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This Is Your Brain On Music: The Science Of A Human Obsession!

Posted by thetubeguy1954 (A) on December 28, 2007 at 11:08:22

I've long stated that I believe the human ear/brain combo plays a very significant role in how we perceive music and because of the role it plays, we cannot determine how people will perceive the "sound" quality of an audio component to be, based on the component's measurements!

Well it now appears all those extremists amongst the objectivists who scoffed at my suggestion as being just one more example of a subjectivist's fantasy and as such felt it was too absurd to even consider, may have to reconsider their statements. While continuing my ongoing research into what part the human ear/brain plays in how we perceive music, I discovered a series written by Dr. Daniel Levitin, an associate professor of Psychology, Behavioural Neuroscience, and Music @ McGill University. This series is entitled: This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession. Dr Levitin has something to say on how the human ear/brain perceives and is influenced by music. Dr Levitin even wrote a peer reviewed article entitled "Absolute memory for musical tempo: Additional evidence that auditory memory is absolute." Wow! Auditory memory is absolute? Dr Levitin is in a quite unique postion having studied and taught:

1) Psychology ---Basic Issues in Cognitive Science, Cognition, Judgment and Decision Making, Psychophysics and Cognitive Psychology for Musicians, Seminar in Auditory Perception, Seminar in experimental problems, Graduate Seminar in Music Cognition and Psychology Honors: Advanced topics in cognition

2) Computer Science Cognitive and Perceptual Principles and Methods for Computer-Human Interaction, Introduction to Psychoacoustics and Psychophysics: Audio and Haptic Components of Virtual Reality Design.

3) Music Workshop in Music Arranging, Aesthetic Issues in the Creation of Popular Music and Creative Issues in Popular Music Recording

Dr Levitin is not some quack that extremist objectivists can easily dismiss, simply because they don't like his POV! Fact is Dr Levitin is highly published. Some of his "Peer Reviewed" Journal Articles consist of:

1) Sridharan, D., Levitin, D. J., Chafe, C. H., Berger, J., and Menon, V. (2007). Neural dynamics of event segmentation in music: Converging evidence for dissociable ventral and dorsal networks. Neuron 55, 1-12.

2) Koulis, T., Ramsay, J. O., and Levitin, D. J. (In press). From zero to sixty: Calibrating real-time responses. Psychometrika.

3) Levitin, D. J., Nuzzo, R. L. Vines, B. W. & Ramsay, J. O. (2007) Introduction to functional data analysis. Canadian Psychology, 48:3, 135-155.

4) Langford, D. J., Crager, S. E., Shehzad, Z., Smith, S. B., Sotocinal, S. G., Levenstadt, J.S., Chanda, M. L., Levitin, D. J. and Mogil, J. S. (2006). Social Modulation of Pain as Evidence for Empathy in Mice. Science, 312, (June 30, 2006), 1967- 1970.

5) Mogil, J. S., Ritchie, J., Sotocinal, S. G., Smith, S. B., Croteau, S., Levitin, D. J., and Naumova, A.K. (2006). Screening for pain phenotypes: analysis of three congenic mouse strains on a battery of nine nociceptive assays. Pain, 126, 24-34.

6) Vines, B.W., Krumhansl, C. L., Wanderley, M. M., & Levitin, D. J. (2006). Cross-Modal Interactions in the Perception of Musical Performance. Cognition, 101, 80-113.

7) Guastavino, C., Katz, B., Polack, J-D., Levitin, D.J., & Dubois, D. (2005). Ecological validity of soundscape reproduction. Acustica (united with Acta Acustica), 91 (2), 333-341.

8) Levitin, D. J. (2005). Musical behavior in a neurogenetic developmental disorder: Evidence from Williams syndrome. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1060(27), 325-334.

9) Levitin, D. J., Cole, K., Lincoln, A., & Bellugi, U. (2005). Aversion, awareness and attraction: Understanding hyperacusis in Williams Syndrome. Journal of Child Psychiatry, Psychology and Allied Disciplines, 46(5), 514-523.

10)Levitin, D. J. & Menon, V. (2005). The neural locus of temporal structure and expectancies in music: Evidence from functional neuroimaging at 3 Tesla. Music

11) Perception, 22(3), 563-575. Levitin, D. J. & Menon, V. (2005). Tutorial on fMRI methods. Music Perception, 22(3), 566.

