Psychology 3230G-001
Cognitive Neuroscience of Music
If there is a discrepancy between the outline posted below and the outline posted on the OWL course website, the latter shall prevail.
1.0 CALENDAR DESCRIPTION
An in-depth examination of music and the brain. After reviewing neuroscience techniques, we will discuss music and evolutionary theories, emotional responses, comparisons to language, effects on children, and changes of brain structure in musicians.
Prerequisites: Psychology 2820E (or both Psychology 2800E and 2810), AND one of Psychology 2115A/B, 2134A/B, 2135A/B, 2220A/B, or Psychology 2221A/B or Neuroscience 2000
Unless you have either the prerequisites for this course or written special permission from your Dean to enrol in it, you may be removed from this course and it will be deleted from your record. This decision may not be appealed. You will receive no adjustment to your fees in the event that you are dropped from a course for failing to have the necessary prerequisites.
Antirequisite: Psychology 3190F if taken in Fall of 2011
Antirequisites are courses that overlap sufficiently in content that only one can be taken for credit. So if you take a course that is an antirequisite to a course previously taken, you will lose credit for the earlier course, regardless of the grade achieved in the most recent course.
3 lecture hours; 0.5 course
2.0 COURSE INFORMATION
Instructor: Dr. Jessica Grahn and Dr. Emily Ready
Office and Phone Number: WIRB 5118, (519) 661-2111, Ext. 84804
Office Hours: By appointment, WIRB 5118
Email: jgrahn@uwo.ca, eready2@uwo.ca
Teaching Assistant: Stacey Reyes
Office: TBA
Office Hours: By appointment
Email: sreyes4@uwo.ca
Time and Location of Lectures: Tuesday, 1:30 to 4:30 pm, WIRB 1130
The beginning of the course will be taught primarily by Dr. Grahn. She will be going on parental leave at the end of February or beginning of March (exact time to-be-determined-by-baby), and Dr. Ready will teach the remaining lectures and be responsible for grant presentation/proposal grading. More information will be given in class.
Students who are in emotional/mental distress should refer to Mental Health@Western
http://www.uwo.ca/uwocom/mentalhealth/ for a complete list of options about how to obtain help.
Please contact the course instructor if you require material in an alternate format or if you require any other arrangements to make this course more accessible to you. You may also wish to contact Student Accessibility Services (formerly known as Services for Students with Disabilities) at 519-661-2147.
3.0 TEXTBOOK
There is no textbook for this course. The readings for this course consist of journal articles and book chapters. Electronic copies of the readings will be made available for the participants of this course on Owl (http://owl.uwo.ca/). Written assignments should be turned in via Owl. There is also a course website at www.jessicagrahn.com/musicneuro2020.html. This has readings and additional information to illustrate course content. The password is musicneuro. The URL is case-sensitive.
4.0 COURSE OBJECTIVES
The class will meet once a week for a 3-hr lecture and discussion. The primary emphasis will be on review of methods and empirical investigations of music and neuroscience. There will also be discussions of the assigned readings (largely primary research articles) and major issues related to each topic area. All students are expected to complete the weekly basic readings and to actively participate in the class discussions.4.1 STUDENT LEARNING OUTCOMES
After successfully completing this course, students should be able to:
-Compare perceptual, motor, cognitive, emotional, and developmental aspects of music from a neuroscientific point of view (assessed in critiques, in-class exercises, and grant proposal).
-Explain how innate factors and environmental experience affect the development of our musical capacities (assessed in critiques, in-class exercises, and grant proposal).
-Recognize and name the neural systems that underpin different aspects of musical processing, such as rhythm or pitch perception (assessed in in-class exercises).
- Develop critical thinking skills (e.g., analyzing and critiquing methods and conclusions of published studies, drawing inferences supported by data, finding connections across disparate sources of information, creating hypotheses and predictions suggested by existing evidence) and apply them to published studies (assessed in critiques and final grant proposal).
-Describe various cognitive neuroscience techniques (behavioural testing, event-related potentials, positron emission tomography, and magnetic resonance imaging) and how they are used in different populations: newborns, healthy adults, patients with brain damage, and people with different levels of musical training (assessed in in-class exercises and grant proposal).
