102 posts · 55,232 views
Full Professor in Music Cognition at the University of Amsterdam
Music Matters
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- May 16, 2013
- 11:16 AM
- 15 views
'Vocal mimicry hypothesis' falsified? [Part 2]
by Henkjan Honing in Music Matters
A few entries ago I uploaded a fragment from a study that discusses an intriguing experiment with three chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) which were trained to tap regularly on a piano keyboard...... Read more »
Hattori, Y., Tomonaga, M., & Matsuzawa, T. (2013) Spontaneous synchronized tapping to an auditory rhythm in a chimpanzee. Scientific Reports. DOI: 10.1038/srep01566
Hasegawa, A., Okanoya, K., Hasegawa, T., & Seki, Y. (2011) Rhythmic synchronization tapping to an audio–visual metronome in budgerigars. Scientific Reports. DOI: 10.1038/srep00120
Honing, H., Merchant, H., Háden, G., Prado, L., & Bartolo, R. (2012) Rhesus Monkeys (Macaca mulatta) Detect Rhythmic Groups in Music, but Not the Beat. PLoS ONE, 7(12). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0051369
- April 21, 2013
- 11:23 AM
- 84 views
Was Steven Pinker right after all? [Part 2]
by Henkjan Honing in Music Matters
Last week Science published a study (a follow-up of Salimpoor et al., 2011) in which Canadian researchers showed that music can arouse feelings of euphoria and craving, similar to tangible rewards that involve the striatal dopaminergic system. ... Read more »
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
- April 2, 2013
- 03:04 AM
- 162 views
Steven Pinker: "People in music hate this theory"
by Henkjan Honing in Music Matters
Steven Pinker explains again why music is not an adaptation but should be seen as a kind of 'supernormal stimulus'...... Read more »
Honing, H. (2011) Muziek is geen luxe.. maar wat dan wel?. Academische Boekengids. info:/
Collier, D., Honing, H., & Oliver, R. (2012) REVIEWS. Journal of Music, Technology and Education, 5(1), 109-121. DOI: 10.1386/jmte.5.1.109_5
- April 1, 2013
- 05:00 PM
- 139 views
Can a Sea Lion keep the beat too?
by Henkjan Honing in Music Matters
Yesterday another piece of evidence was published in the Journal of Comparative Psychology showing a sea lion (Zalophus californianus) being able to learned to entrain to the beat of the music.... Read more »
Cook, P., Rouse, A., Wilson, M., & Reichmuth, C. (2013) A California Sea Lion (Zalophus californianus) Can Keep the Beat: Motor Entrainment to Rhythmic Auditory Stimuli in a Non Vocal Mimic. Journal of Comparative Psychology. DOI: 10.1037/a0032345
- January 28, 2013
- 08:36 AM
- 151 views
Can monkeys spontaneously synchronize to audio?
by Henkjan Honing in Music Matters
Today a new study appeared in Nature Scientific Reports claiming to show rhythmic entrainment (or spontaneous synchronization as the authors refer to it) in the Japanese macaque (Macaca Fuscata). Intriguing! However, reading the paper it becomes clear quickly that the results might not be what they seemed at first sight. ... Read more »
Nagasaka, Y., Chao, Z., Hasegawa, N., Notoya, T., & Fujii, N. (2013) Spontaneous synchronization of arm motion between Japanese macaques. Scientific Reports. DOI: 10.1038/srep01151
Honing, H., Merchant, H., Háden, G., Prado, L., & Bartolo, R. (2012) Rhesus Monkeys (Macaca mulatta) Detect Rhythmic Groups in Music, but Not the Beat. PLoS ONE, 7(12). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0051369
- January 21, 2013
- 11:23 AM
- 186 views
Can the origins of music be studied at all?
