain, using the number of open prolongation and preparation dependencies as predictors whilst controlling for audio envelope. We observed that prolongation and preparation both carry independent and distinguishable predictive value for theta band fluctuation in key linguistic areas such as the Angular, Superior Temporal, and Heschl's Gyri, or their right-lateralised homologues, with preparation showing additional predictive value for areas associated with the reward system and prediction. Musical expertise further mediated these effects in language-related brain areas. Results show that predictions of precisely formalised music-theoretical models are reflected in the brain activity of listeners which furthers our understanding of the perception and cognition of musical structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beat perception offers cognitive scientists an exciting opportunity to explore how cognition and action are intertwined in the brain even in the absence of movement. Many believe the motor system predicts the timing of beats, yet current models of beat perception do not specify how this is neurally implemented. Drawing on recent insights into the neurocomputational properties of the motor system, we propose that beat anticipation relies on action-like processes consisting of precisely patterned neural time-keeping activity in the supplementary motor area (SMA), orchestrated and sequenced by activity in the dorsal striatum. In addition to synthesizing recent advances in cognitive science and motor neuroscience, our framework provides testable predictions to guide future work. Components of the brain's motor system are activated by the perception of a musical beat, even in the absence of movement, and may play an important role in beat-based temporal prediction. Two key brain regions involved in movement, the supplementary motor area (SMA) and dorsal striatum, have neurocomputational properties that lend themselves to beat perception. In SMA, neural firing rates represent the phase of cyclic sensorimotor processes. The involvement of SMA in perceptual suppression of self-generated sounds suggests that it could play a broader role in informing auditory expectations. The dorsal striatum plays a central role in initiating and sequencing units of movement, and may serve similar functions in structuring beat-based temporal anticipation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the current investigation was to explore the nature of music-evoked visual imagery in listening contexts designed to elicit such imagery. In Experiment 1, 53 participants listened to 2.5-min excerpts of classical and popular music with their eyes closed and answered questions about their visual imagery and emotional experiences. In all, 81% of participants reported experiencing both visual imagery and emotions while listening to the classical piece, whereas 66% of individuals experienced visual imagery and 91% experienced an emotion while listening to the popular piece. Emotional responses and visual imagery emerged early in the music, with emotional experiences typically occurring before visual imagery. Experiment 2 examined whether personality and other individual difference factors predict experiences of emotion and visual imagery while listening to music. A total of 120 participants completed a battery of self-report questionnaires assessing personality traits such as absorption, empathy, anxiety, neuroticism, and trait visual imagery and listened to happy, scary, sad, and angry pieces. Results indicated that 78% of participants experienced imagery, and to a limited degree, trait empathy predicted the emotional content of visual imagery for the happy, scary, and angry pieces. Taken together, the investigation suggests that music-evoked visual imagery is surprisingly prevalent when people listen to emotional music with their eyes closed, and this experience occurs largely independently of personality traits. However, individuals typically experience emotional responses to music before their experiences of visual imagery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In typical Western music, important pitches occur disproportionately often on important beats, referred to as the tonal-metric hierarchy (Prince & Schmuckler, 2014, Music Perception, 31, 254–270). We tested whether listeners are sensitive to this alignment of pitch and temporal structure. In Experiment 1, the stimuli were 200 artificial melodies with random pitch contours; all melodies had both a regular beat and a pitch class distribution that favored one musical key, but had either high or low agreement with the tonal-metric hierarchy. Thirty-two listeners rated the goodness of each melody, and another 41 listeners rated the melodies' metric clarity (how clear the beat was). The tonal-metric hierarchy did not affect either rating type, likely because the melodies may have only weakly (at best) established a musical key. In Experiment 2, we shuffled the pitches in 60 composed melodies (scrambling pitch contour, but not rhythm) to generate versions with high and low agreement with the tonal-metric hierarchy. Both ratings of goodness (N = 40) and metric clarity (N = 40) revealed strong evidence of the tonal-metric hierarchy influencing ratings; there was no effect of musical training. In Experiment 3, we phase-shifted, rather than shuffled, the pitches from the composed melodies, thus preserving pitch contour. Both rating types (goodness N = 43, metric clarity N = 32) replicated the results of Experiment 2. These findings establish the psychological reality of the tonal-metric hierarchy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research has demonstrated that people with Parkinson’s disease (PD) have difficulties with the perceptual discrimination of rhythms, relative to healthy controls. It is not however clear if this applies only to simpler rhythms (a so called “beat-based” deficit), or if it is a more generalized deficit that also applies to more complex rhythms. Further