Music

Cross-cultural and Indigenous perspectives on music and social bonding.

Experimental studies of primarily Western participants have suggested that musical synchrony facilitates social bonding. Critics question the validity and cross-cultural generality of synchrony-bonding relationships, as well as the causal role of …

Colombian Music Map

Interactive relief map exploring Colombia's six musical regions through embedded, playable music examples, genres, and traditional-to-fusion classifications.

Synchronised group singing enhances social bonding more than group conversation or recitation does: A Registered Report across 30 languages.

The evolution of music, speech, and prosociality has been debated since before Darwin. The social bonding hypothesis proposes that these phenomena may be interlinked: musicality may have facilitated the evolution of social bonding beyond the …

Mind wandering during rest, evoked by preferred music, does not impede short-term memory consolidation

Research has shown that rest is beneficial for memory consolidation. However, periods of rest are also prone to evoke mind wandering (MW) episodes, which have been observed to be an obstacle to learning. As such, an apparent paradox arises from these …

I see sick people: Beliefs about sensory detection of infectious disease are largely consistent across cultures

Identifying interpersonal disease threats is critical for effectively tracking and defending against infection. People hold lay beliefs about the types of sensory information that are most relevant for identifying whether others are sick with …

The interplay of music, movement, and culture on rhythm processing

A recommendation of: Guérin, S. M. R., Coulon, E., Lenc, T., Polak, R., Keller, P. E., & Nozaradan, S. (2024). *Culture-Driven Neural Plasticity and Imprints of Body-Movement Pace on Musical Rhythm Processing*. …

Cross-cultural relationships between music, emotion, and visual imagery: A comparative study of Iran, Canada, and Japan [Stage 1 Registered Report]

Many people experience emotions and visual imagery while listening to music. Previous research has identified cross-modal associations between musical and visual features as well as cross-cultural links between music and emotion and between music and …

Musicality in human vocal communication: An evolutionary perspective

Studies show that specific vocal modulations, akin to those of infant-directed speech and perhaps music, play a role in communicating intentions and mental states during human social interaction. Based on this, we propose a model for the evolution of …

Voice modulation: From origin and mechanism to social impact

Research on within-individual modulation of vocal cues is surprisingly scarce outside of human speech. Yet, voice modulation serves diverse functions in human and nonhuman nonverbal communication, from dynamically signalling motivation and emotion, …

La música como objeto de estudio científico: consideraciones en torno a la musicalidad y el origen de la música

La existencia de la música y su origen continúan siendo un misterio. Sin embargo, la ciencia ha logrado proveer respuestas parciales y modelos teóricos, basándose en una variedad de evidencias ha logrado señalar aspectos fundamentales y proponer …