by Henkjan Honing in Music Matters
What was the role of music in the evolutionary history of human beings? And is it possible at all, you might wonder, to empirically study this, given the fact that neither music nor musicality fossilises? So, better forget about it? ... Read more »
Bolhuis, J., & Wynne, C. (2009) Can evolution explain how minds work?. Nature, 458(7240), 832-833. DOI: 10.1038/458832a
Honing, H., & Ploeger, A. (2012) Cognition and the Evolution of Music: Pitfalls and Prospects. Topics in Cognitive Science, 4(4), 513-524. DOI: 10.1111/j.1756-8765.2012.01210.x
de Waal, F., & Ferrari, P. (2010) Towards a bottom-up perspective on animal and human cognition. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 14(5), 201-207. DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2010.03.003
- December 12, 2012
- 04:54 PM
- 193 views
Can rhesus monkeys detect the beat in music?
by Henkjan Honing in Music Matters
Beat induction, the ability to pick up regularity – the beat – from a varying rhythm, is not an ability that rhesus monkeys possess. These are the findings of researchers from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and our group in Amsterdam, which are published today in PLOS ONE. ... Read more »
Honing, H., Merchant, H., Háden, G., Prado, L., & Bartolo, R. (2012) Rhesus Monkeys (Macaca mulatta) Detect Rhythmic Groups in Music, but Not the Beat. PLoS ONE, 7(12). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0051369
- December 10, 2012
- 08:52 AM
- 176 views
Do music and language share the same resources?
by Henkjan Honing in Music Matters
The interest in the relationship between music and language is a long-standing one. While Lerdahl & Jackendoff in their seminal book on the generative theory of tonal music built mostly on insights of metrical phonology of the time, more recent studies draw attention to the parallels with current minimalist syntactic theory rather than phonology.... Read more »
Perruchet P, & Poulin-Charronnat B. (2012) Challenging prior evidence for a shared syntactic processor for language and music. Psychonomic bulletin . PMID: 23180417
Peretz, I., & Coltheart, M. (2003) Modularity of music processing. Nature Neuroscience, 6(7), 688-691. DOI: 10.1038/nn1083
Patel, A. (2003) Language, music, syntax and the brain. Nature Neuroscience, 6(7), 674-681. DOI: 10.1038/nn1082
- October 13, 2012
- 11:00 AM
- 572 views
A new vocal learner found?
by Henkjan Honing in Music Matters
In a study that appeared in PLoS ONE two days ago, co-authored by Gustavo Arriaga, Eric Zhou and Erich Jarvis (Duke University), it was shown that a motor cortex region in mice is active during singing, and that it projects directly to brainstem vocal motor neurons that is necessary for keeping song more stereotyped and on pitch.... Read more »
Holy TE, & Guo Z. (2005) Ultrasonic songs of male mice. PLoS biology, 3(12). PMID: 16248680
Arriaga, G., Zhou, E. P., & Jarvis, E. D. (2012) Of Mice, Birds, and Men: The Mouse Ultrasonic Song-system Has Some Features SImilar to Humans and Song-Learning Birds. PLoS ONE, 7(10). info:/10.1371/journal.pone.0046610
- October 12, 2012
- 05:35 AM
- 365 views
What's new in Music Cognition and the Cognitive Sciences?
by Henkjan Honing in Music Matters
Why should music be of interest to cognitive scientists, and what role does it play in human cognition? ... Read more »
Pearce, Marcus, & Rohrmeier, Martin. (2012) Music Cognition and the Cognitive Sciences. Topics in Cognitive Science, 4(4), 468-484. info:/10.1111/j.1756-8765.2012.01226.x
- October 7, 2012
- 01:00 AM
- 244 views
Is birdsong music?
