The research of the Music Cognition Group (MCG) has a special focus on the everyday listener, using theoretical, empirical and computational methods. The research program aims to identify the basic perceptual and neurocogntive mechanisms that constitute musicality, effective ways to study these in human and nonhuman animals, and to develop methods to unravel the cognitive, biological and environmental mechanisms that underpin our capacity for music.
Research questions
Over the years it has become clear that we all share a predisposition for music, just like we have for language. Even those of us who can’t play a musical instrument or lack a sense of rhythm can perceive and enjoy music. We will refer to this unique predisposition, in all its complexity, as ‘musicality’, defined as a natural, spontaneously developing set of traits that are based on and constrained by our cognitive abilities and its underlying biology. As such, ‘music’, in all its diversity, can be defined as a social and cultural construct that is built on this musicality (Honing et al., 2015).
In the coming years (2022-2026) the MCG will focus on the following research questions:
1a. What are the core cognitive components of musicality?
1b. What are the biological and environmental factors contributing to musicality?
Musicality is an ability that nearly all human beings possess: a set of traits that allows us to appreciate music. This research aims to identify these constituent traits by means of a series of listening experiments in the form of engaging memory-based games. Researchers: Dave J. Baker, Noah Henry, Jiaxin Li, J. Ashley Burgoyne, Makiko Sadakata, Karline Janmaat, Henkjan Honing. This project is funded by NWO-OC(2022-2026).
2. How does music differ from other sounds, such as language and environmental sounds?
Another unresolved question is what is shared between music and language. For this we use the speech-to-song illusion. Principal investigator: Makiko Sadakata.
3. What do everyday listeners attend to when they listen to music?
We study everyday listening by developing listening games to find out about how listeners hear music, how their listening style compares to others, and providing a place where the music industry can test new ideas with the forefront of music cognition research. Principal investigator: John Ashley Burgoyne.
4. How to develop intrinsically motivating music listening games?
Infrastructural support for the projects that are listed above will be developed in the context of MCGs Amsterdam Music Lab. In this project we will design and implement a flexible and sustainable infrastructure for MUSic-related Citizen Science Listening Experiments (MUSCLE). Management: John Ashley Burgoyne, Berit Janssen, Henkjan Honing. This project is funded by PDI-SSH (2022-2025).
NWO Open Competition - SSH Unravelling our capacity for music: The contour hypothesis (2022-2026) Read more…
Platform Digitale Infrastructuur (PDI-SSH) A flexible and sustainable infrastructure for MUSic-related Citizen Science Listening Experiments [MUSCLE] (2022-2025) Read more…
NWO-NWA Opening the Black Box of Deep Learning for Language, Speech and Music (InDeep)(2022-2025) Read more…
NWO-XS Bird Singalong: A citizen science project to understand the musical abilities of parrots (Primary applicant: Leiden University) (2023-2024) Read more…
National Institutes of Health (NIH) The MusicGens Consortium: Growing robust and rigorous approaches to musicality genomics (#R13HD116533) (Primary applicant: Vanderbilt Music Cognition Lab) (2024-2028) Read more…
Funding under review
Platform Digitale Infrastructuur (PDI-SSH) Structural support
to sustain MUSic-related Citizen Science Listening Experiments
[MUSCLE] (2025-..) Read more…
National Institutes of Health (NIH) A transformative approach to musicality within health (Primary applicant: Vanderbilt Music Cognition Lab) (2025-2030) Read more…
Past Funding / Main Grants
NWO-NWA Snaartjes: Interactief kinderfestival voor wetenschap en muziek (Primary applicant: Leiden University) (2023-2024) Read more…
UvA-ABC Project How temporal expectations shape musical experience in the human brain (2021-2023) Read more…
NWO-WBO Support for Musicality Genomics Consortium (MusicGens) In-Person Meeting (in collabortation with Max Planck Nijmegen) (2023) Read more…
KNAW-Pilotfonds WetenschapscommunicatieIedereen is muzikaal: Wat muziekcognitieonderzoek kan zeggen over de alledaagse luisteraar (2021-2022) Read more…
NWO-Horizon Knowledge and Culture | New Methods for the Humanities: Empirical, Computational and Mathematical advances (2013-2019) Read more…
NWO-CATCH COGITCH (COgnition Guided Interoperability beTween Collections of musical Heritage) (2012-2015) Read more…