12) Levitin, D. J. & Rogers, S. E. (2005). Absolute pitch: Perception, coding, and controversies. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9(1), 26-33.

13) Menon, V. & Levitin, D. J. (2005). The rewards of music listening: Response and physiological connectivity of the mesolimbic system. NeuroImage, 28(1), 175-184.

14) Vines, B. W., Krumhansl, C. L., Wanderley, M. M., Dalca, I., & Levitin, D. J. (2005). Dimensions of emotion in expressive musical performance. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1060(27), 462-466.

15) Vines, B. W., Nuzzo, R. L. & Levitin, D. J. (2005). Analyzing temporal dynamics in music: Differential calculus, physics, and functional data techniques. Music Perception, 23, 139-154.

16) Levitin, D. J. (2004). L'Oreille Absolue. L'Année Psychologique, 104, 103-120.

17) Levitin, D. J., Cole, K., Chiles, M., Lai, Z., Lincoln, A., & Bellugi, U. (2004). Characterizing the musical phenotype in individuals with Williams Syndrome. Child Neuropsychology, 10(4), 223-247.

18) Levitin, D. J. and Menon, V. (2003). Musical structure is processed in "language" areas of the brain: A possible role for Brodmann Area 47 in temporal coherence. NeuroImage, 20(4), 2142-2152.

19) Levitin, D. J.; Menon, V.; Schmitt, J. E.; Eliez, S.; White, C.; Glover, G.; Kadis, J.;Korenberg, J. R.; Bellugi, U.; and Reiss, A. L. (2003). Neural Correlates of Auditory Perception in Williams Syndrome: An fMRI Study. NeuroImage, 18, 74-82.

20) Levitin, D. J. and Zatorre, R. J. (2003). On the nature of early music training and absolute pitch. Music Perception, 21(1), 105-110.

21) Levitin, D. J.; McAdams, S.; and Adams, R. L. (2002). Control parameters for musical instruments: A foundation for new mappings of gesture to sound. Organised Sound, 7(2), 171-189.

22) Menon, V., Levitin, D. J., Krasnow, B. & McAdams, S. (2002). Neural correlates of timbre change in harmonic sounds. NeuroImage, 17, 1742-1754.

23) Levitin, D. J., MacLean, K., Mathews, M. V., Chu, L. Y., and Jensen, E. R. (2000). The perception of cross-modal simultaneity. International Journal of Computing and Anticipatory Systems, 5, 323-329.

24) Levitin, D. J. (1999a). Absolute Pitch: Self-Reference and Human Memory. International Journal of Computing and Anticipatory Systems, 4, 255-266.

25) Levitin, D. J. (1999b). Tone Deafness: Failures of Musical Anticipation and Self-Reference. International Journal of Computing and Anticipatory Systems, 4, 243-254.

26) Hintzman, D. L., Caulton, D. A., & Levitin, D. J. (1998). Retrieval dynamics in recognition and list discrimination: Further evidence of separate processes of familiarity and recall. Memory & Cognition, 26(3), 449-462.

27) Levitin, D. J. , & Bellugi, U. (1998). Musical ability in Individuals with Williams Syndrome. Music Perception, 15(4), 357-389.


28) Levitin, D. J., & Cook, P. R. (1996). Absolute memory for musical tempo: Additional evidence that auditory memory is absolute. Perception & Psychophysics, 58, 927-935.

29) Russell, G. S., & Levitin, D. J. (1995). An expanded table of probability values for Rao's spacing test. Communications in Statistics: Simulation and Computation, 24(4),879-888.

30) Levitin, D. J. (1994). Absolute memory for musical pitch: Evidence from the production of learned melodies. Perception & Psychophysics, 56, 414-423. [Listed as one of the top 100 papers in cognitive science by the Millennium Project.]

For a complete list of grants recieved, previous academic postions, awards & honors recieved, colloguia, conference presentations etc go to this site: http://www.psych.mcgill.ca/levitin/levitin_vita.pdf

Thetubeguy1954

A Rational Subjectivist

• One Of Dr Levitin Video Presentations   (Open in New Window)

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