-Advance written communication skills, including grammar, structure, and style (practiced and assessed in all written assignments), as well as practice oral communication skills (used during in-class participation and assessed in the oral presentation of the final grant proposal).
5.0 EVALUATION
Grades will be based on critical evaluations of empirical studies (30%), press evaluation (10%), in-class exercises (10%), in-class evaluations of empirical studies (2%), written and oral presentation of a grant proposal (38%), peer review of a grant proposal (10%). All written assignments are submitted via Turnitin through the links on the Owl course page. As this is a writing-intensive course, grammar, writing clarity, and structure will form part of the assessment of the written critiques and grant proposal. Feedback will be given on these elements as well.
Because this is an essay course, as per Senate Regulations, you must pass the essay component to pass the course. That is, the average mark for your written assignments must be at least 50%.
This course is exempt from the Senate requirement that students receive assessment of their work accounting for at least 15% of their final grade at least three full days before the date of the deadline for withdrawal from a course without academic penalty.
Critical evaluations of empirical studies (30% of total mark) Due 12 pm on day your article discussed in class
Sign up by January 9th (a limited number of students can choose each article, and some of you will have an article critique due on January 14th) Email Stacey Reyes at sreyes4@uwo.ca to sign up: please list your top 6 choices. It is a good idea to select papers due more than 1 week apart so that you can receive feedback on the first assignment before completing the second. You may be assigned to an article you did not select.
Critique THREE of the papers listed below. At 12 PM on the day of the class at which your paper is discussed, you are to turn in a report of 1.5 to 2.5 pages (typed double spaced with 12-point font and margins of 1 inch), as follows. Use Turnitin on Owl. Please also bring a hard copy of the assignment with the Turnitin report to class (the report may take up to an hour to appear, so be sure to allow for this delay).
- Indicate the hypotheses of the study.
- Briefly summarize the methodological approach and the findings.
- Discuss how the authors interpret the findings.
- End with a critical discussion of what we can conclude from the paper. This is the most important section, demonstrating critical thinking skills, and should account for at least 25% of the length. Critical discussion can include: valid and substantial criticisms or questions about the authors’ stimuli, procedure, results, or interpretations; relating the findings to other research discussed in class (are there conflicts or convergences with other work?); specific studies that could be conducted to follow up on the current study; important questions that are raised by the findings in the current study, etc.
Fewer marks will be given for superficial criticisms (pointing out that the number of males and females was not balanced without clear reasons why gender would be expected to affect the outcome), cursory connections to other work (simply stating that the current study used a paradigm that has been used by others, without further discussion of why that is relevant or important), or unfleshed-out ideas for future research. Higher marks will be given for thought-out and supported connections and ideas.
Papers to sign up for:
1 Grahn & Brett, 2007: Rhythm and beat processing in motor areas of the brain
2 Patel, A.D., Iversen, J.R., Bregman, M.R., & Schulz, I. (2009). Experimental evidence for synchronization to a musical beat in a nonhuman animal
3 Nozaradan, Peretz, Missal, Mouraux, 2011: Tagging the neuronal entrainment to beat and meter.
4 Loui, Wu, Wessel, & Knight, 2009: A generalized mechanism for perception of pitch patterns.
5 Tierney, Russo, & Patel: The motor origins of human and avian song structure: commonalities in song structure
6 Winkler et al., 2009: Newborn infants detect the beat in music
7 Phillips-Silver & Trainor, 2005 Feeling the Beat: Movement Influences Infant Rhythm Perception
8 Slevc, Rosenberg, & Patel, 2009: Making psycholinguistics musical: Self-paced reading time: evidence for shared processing of linguistic and musical syntax
9 Koelsch, Kasper, Sammler, Schulze, Gunter & Friederici 2004: Music, language and meaning: brain signatures of semantic processing.
10 Mas-Herrero, Zatorre, Rodriguez-Fornells, Marco-Pallares, 2014: Dissociation between musical and monetary reward responses in specific musical anhedonia
11 Salimpoor, Benovoy, Larcher, Dagher, & Zatorre, 2011: Anatomically distinct dopamine release during anticipation and experience of peak emotion to music.