insight into how people with PD process and perceive rhythm can refine our understanding of the well known problems of temporal processing in the disease. In this study, we wanted to move beyond simple/complex-dichotomy in previous studies, and further investigate the effect of tempo on the perception of musical rhythms. To this end, we constructed ten musical rhythms with a varied degree of complexity across three different tempi. Nineteen people with PD and 19 healthy controls part-took in an internet based listening survey and rated 10 different musical rhythms for complexity and likeability. In what we believe is the first study to do so, we asked for the participants subjective ratings of individual rhythms and not their capacity to directly compare or discriminate between them. We found an overall between-group difference in complexity judgments that was modulated by tempo, but not level of complexity. People with PD rated all rhythms as more complex across tempi, with significant group differences in complexity ratings at 120 and 150bpm, but not at 90bpm. Our analysis found a uniform elevated baseline for complexity judgments in the PD-group, and a strong association between the two groups’ rank-ordering the rhythms for complexity. This indicates a preserved ability to discriminate between relative levels of complexity. Finally, the two groups did not significantly differ in their subjective scoring of likeability, demonstrating a dissimilarity between judgment of complexity and judgment of likeability between the two groups. This indicates different cognitive operations for the two types of judgment, and we speculate that Parkinson’s disease affects judgment of complexity but not judgment of likeability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To examine how individuals perceive synchrony between music and body motion, we investigated the characteristics of synchrony perception during observation of a Japanese Radio Calisthenics routine. We used the constant stimuli method to present video clips of an individual performing an exercise routine. We generated stimuli with a range of temporal shifts between the visual and auditory streams, and asked participants to make synchrony judgments. We then examined which movement-feature points agreed with music beats when the participants perceived synchrony. We found that extremities (e.g., hands and feet) reached the movement endpoint or moved through the lowest position at music beats associated with synchrony. Movement onsets never agreed with music beats. To investigate whether visual information about the feature points was necessary for synchrony perception, we conducted a second experiment where only limited portions of video clips were presented to the participants. Participants consistently judged synchrony even when the video image did not contain the critical feature points, suggesting that a prediction mechanism contributes to synchrony perception. To discuss the meaning of these feature points with respect to synchrony perception, we examined the temporal relationship between the motion of body parts and the ground reaction force (GRF) of exercise performers, which reflected the total force acting on the performer. Interestingly, vertical GRF showed local peaks consistently synchronized with music beats for most exercises, with timing that was closely correlated with the timing of movement feature points. This result suggests that synchrony perception in humans is based on some global variable anticipated from visual information, instead of the feature points found in the motion of individual body parts. In summary, the present results indicate that synchrony perception during observation of human motion to music depends largely on spatiotemporal prediction of the performer’s motion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the role of extrinsic and intrinsic predictors in the perception of affect in mostly unfamiliar musical chords from the Bohlen-Pierce microtonal tuning system. Extrinsic predictors are derived, in part, from long-term statistical regularities in music; for example, the prevalence of a chord in a corpus of music that is relevant to a participant. Conversely, intrinsic predictors make no use of long-term statistical regularities in music; for example, psychoacoustic features inherent in the music, such as roughness. Two types of affect were measured for each chord: pleasantness/unpleasantness and happiness/sadness. We modelled the data with a number of novel and well-established intrinsic predictors, namely roughness, harmonicity, spectral entropy and average pitch height; and a single extrinsic predictor, 12-TET Dissimilarity, which was estimated by the chord’s smallest distance to any 12-tone equally tempered chord. Musical sophistication was modelled as a potential moderator of the above predictors. Two experiments were conducted, each using slightly different tunings of the Bohlen-Pierce musical system: a just intonation version and an equal-tempered version. It was found that, across both tunings and across both affective responses, all the tested intrinsic features and 12-TET Dissimilarity have consistent influences in the expected direction. These results contrast with much current music perception research, which tends to assume the dominance of extrinsic over intrinsic predictors. This study highlights the importance of both intrinsic characteristics of the acoustic signal itself, as well as extrinsic factors, such as 12-TET Dissimilarity, on perception of affect in music. