Music Listening, Music Therapy, Phenomenology and Neuroscience

Appendix 3.01 Survey of The Neurosciences and Music I

• Conference 2002

Part III: Poster papers

Title, Category

Aim

Mus. Material, Cultural Ref.

Technology & Procedure

Main focus of interest

Conclusion

56P. Gaser & Schlaug (514

-517)

Gray matter differences in musicians

Cat. 8. Musicians

Cat

. 10: Training

Structural adaptation of the brain in response to lon

g-term

skill learning and repetitive rehearsal of skills

None CR:

---

20

professional musicians,

20

amateur mu

sicians and

40

non

-musicians

, all male.

Magnetic Res

onance (MR)

data aquisition and image analysis.

Image analysis, searching for gray matter differences between groups

Professional musicians: Areas of increased gray matter in motor as well as auditory

and

visuospatial brain regions

57P. Lamont (518

-519)

Toddlers’ musical preferences

Cat

. 9: Child development
58P. Plantinga & Trainor (520

-521)

Long

-term memory (LTM) for

pitch in infants

Cat

. 9: Child development
Cat. 14. Memory
59P. Ross et

al. (522

-526)

Absolute pitch and early musical training

Cat

. 1: Pitch

Pilot study: musical pre

ferences of children aged

2- 3

 years for dif

ferent kinds

of music

6-month

-old infants’

LTM

representations for the pitch of famiiar melodies

To

test the importance of

musical training for Absolute Pitch (AP) by means of new test paradigm

Recordings:

Four real music

extracts

(not specified).

Music

not the same for all partici-pants

CR: Not indicated

Recordings:

One of two English folk songs, ”The Country Lass” or ”The Painful Plough”

CR: Western traditional Pure tones from a sinus tone generator CR: Neutral

The c

hild can choose music

by pressing one of four keys on a toy keyboard with flashing lights

1) 16 infants heard

6

repetitions each day for 7 days of one of the songs. On the 8th day:

Prefe

rence test,

choosing between fa

miliar

and unfamilar song

2) Task: recognize a familiar song in transposition

3)

Testing whether infants

remembered the absolute pitch of melodies

27 experienced musicians, 6 with AP, 21 without. Plus one person,

R.M., claiming to

have AP without musical training. Task: Listen to a tone. Reproduce the tone by means of

a sinus tone

generator 1) after a silent interval

2) after distracting tones

Lis

tening time for each piece

out of a total playing time of 10 minutes

To determine the nature of infants’ long

-term memory

representaio

ns

Differences between AP

• 
  

group and Non

-AP group,

plus one person, R.M., claiming to have AP without musical

training

General preferences for f

ast

and loud music

over slow and

quiet music irrespective of style 1) Infants remembered the familiarized melody.

2) Indication that infants encoded the relative pitch of the melodies in LTM

3) Six

-month

-old infan

ts

remember melodies in terms of relative pitch, not absolute pitch

R.M. possesses AP.

Musical training is not necessary for the develop

ment of AP