12 Steele, Bailey, Zatorre, Penhune, 2013: Early musical training and white-matter plasticity in the corpus callosum: Evidence for a sensitive period
13 Schneider, Scherg, Dosch, Specht, Gutschalk & Rupp: 2002: Morphology of Heschl’s gyrus reflects enhanced activation of auditory cortex in musicians
14 Elbert, Candia, Altenmuller, Rau, Sterr, Rockstroh, Pantev & Taub, 1998: Alteration of digital representations in somatosensory cortex in focal hand dystonia
15 de Bruin, Doan, Turnbull, Suchowersky, Bonfield, Hu, & Brown 2010: Walking with music is a safe and viable tool for gait training in Parkinson’s disease: the effect of a 13-week feasibility study on single and dual task walking.
16 Finke, Esfahani, Ploner, 2012: Preservation of musical memory in an amnesic professional cellist
In-class evaluations of empirical studies (1% each, of total mark):
On two occasions during the term, I will ask you to write, in-class, without notes, a paragraph evaluation on ONE of the readings (your choice) that was due for that week’s lecture. You will be asked to briefly describe elements of the study, and give your opinion on one or two aspects of the design, analysis, or conclusions. The reading cannot be the same one that you have chosen for your out-of-class Paper Critique. These assignments will be graded pass/fail. If you miss the class, you miss the mark. Only with one week’s advance notice can you be allowed to make up a missed in-class evaluation.
In-class exercises (5% each of total mark), February 4th and March 17th
These written assignments will cover material up to and including the lecture prior to the date of the exercise. There will be some multiple choice and short/medium answer questions about methods in cognitive neuroscience and experimental design using those methods, terminology related to cognitive neuroscience of music, and experimental findings covered by the readings and in class. Answers will be discussed in class.
Press article critique (10% of total mark) Due any time before 12 pm February 25th
Find one written news article in the media that covers a recently published scientific finding in music and science (in the last 5-6 years). Choose articles from popular news sources, not scientific magazines such as Discover, Scientific American, etc. A list of press articles that you may choose has been collected and posted on the class website, however, I encourage you to find one yourself. After you have the press article, find the original article. Write a 2-3 page paper relating the press article to the original article. Include the main message conveyed in the press article, as well as a summary of the methods and results in the original paper. Reflect on whether the article stays true to the original findings, and if not, how it could have been improved (keeping in mind the media’s need to attract readers, relate findings to issues that interest the public, and simplify complexities). Include a copy of the press article and original article with your assignment.
Final project: Grant proposal
Sign up in groups of 2 students by January 28th by emailing your groups to Stacey Reyes. You may work with whomever you like. Pick one of the papers on the course outline. Identify a major unanswered question of scientific and/or clinical importance related to the topic of that paper. As a group, you will prepare an experiment proposal that addresses this question. Your group will present the proposal in class and defend it by answering questions from classmates and the instructors.
Steps to take:
- Brainstorm as a group to pick a question that is both interesting and can be answered.
- Conduct a thorough literature search in order to understand what is currently known about the question and synthesize this literature into an introduction.
- Design an experiment or set of experiments to answer the question. Define the dependent and independent variables. Construct null and alternative hypotheses.
- Outline the rationale for the proposed experiments.
- Discuss how the experiments will answer the question. Address the broader significance of the potential findings.
Groups will be set up during the first few weeks of class by signing up on Owl. All members of the group must be actively involved, but you can divide the work however you see fit. You will have some class time to ask questions about the project. Of course you will need to spend additional time outside of class hours.
Progress report on grant proposal (3% of total mark) due 12 pm February 11th
A group progress report of less than one page must be submitted outlining what you have accomplished to date and evaluating how the group is working together. Bring a hard copy to class.
Oral presentation of grant proposal (15% of total mark) presented on March 24th & 31st
Each group will give a 15-minute presentation followed by 10 minutes of questions and discussion. Evaluation will be based on clarity and style of presentation, adequate consideration of background literature, clear presentation of proposed methods and predicted results, and evidence of preparation. If there is a disparity of more than 10% between the group presentation mark and an individual’s written proposal mark, the weighting will change by 5% to favour the written mark (10% on oral presentation, 25% on written project). For example, if the group oral presentation mark is 65 and one individual’s written proposal mark is 80, the oral presentation will count for 10% of the total mark and the written proposal will count for 25% of the total mark for that individual. If the difference between the oral and written mark for an individual is less than 10 points, the original weightings (15% for oral, 20% for written) will remain. If the group presentation mark is better than the written mark, no adjustments will be made.