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent investigations analysing synchronization in singing ensembles have shown that the precision of synchronization during singing duo performances is better in the presence of visual contact between the singers than without. Research has also shown that synchronisation improves with practice across rehearsals in a newly formed singing quintet. However, whether listeners’ perceptions of synchronization reflect the different patterns of synchronization that were observed during ensemble performance with and without visual contact and across rehearsals has not yet been investigated. This study aims to analyse the perception of the synchronization associated with altered visual contact and amount of rehearsal during singing duo and quintet performances respectively, for listeners with different levels of musical expertise. A set of fifty-eight singing recordings selected from duo and quintet ensemble performances, collected from previous investigations of interpersonal synchrony, was presented to 33 listeners, including non-experts (university students with little or no music training), performers in the group (singers who performed the pieces used for the study), and other musicians (advanced music students). Participants were required to listen to each trial and judge the level of “togetherness” on a sliding scale from zero to 100. Results show that listeners, irrespective of their musical training and performance experience, perceived differences in the synchronization in the duo tokens depending on the presence/absence of visual contact between singers; on the other hand, the smaller asynchrony patterns measured across rehearsals in the singing quintet recordings were not perceived. This study contributes to our understanding of perceptions of synchronization by individuals with different levels of musical expertise, and underscores the perceptual salience of synchronization, regardless of musical experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined similarities and differences in the cognitive profiles of older adult instrumental musicians and non-musicians. We compared neuropsychological test scores among older adult non-musicians, low-activity musicians (<10 years of lessons), and high-activity musicians (≥10 years of lessons), controlling for self-reported physical and social activity, years of education, and overall health. Significant differences among groups were found on tasks of visual spatial ability, naming, and executive functioning. No significant differences were found on tests of attention/processing speed, or episodic memory. The current study supports late life cognitive benefits of early musical training, but only in select cognitive domains, including language, executive functioning, and visual spatial ability. The results are discussed in the context of cognitive reserve and aging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While many techniques are known to music creators, the technique of repetition is one of the most commonly deployed. The mechanism by which repetition is effective as a music-making tool, however, is unknown. Building on the speech-to-song illusion (Deutsch, Henthorn, & Lapidis in Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 129(4), 2245–2252, 2011), we explore a phenomenon in which perception of musical attributes are elicited from repeated, or "looped," auditory material usually perceived as nonmusical such as speech and environmental sounds. We assessed whether this effect holds true for speech stimuli of different lengths; nonspeech sounds (water dripping); and speech signals decomposed into their rhythmic and spectral components. Participants listened to looped stimuli (from 700 to 4,000 ms) and provided continuous as well as discrete perceptual ratings. We show that the regularizing effect of repetition generalizes to nonspeech auditory material and is strongest for shorter clip lengths in the speech and environmental cases. We also find that deconstructed pitch and rhythmic speech components independently elicit a regularizing effect, though the effect across segment duration is different than that for intact speech and environmental sounds. Taken together, these experiments suggest repetition may invoke active internal mechanisms that bias perception toward musical structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Music making, in the form of free improvisations, is a common technique in music therapy, used to express one’s feelings or ideas in the non-verbal language of music. In the broader sense, arts therapies, and music therapy in particular, are used to induce therapeutic and psychosocial effects, and to help mitigate symptoms in serious and chronic diseases. They are also used to empower the wellbeing and quality of life for both healthy individuals and patients. However, much research is still required to understand how music-based and arts-based approaches work, and to eventually enhance their effectivity. The clinical setting employing the arts constitutes a rich dynamic environment of occurrences that is difficult to capture, being driven by complex, simultaneous, and interwoven behavioral processes. Our computational paradigm is designed to allow substantial barriers in the arts-based fields to be overcome by enabling the rigorous and quantitative tracking, analyzing and documenting of the underlying dynamic processes. Here we expand the method for the music modality and apply it in a proof of principle experimentation to study expressive behavioral effects of diverse musical improvisation tasks on individuals and collectives. We have obtained statistically significant results that include empirical expressive patterns of feelings, as well as proficiency, gender and age behavioral differences, which point to variation factors of these categorized collectives in music making. Our results also suggest that males are more exploratory than females (e.g., they exhibit a larger range of octaves and intensity) and that the older people express musical characterized negativity more than younger ones (e.g., exhibiting larger note clusters and more chromatic transitions). We discuss implications of these findings to music therapy, such as behavioral diversity causality in treatment, as well as future scientific and clinical applications of the methodology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Humans make predictions about future events in many