by Henkjan Honing in Music Matters
Many studies on the origins of music concern the question of what defines music. Can birdsong, the song structure of humpback whales, a Thai elephant orchestra, or the interlocking duets of Gibbons be considered music? ... Read more »
Araya-Salas, Marcelo. (2012) Is birdsong music? Evaluating harmonic intervals in songs of a Neotropical songbird. Animal Behaviour, 84(2), 309-313. info:/10.1016/j.anbehav.2012.04.038
- September 14, 2012
- 04:05 AM
- 151 views
A case of congenital beat deafness? [revisited]
by Henkjan Honing in Music Matters
Mathieu, apparently lacking a sense of beat.Isabelle Peretz, co-director of the International Laboratory for Brain, Music and Sound Research (BRAMS), told me about Mathieu during a workshop at the Université Libre de Bruxelles in November 2009. She was very excited, and was pretty sure she found a 'beat-deaf' person. I couldn’t but share her enthusiasm. In Phillips-Silver et al. (2011) Peretz and her team wrote:'Mathieu was discovered through a recruitment of subjects who felt they could not........ Read more »
Phillips-Silver, J., Toiviainen, P., Gosselin, N., Piché, O., Nozaradan, S., Palmer, C., & Peretz, I. (2011) Born to dance but beat deaf: A new form of congenital amusia. Neuropsychologia. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2011.02.002
- August 9, 2012
- 02:48 PM
- 166 views
Is music a result of sexual selection? [Revisited]
by Henkjan Honing in Music Matters
Cover of NRC Cultureel Supplement.It was Darwin’s hunch: music, as widespread as it is in our human culture, could well be a result of sexual selection, one of the two selection mechanisms he proposed to be at the basis of our evolution (the other being natural selection).Today an article by Wim Köhler appeared in the Dutch newspaper NRC elaborating on this idea: the potential evolutionary advantage of ‘mooizingers’ - those who perform well musically.Music as a result of sexual selection ........ Read more »
Charlton, Benjamin D., Filippi, Piera, & Fitch, W. Tecumseh. (2012) Do Women Prefer More Complex Music around Ovulation?. PLoS ONE, 7(4). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0035626
Honing, H., & Ploeger, A. (2012) Cognition and the Evolution of Music: Pitfalls and Prospects. Topics in Cognitive Science. DOI: 10.1111/j.1756-8765.2012.01210.x
- August 9, 2012
- 11:23 AM
- 362 views
Is music a result of sexual selection?
by Henkjan Honing in Music Matters
Cognitive biologist Tecumseh Fitch (Vienna University) and his colleagues recently designed an experiment to put the sexual selection hypothesis to the test: does the ability to produce complex musical sounds reflect qualities that are relevant in mate choice contexts, supporting the idea of music to be functionally analogous to the sexually-selected acoustic displays of some animals, such as songbirds. ... Read more »
Charlton, Benjamin D., Filippi, Piera, & Fitch, W. Tecumseh. (2012) Do Women Prefer More Complex Music around Ovulation?. PLoS ONE, 7(4). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0035626
Honing, H., & Ploeger, A. (2012) Cognition and the Evolution of Music: Pitfalls and Prospects. Topics in Cognitive Science. DOI: 10.1111/j.1756-8765.2012.01210.x
- July 24, 2012
- 12:30 PM
- 135 views
Is replication an issue in music cognition?
by Henkjan Honing in Music Matters
This week the 12th International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition (ICMPC) is being held in Thessaloniki, Greece. A week long hunderds of researchers will present their latest work in a dense program with five parallel sessions and four keynotes. Slightly overdone perhaps, but it shows the still growing and international interest in music cognition as a research topic.On the first day there will be a symposium on 'Replication'. By way of introduction below a blog entry that was origin........ Read more »
Richter, S., Garner, J., Auer, C., Kunert, J., & Würbel, H. (2010) Systematic variation improves reproducibility of animal experiments. Nature Methods, 7(3), 167-168. DOI: 10.1038/nmeth0310-167
Honing, H., & Reips, U.-D. (2008) Web-based versus lab-based studies: a response to Kendall (2008). Empirical Musicology Review, 3(2), 73-77. info:/
Simmons, Joseph P., Nelson, Leif D., & Simonsohn, Uri. (2011) False-Positive Psychology: Undisclosed Flexibility in Data Collection and Analysis Allows Presenting Anything as Significant. Psychological Science. DOI: 10.1177/0956797611417632
- July 24, 2012
- 11:23 AM
- 426 views
Is replication an issue in music cognition?