Written grant proposal (20% of total mark) due at 12 pm on March 24th
Each individual must submit a written proposal that is no longer than 8 pages (typed double spaced with 12-point font and margins of 1 inch) excluding figures, references and any appendices (e.g., a questionnaire). The oral presentation and development of experimental ideas are group activities, but the written proposal is done independently by each group member. The written proposal must be submitted on Owl by 12 pm. Please also bring 2 hard copies to class. The proposal needs to include the following parts:
- Introduction/rationale section.
The introduction should describe the research question, why it is important, how it relates to previous research, and how the proposed study will extend our knowledge of the topic in question. The introduction does not have to provide a comprehensive overview of the available research related to the research question; however, it is expected that students complete a literature search (e.g., PsycINFO) to identify existing studies that are relevant for their research proposal. The identified studies should be included in the introduction with a discussion of how the proposed study expands on earlier research.
- Proposed methods section, including identification of dependent and independent variables and of null and alternative hypotheses. Be sure to give a rationale for particular experimental choices (stimuli, task, participants), particularly if these were to avoid extraneous or confounding variables.
- Results section explaining what would be concluded if various results were found. It is not necessary to outline how the results would be analyzed, but reference to simple statistical concepts (e.g., mean values, t-tests, correlations, etc.) is generally expected.
- Conclusion section outlining the potential significance of the results.
- References. The proposal should include a bibliographic listing of all references cited in the proposal. Papers should be edited according to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (5th or later edition.).
Proposals will be evaluated on the basis of the following four criteria: introduction of the research question (how well is the research question introduced and is it appropriately linked to relevant research in this area?); creativity and importance (how creative and important is the research question?); soundness of method (does the proposed study provide a good test of the hypotheses?); and style (is the proposal well written and properly edited with good structure?).
Peer feedback and review of a grant proposal (10% of total mark) due at 12 pm, April 3rd online
Each individual student (not a group assignment) will be assigned to write an evaluation of the written report from another group. The evaluation must be no longer than two pages (typed double spaced with 12-point font and margins of 1 inch). It should contain of the following parts:
- Two or three sentence summary of the research proposed.
- Evaluation of whether the report and presentation provides a good background and rationale for the proposed research.
- Evaluation of whether the experiments are logical and whether they will answer the question(s) proposed.
- Evaluation of any potential flaws in the experimental design that will make interpretation of the data difficult.
- Evaluation of whether the proposed research is interesting, novel and important.
6. Summary of the strengths and weaknesses, and indication of whether you would recommend funding.
Although the Psychology Department does not require instructors to adjust their course grades to conform to specific targets, the expectation is that course marks will be distributed around the following averages:
70% 1000-level and 2000-level courses
72% 2190-2990 level courses
75% 3000-level courses
80% 4000-level courses
The Psychology Department follows Western's grading guidelines, which are as follows (see http://www.uwo.ca/univsec/pdf/academic_policies/general/grades_undergrad.pdf):
A+ 90-100 One could scarcely expect better from a student at this level
A 80-89 Superior work that is clearly above average
B 70-79 Good work, meeting all requirements, and eminently satisfactory
C 60-69 Competent work, meeting requirements
D 50-59 Fair work, minimally acceptable
F below 50 Fail
6.0 ASSESSMENT/EVALUATION SCHEDULE
7.0 CLASS SCHEDULE
January 7th Lecture: Introduction, evolution
*McDermott & Hauser, 2005: The origins of music: innateness, uniqueness, and evolution
*Ch 2/3 of Tan: Acoustics of music (p. 9-18)/Sound and neurophysiology of hearing
Ch 3/4 Ward: The electrophysiological brain/The imaged brain (required if your background in neuroscience does not include these methods)
Ch 1 of Levitin: Useful and readable descriptions of music terminology (required if your background does not include musical training)
Additional supplementary material and music notation demos on course website.