domains, including when they listen to music. Previous accounts of harmonic expectation in music have emphasised the role of implicit musical knowledge acquired in the long term through the mechanism of statistical learning. However, it is not known whether listeners can adapt their expectations for unusual harmonies in the short term through repetition priming, and whether the extent of any short-term adaptation depends on the unfolding statistical structure of the music. To explore these possibilities, we presented 150 participants with phrases from Bach chorales that ended with a cadence that was either a priori likely or unlikely based on the long-term statistical structure of the corpus of chorales. While holding the 50–50 incidence of likely vs. unlikely cadences constant, we manipulated the order in which these phrases were presented such that the local probability of hearing an unlikely cadence changed throughout the experiment. For each phrase, participants provided two judgements: (a) a prospective rating of how confident they were in their expectations for the cadence, and (b) a retrospective rating of how well the presented cadence matched their expectations. While confidence ratings increased over the course of the experiment, the rate of change decreased as the local probability of an unexpected cadence increased. Participants' expectations favoured likely cadences over unlikely cadences on average, but their expectation ratings for unlikely cadences increased at a faster rate over the course of the experiment than for likely cadences, particularly when the local probability of hearing an unlikely cadence was high. Thus, despite entrenched long-term statistics about cadences, listeners can indeed adapt to unusual musical harmonies and are sensitive to the local statistical structure of the musical environment. We suggest that this adaptation is an instance of Bayesian belief updating, a domain-general process that accounts for expectation adaptation in multiple domains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Music performances are rich in systematic temporal irregularities called "microtiming", too fine-grained to be notated in a musical score but important for musical expression and communication. Several studies have examined listeners' preference for rhythms varying in microtiming, but few have addressed precisely how microtiming is perceived, especially in terms of cognitive mechanisms, making the empirical evidence difficult to interpret. Here we provide evidence that microtiming perception can be simulated as a process of probabilistic prediction. Participants performed an XAB discrimination test, in which an archetypal popular drum rhythm was presented with different microtiming. The results indicate that listeners could implicitly discriminate the mean and variance of stimulus microtiming. Furthermore, their responses were effectively simulated by a Bayesian model of entrainment, using a distance function derived from its dynamic posterior estimate over phase. Wide individual differences in participant sensitivity to microtiming were predicted by a model parameter likened to noisy timekeeping processes in the brain. Overall, this suggests that the cognitive mechanisms underlying perception of microtiming reflect a continuous inferential process, potentially driving qualitative judgements of rhythmic feel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Perception of a regular beat in music is inferred from different types of accents. For example, increases in loudness cause intensity accents, and the grouping of time intervals in a rhythm creates temporal accents. Accents are expected to occur on the beat: when accents are “missing” on the beat, the beat is more difficult to find. However, it is unclear whether accents occurring off the beat alter beat perception similarly to missing accents on the beat. Moreover, no one has examined whether intensity accents influence beat perception more or less strongly than temporal accents, nor how musical expertise affects sensitivity to each type of accent. In two experiments, we obtained ratings of difficulty in finding the beat in rhythms with either temporal or intensity accents, and which varied in the number of accents on the beat as well as the number of accents off the beat. In both experiments, the occurrence of accents on the beat facilitated beat detection more in musical experts than in musical novices. In addition, the number of accents on the beat affected beat finding more in rhythms with temporal accents than in rhythms with intensity accents. The effect of accents off the beat was much weaker than the effect of accents on the beat and appeared to depend on musical expertise, as well as on the number of accents on the beat: when many accents on the beat are missing, beat perception is quite difficult, and adding accents off the beat may not reduce beat perception further. Overall, the different types of accents were processed qualitatively differently, depending on musical expertise. Therefore, these findings indicate the importance of designing ecologically valid stimuli when testing beat perception in musical novices, who may need different types of accent information than musical experts to be able to find a beat. Furthermore, our findings stress the importance of carefully designing rhythms for social and clinical applications of beat perception, as not all listeners treat all rhythms alike. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three experiments tested the proposal that music--color associations are mediated by emotional connotations as suggested by Palmer and collaborators (2013, 2016). Experiment 1 asked participants to choose 1 of 8 saturated colors for excerpts of 24 Preludes from Bach's Well-tempered Clavier. Half of these excerpts were presented again for color choices, together with excerpts from another 12 Preludes. Participants were also asked to judge whether or not they had heard the excerpts before in the experiment. The color choices grouped together Preludes according to tempo, mode, pitch height, and attack rate. Participants included nonmusicians, musicians, absolute pitch (AP) possessors, and music--color synesthetes. Color choices followed the same general pattern across groups, and were more similar than chance when the excerpts were repeated and, to a lesser extent, when the excerpt was different but in the same key. No recognition advantage was found for synesthetes or possessors of AP. Experiment 2 asked participants to rate the colors on a number of emotion scales. Experiment 3 asked them to rate the excerpts from the Preludes on the same emotion scales, and found that the emotion ratings grouped together Preludes according to tempo, mode, pitch height, and attack rate as in Experiment 1. Finally, the color choices in Experiment 1 could be predicted by the color-- emotion ratings in Experiment 2 and the music--emotion ratings in Experiment 3. These results support the proposal that music--color associations can be accounted for by the correlations between music and emotion, and color and emotion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Musicality can be defined as a natural, spontaneously developing trait based on and constrained by biology and cognition. Music, by contrast, can be defined as a social and cultural construct based on that very musicality. One critical challenge is to delineate the constituent elements of musicality. What biological and cognitive mechanisms are essential for perceiving, appreciating and making music? Progress in understanding the evolution of music cognition depends upon adequate characterization of the constituent mechanisms of musicality and the extent to which they are present in non-human species. We argue for the importance of identifying these mechanisms and delineating their functions and developmental course, as well as suggesting effective means of studying them in human and non-human animals. It is virtually impossible to underpin the evolutionary role of musicality as a whole, but a multicomponent perspective on musicality that emphasizes its constituent capacities, development and neural cognitive specificity is an excellent starting point for a research programme aimed at illuminating the origins and evolution of musical behaviour as an autonomous trait. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Absolute pitch, the ability to name tones without an external reference, is commonly related to music cognition. Despite the growing investment in its understanding, many questions are still poorly understood, such as genesis, conceptualization, research methodology, identification of structural and functional features. The present review aims to analyze recent advances and limitations in the area, considering its methodological and theoretical bases, as well as existing controversies (definition and genesis). It concludes by pointing the need for specific designs for the study of musical cognition for a better understanding of absolute pitch. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What was the role of music in the evolutionary history of human beings? We address this question from the point of view that musicality can be defined as a cognitive trait. Although it has been argued that we will never know how cognitive traits evolved (Lewontin, 1998), we argue that we may know the evolution of music by investigating the fundamental cognitive mechanisms of musicality, for example, relative pitch, tonal encoding of pitch, and beat induction. In addition, we show that a nomological network of evidence (Schmitt & Pilcher, 2004) can be built around the hypothesis that musicality is a cognitive adaptation. Within this network, different modes of evidence are gathered to support a specific evolutionary hypothesis. We show that the combination of psychological, medical, physiological, genetic, phylogenetic, hunter-gatherer, and cross-cultural evidence indicates that musicality is a cognitive adaptation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Expectation and prediction constitute central mechanisms in the perception and cognition of music, which have been explored in theoretical and empirical accounts. We review the scope and limits of theoretical accounts of musical prediction with respect to feature-based and temporal prediction. While the concept of prediction is unproblematic for basic single-stream features such as melody, it is not straight-forward for polyphonic structures or higher-order features such as formal predictions. Behavioural results based on explicit and implicit (priming) paradigms provide evidence of priming in various domains that may reflect predictive behaviour. Computational learning models, including symbolic (fragment-based), probabilistic/graphical, or connectionist approaches, provide well-specified predictive models of specific features and feature combinations. While models match some experimental results, full-fledged music prediction cannot yet be modelled. Neuroscientific results regarding the early right-anterior negativity (ERAN) and mismatch negativity (MMN) reflect expectancy violations on different levels of processing complexity, and provide some neural evidence for different predictive mechanisms. At present, the combinations of neural and computational modelling methodologies are at early stages and require further research. