Symposium explores music, language, dance and the visual arts
[img_inline align=”right” src=”http://padnws01.mcmaster.ca/images/MIMMspeakers08.jpg” caption=”Mireille Besson, Annabel Cohen, Virginia Penhune and Steven Brown spoke at Musical Connections in the Brain: Language, Dance and the Visual Arts hosted by the McMaster Institute for Music and the Mind. Photo by Andrea Unrau. “]Have you ever wondered why we dance, nod our heads and tap our feet to sounds, but not lights? How the addition of music changes our perception and interpretation of film and television? What areas of the brain are involved in music performance, dance and synchronizing with others? And why children taking music lessons show improvement in language and other cognitive skills? These questions and more were addressed at the fourth annual all-day symposium sponsored by the McMaster Institute for Music and the Mind (MIMM).
A diverse group of over 100 psychologists, musicians, educators, neuroscientists, music therapists, mathematicians, engineers and students gathered at McMaster to explore the topic “Musical Connections in the Brain: Language, Dance and the Visual Arts.” The event featured four presentations by an international group of experts and concluded with a live performance by two groups of critically acclaimed jazz and contemporary dancers.
“One of the purposes of this symposium is to expose students to current research in the field of Music Cognition,” said MIMM director and symposium organizer Laurel Trainor.
Virginia Penhune (Concordia University) presented her exciting fMRI data showing connections between motor and auditory areas in the brain when we simply listen to music stimuli and when we perform rhythmic tasks. Annabel Cohen (University of Prince Edward Island) explained how musical information interacts with visual information and prior knowledge in multimedia contexts such as film. Mireille Besson (CNRS, France) examined how early musical training can influence brain responses to sound and the ability to discriminate pitches in non-musical contexts such as in processing speech intonation. To conclude, Steven Brown, director of the NeuroArts Lab in the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour, explained how cultures around the world use dance to convey meaning and presented studies showing what areas of the brain are involved in producing the complex movements that comprise dance sequences.
The event culminated with a stimulating dance and multimedia presentation by two of Kinesiology Professor Dave Wilsons dance groups, The Parahumans and the McMaster Dance Company (Jazz). For many, the highlight was a contemporary piece in which five dancers improvised together to music they had never heard before.
“The Improv at the end of the day provided a great finale that nicely integrated the arts of dance with the neuroscience of auditory-motor interaction,” remarked David Shore, associate professor in the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour.
For more information on upcoming events and ongoing MIMM research, please visit http://mimm.mcmaster.ca. To learn more about the Music Cognition Specialization, please contact Ann Hollingshead, hollings@mcmaster.ca.