by Henkjan Honing in Music Matters
In the last few years Web-based experiments have become an attractive alternative to lab-based experiments. Next to the advantages of versatility and the ecological validity of the results, Web-based experiments can potentially reach a much larger, more varied and intrinsically motivated participant pool. Especially in the domain of music perception and cognition it is important to probe a wide variety of participants, with different levels of training and cultural backgrounds.... Read more »
Richter, S., Garner, J., Auer, C., Kunert, J., & Würbel, H. (2010) Systematic variation improves reproducibility of animal experiments. Nature Methods, 7(3), 167-168. DOI: 10.1038/nmeth0310-167
Honing, H., & Reips, U.-D. (2008) Web-based versus lab-based studies: a response to Kendall (2008). Empirical Musicology Review, 3(2), 73-77. info:/
Simmons, Joseph P., Nelson, Leif D., & Simonsohn, Uri. (2011) False-Positive Psychology: Undisclosed Flexibility in Data Collection and Analysis Allows Presenting Anything as Significant. Psychological Science. DOI: 10.1177/0956797611417632
- July 19, 2012
- 04:50 PM
- 120 views
What about the what, how, and where of auditory perception?
by Henkjan Honing in Music Matters
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 ........ Read more »
Scott, Sophie K. (2005) Auditory processing — speech, space and auditory objects. Current Opinion in Neurobiology 2005,, 197-201. DOI: 10.1016/j.conb.2005.03.009
- July 14, 2012
- 11:23 AM
- 536 views
What makes us musical animals?
by Henkjan Honing in Music Matters
In a forthcoming issue of Topics in Cognitive Science researchers from the University of Amsterdam (UvA) argue that at least two, seemingly trivial musical skills can be considered fundamental to the evolution of music: relative pitch -- the skill to recognise a melody independent of its pitch level -- and beat induction -- the skill to pick up regularity (the beat) from a varying rhythm. Both are considered cognitive mechanisms that are essential to perceive, make and appreciate music, and, as ........ Read more »
Honing, H., & Ploeger, A. (2012) Cognition and the Evolution of Music: Pitfalls and Prospects. Topics in Cognitive Science. DOI: 10.1111/j.1756-8765.2012.01210.x
- July 7, 2012
- 11:01 AM
- 127 views
If music isn’t a luxury, what is it?
by Henkjan Honing in Music Matters
The title of the newest and fourteenth book by science writer Philip Ball leaves no doubt: this is a counter-attack on claims made by Steven Pinker in his publications The Language Instinct (1994) and How the Mind Works (1997). Pinker characterised music as ‘auditory cheesecake’: a tasty bonus but, from an evolutionary point of view, no more than a by-product of much more important mental functions such as language (‘music could vanish from our species and the rest of our lifestyle would b........ Read more »
Honing, H. (2012) If music isn’t a luxury, what is it? . Journal of Music, Technology and Education,, 5(1), 114-117. info:/10.1386/jmte.5.1.109_5
- July 6, 2012
- 11:23 AM
- 406 views
If music isn’t a luxury, what is it?
by Henkjan Honing in Music Matters
The title of the newest and fourteenth book by science writer Philip Ball leaves no doubt: this is a counter-attack on claims made by Steven Pinker in his publications The Language Instinct (1994) and How the Mind Works (1997).... Read more »
Honing, H. (2012) If music isn’t a luxury, what is it? . Journal of Music, Technology and Education,, 5(1), 114-117. info:/10.1386/jmte.5.1.109_5
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