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Two experiments investigated psychological representations of musical tonality in auditory imagery. In Experiment 1, musically trained participants heard a single tone as a perceptual cue and built an auditory image of a specified major tonality based on that cue; participants' images were then assessed using judgments of probe tones. In Experiment 2 participants imaged a minor tonality rather than a major one. Analysis of the probe tone ratings indicated that participants successfully imaged both major and minor tonal hierarchies, demonstrating that auditory imagery functions comparably to auditory perception. In addition, the strength of the major tonal image was dependent upon the pitch and tonal relations of the perceptual cue and the to-be-imaged tonality. Finally, representations of minor tonal hierarchies were less robust than those of major ones, converging with perceptual evidence that minor tonalities are less psychologically stable than major tonalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Though auditory pitch is customarily mapped in Western cultures onto spatial verticality (high–low), both anthropological reports and cognitive studies suggest that pitch may be mapped onto a wide variety of other domains. We collected a total number of 35 pitch mappings and investigated in four experiments how these mappings are used and structured. In particular, we inquired (1) how Western subjects apply Western and non-Western metaphors to “high” and “low” pitches, (2) whether mappings applied in an abstract conceptual task are similarly applied by listeners to actual music, (3) how mappings of spatial height relate to these pitch mappings, and (4) how mappings of “high” and “low” pitch associate with other dimensions, in particular quantity, size, intensity and valence. The results show strong agreement among Western participants in applying familiar and unfamiliar metaphors for pitch, in both an abstract, conceptual task (Exp. 1) and in a music listening task (Exp. 2), indicating that diverse cross-domain mappings for pitch exist latently besides the common verticality metaphor. Furthermore, limited overlap between mappings of spatial height and pitch height was found, suggesting that, the ubiquity of the verticality metaphor in Western usage notwithstanding, cross-domain pitch mappings are largely independent of that metaphor, and seem to be based upon other underlying dimensions. Part of the discrepancy between spatial height and pitch height is that, for pitch, “up” is not necessarily “more,” nor is it necessarily “good.” High pitch is only “more” for height, intensity and brightness. It is “less” for mass, size and quantity. We discuss implications of these findings for music and speech prosody, and their relevance to notions of embodied cognition and of cross-domain magnitude representation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This study was aimed at examining whether pitch height and pitch change are mentally represented along spatial axes. A series of experiments explored, for isolated tones and 2-note intervals, the occurrence of effects analogous to the spatial numerical association of response codes (SNARC) effect. Response device orientation (horizontal vs. vertical), task, and musical expertise of the participants were manipulated. The pitch of isolated tones triggered the automatic activation of a vertical axis independently of musical expertise, but the contour of melodic intervals did not. By contrast, automatic associations with the horizontal axis seemed linked to music training for pitch and, to a lower extent, for intervals. These results, discussed in the light of studies on number representation, provide a new example of the effects of musical expertise on music cognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whilst findings from experimental studies suggest that perceptual mechanisms underpinning musical cognition are preserved or enhanced in autism, little is known about how higher-level, structural aspects of music are processed. Twenty participants with autism, together with age and intelligence matched controls, completed a musical priming task in which global and local musical contexts were manipulated. The results from the study revealed no between-group differences and showed that both global and local musical contexts influenced participants’ congruity judgements. The findings were interpreted within the context of studies showing weakened sensitivity to verbal/semantic information in autism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Perceptual invariance has been studied and found in several domains of cognition, including those of speech, motor behavior, and object motion. It has also been the topic of several studies in music perception. However, the existing perceptual studies present rather inconclusive evidence with regard to the perceptual invariance of expressive timing under tempo transformation in music performance. The current study used a novel experimental methodology that took advantage of new technologies, such as an online Internet setup, high-quality audio, and state-of-the-art tempo-transformation techniques. The results show that listeners could detect which was the original performance when asked to compare 2 recordings, 1 of which was tempo-transformed to make both similar in overall tempo. This result is taken as support for the tempo-specific timing hypothesis—which predicts that a tempo-transformed performance will sound less natural than an original performance—and as counterevidence for the relationally invariant timing hypothesis, which predicts that a tempo-transformed performance will sound equally natural. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Auditory alarms are an important component of human–computer interfaces, used in mission-critical industries such as aviation, nuclear power plants, and hospital settings. Unfortunately, problems with recognition, detection, and annoyance continue to hamper their effectiveness. Historically, they appear designed more in response to engineering constraints than principles of hearing science. Here we argue that auditory perception in general and music perception in particular hold valuable lessons for alarm designers. We also discuss ongoing research suggesting that the temporal complexity of musical tones offers promising insight into new ways of addressing widely recognized shortcomings of current alarms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Musical pitch perception is argued to result from nonmusical biological constraints and thus