Waarom kan muziek zulke sterke herinneringen oproepen? [Dutch]

'Muziek raakt onze allerdiepste emoties en blijkt een spoor te trekken in de hersenen. Muziek is ook een drager van herinneringen. Hoe werkt dat? En waarom houdt de één van Bach en de ander van The Beatles?'

De Ncrv-tv zendt vandaag een aflevering uit over muziek, emotie en herinneringen. Zie de trailer.

Voor de volledige aflevering, zie uitzending gemist.
En gerelateerd artikel in de Volkskrant bijlage van 13.12.2008 (met levendige reacties).

Can you point at it?

This week an extra entry with a (repeated) poll related to a research project on older and newer internet technologies that support sharing musical taste and exchange of musical listening experiences.

Before explaining more: would you like to do this informal poll?


(If you like, you can use the Comments option below to mention which piece it actually is.)

The project (in preparation) aims not only to analyze and explicate these existing listening communities (e.g. Last.fm, Yo.uTube, Pandora) but also to actively experiment with Web 2.0 technologies by designing and constructing virtual listening spaces that will allow participants to share their listening experiences (LISTEN), make other listeners enthusiastic for a certain musical fragment (LURE), and mark a specific location in an actual recording (LOCATE) - a specific point in the music where a particular listener experienced something special or that s/he considers musically striking or intriguing.

The LOCATE-component of the project was inspired by some early work of John Sloboda (Keele University). He found that a large portion of music listeners could locate (in the score or a recording) specific musical passages that reliably evoked, e.g., shivers down the spine, laughter, tears or a lump in the throat (Sloboda, 1991).

J. A. Sloboda (1991). Music Structure and Emotional Response: Some Empirical Findings Psychology of Music, 19 (2), 110-120 DOI: 10.1177/0305735691192002

And what was the symposium like?

I just returned from the UK where the Music, Science and the Brain symposium was held in celebration of the end of the European EmCAP project. (The lectures will be online as vodcasts soon.)

I particularly liked, among others, the presentations of David Huron (Ohio State University, US) and Lauren Stewart (Goldsmiths, University of London, UK).

David Huron was the keynote speaker (delivered by video link from Columbus, Ohio), His talk was entitled: ‘How Music Produces Goose-bumps and Why Listeners Enjoy It’. Paralleling one of the chapters of his recent book ‘Sweet Anticipation’ (MIT Press), he treated the audience on a waterfall of ideas and findings on why and how music elicits physiological reactions like goose bums (or piloerection, as it is formally called). Because the speed of it all, some ideas lacked alternative interpretations or proposals on how to (potentially) falsify them. Nevertheless, I’m a great fan of David. His knowledge of the literature is more than impressive. You should read his book that presents these ideas at a more appropriate pace.

Lauren Stewarts’s talk was on amusia (or tone deafness, see earlier blog), and the question of whether people with amusia are destined to get no pleasure out of music (listening) whatsoever. She discussed a recent study, published earlier this year in Music Perception, on the use and functions of music for people ‘suffering’ from amusia. While people with amusia seem to be mostly annoyed by music (‘[I have experienced] just a sort of irritable rage. Now I wonder what others feel and think I may be missing out on something.’), some music appraisal seemed to be shared with ‘normal’ listeners.

CLAIRE MCDONALD, LAUREN STEWART (2008). USES AND FUNCTIONS OF MUSIC IN CONGENITAL AMUSIA Music Perception, 25 (4), 345-355 DOI: 10.1525/MP.2008.25.4.345