to have similar characteristics across cultures, but its universality remains unclear. We probed pitch representations in residents of the Bolivian Amazon—the Tsimane', who live in relative isolation from Western culture—as well as US musicians and non-musicians. Participants sang back tone sequences presented in different frequency ranges. Sung responses of Amazonian and US participants approximately replicated heard intervals on a logarithmic scale, even for tones outside the singing range. Moreover, Amazonian and US reproductions both deteriorated for high-frequency tones even though they were fully audible. But whereas US participants tended to reproduce notes an integer number of octaves above or below the heard tones, Amazonians did not, ignoring the note "chroma" (C, D, etc.). Chroma matching in US participants was more pronounced in US musicians than non-musicians, was not affected by feedback, and was correlated with similarity-based measures of octave equivalence as well as the ability to match the absolute f0 of a stimulus in the singing range. The results suggest the cross-cultural presence of logarithmic scales for pitch, and biological constraints on the limits of pitch, but indicate that octave equivalence may be culturally contingent, plausibly dependent on pitch representations that develop from experience with particular musical systems. • Pitch perception was probed cross-culturally with sung reproduction of tone sequences • Mental scaling of pitch was approximately logarithmic for US and Amazonian listeners • Pitch perception deteriorated similarly in both groups for very high-frequency tones • Sung correlates of octave equivalence varied across cultures and musical expertise Jacoby et al. use sung reproduction of tones to explore pitch perception cross-culturally. US and native Amazonian listeners exhibit deterioration of pitch at high frequencies and logarithmic mental scaling of pitch. However, sung correlates of octave equivalence are undetectable in Amazonians, suggesting effects of culture-specific experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Elements in speech and music unfold sequentially over time. To produce sentences and melodies quickly and accurately, individuals must plan upcoming sequence events, as well as monitor outcomes via auditory feedback. We investigated the neural correlates of sequential planning and monitoring processes by manipulating auditory feedback during music performance. Pianists performed isochronous melodies from memory at an initially cued rate while their electroencephalogram was recorded. Pitch feedback was occasionally altered to match either an immediately upcoming Near-Future pitch (next sequence event) or a more distant Far-Future pitch (two events ahead of the current event). Near-Future, but not Far-Future altered feedback perturbed the timing of pianists' performances, suggesting greater interference of Near-Future sequential events with current planning processes. Near-Future feedback triggered a greater reduction in auditory sensory suppression (enhanced response) than Far-Future feedback, reflected in the P2 component elicited by the pitch event following the unexpected pitch change. Greater timing perturbations were associated with enhanced cortical sensory processing of the pitch event following the Near-Future altered feedback. Both types of feedback alterations elicited feedback-related negativity (FRN) and P3a potentials and amplified spectral power in the theta frequency range. These findings suggest similar constraints on producers' sequential planning to those reported in speech production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why should music be of interest to cognitive scientists, and what role does it play in human cognition? We review three factors that make music an important topic for cognitive scientific research. First, music is a universal human trait fulfilling crucial roles in everyday life. Second, music has an important part to play in ontogenetic development and human evolution. Third, appreciating and producing music simultaneously engage many complex perceptual, cognitive, and emotional processes, rendering music an ideal object for studying the mind. We propose an integrated status for music cognition in the Cognitive Sciences and conclude by reviewing challenges and big questions in the field and the way in which these reflect recent developments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the views of four sets of authors, each taking concepts of embodied cognition into problem spaces where the new paradigm can be applied. The first considers consequences of embodied cognition on the legal system. The second explores how embodied cognition can change how we interpret and interact with art and literature. The third examines how we move through architectural spaces from an embodied cognition perspective. And the fourth addresses how music cognition is influenced by the approach. Each contribution is brief. They are meant to suggest the potential reach of embodied cognition, increase the visibility of applications, and inspire potential avenues for research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Implicit learning is a core process for the acquisition of a complex, rule-based environment from mere interaction, such as motor action, skill acquisition, or language. A body of evidence suggests that implicit knowledge governs music acquisition and perception in nonmusicians and musicians, and that both expert and nonexpert participants acquire complex melodic, harmonic, and other features from mere exposure. While current findings and computational modeling largely support the learning of chunks, some results indicate learning of more complex structures. Despite the body of evidence, more research is required to support the cross-cultural validity of implicit learning and to show that core and more complex music theoretical features are acquired implicitly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]