January 14th Lecture: Pitch processing in music
*Stewart, 2012: Characterizing congenital amusia
*Loui, Wu, Wessel, & Knight, 2009: A generalized mechanism for perception of pitch patterns.
*Tierney, Russo, & Patel: The motor origins of human and avian song structure: commonalities in song structure
Supplementary: Peretz, 2016: Neurobiology of Congenital Amusia.
January 21th Lecture: Rhythm, beat perception, and metre
*Nozaradan, Peretz, Missal, Mouraux, 2011: Tagging the neuronal entrainment to beat and meter.
*Grahn & Brett, 2007: Rhythm and beat processing in motor areas of the brain
*Patel, Iversen, Bregman, & Schulz, I. (2009). Experimental evidence for synchronization to a musical beat in a nonhuman animal.
*Wilson & Cook, 2016: Rhythmic entrainment: why humans want to, fireflies can’t help it, pet birds try, and sea lions have to be bribed.
Supplementary: Zatorre, Chen & Penhune, 2007: When the brain plays music: auditory–motor interactions in music perception and production
January 28th Lecture: Musical development
*Hannon & Trainor, 2007: Music acquisition: effects of enculturation and formal training on development
*Winkler et al., 2009: Newborn infants detect the beat in music
*Phillips-Silver & Trainor, 2005: Feeling the Beat: Movement Influences Infant Rhythm Perception
Supplementary: Trainor, 2005: Are There Critical Periods for Musical Development?
February 4th In-class exercises/Work on projects/TBA
*Mehr, 2015. Miscommunication of science: Music cognition research in the popular press
February 11th Lecture: Music and Language Progress Report due
*Slevc, Rosenberg, & Patel, 2009: Making psycholinguistics musical: Self-paced reading time: evidence for shared processing of linguistic and musical syntax
*Koelsch, Kasper, Sammler, Schulze, Gunter & Friederici, 2004: Music, language and meaning: brain signatures of semantic processing.
*Patel, 2011: Why would musical training benefit the neural encoding of speech? The OPERA hypothesis
Supplementary: Ch 4 of Tan: Neuroscience of Music
February 25th Lecture: Expectation & Emotion. All Press Article Critiques should be finished before this week
*Ch 14 of Tan: The emotional power of music
*Salimpoor, Benovoy, Larcher, Dagher, & Zatorre, 2011: Anatomically distinct dopamine release during anticipation and experience of peak emotion to music.
*Griffiths, Warren, Dean, & Howard, 2004: ‘‘When the feeling’s gone’’: a selective loss of musical emotion
*Mas-Herrero, Zatorre, Rodriguez-Fornells, Marco-Pallares, 2014: Dissociation between musical and monetary reward responses in specific musical anhedonia
Supplementary: Trainor & Zatorre, 2016: The neurobiological basis of musical expectations.
Supplementary: Sacks, 2006: The power of music
March 3rd Lecture: Brain Plasticity and Structure
*Jakobson and Cuddy, 2019: Music training and transfer effects (first 5 pages only)
*Steele, Bailey, Zatorre, Penhune, 2013: Early musical training and white-matter plasticity in the corpus callosum: Evidence for a sensitive period
*Schneider, Scherg, Dosch, Specht, Gutschalk & Rupp: 2002: Morphology of Heschl’s gyrus reflects enhanced activation of auditory cortex in musicians
*Elbert, Candia, Altenmuller, Rau, Sterr, Rockstroh, Pantev & Taub, 1998: Alteration of digital representations in somatosensory cortex in focal hand dystonia
Supplementary: Schellenberg, 2005: Music and Cognitive Abilities
March 10th Lecture: Neuropsychological studies and applications of music
*Finke, Esfahani, Ploner, 2012: Preservation of musical memory in an amnesic professional cellist
*de Bruin, Doan, Turnbull, Suchowersky, Bonfield, Hu, & Brown 2010: Walking with music is a safe and viable tool for gait training in Parkinson’s disease: the effect of a 13-week feasibility study on single and dual task walking.
*Norton, Zipse, Marchina, & Schlaug, 2009: Melodic intonation therapy: shared insights on how it is done and why it might help.
March 17th In-class exercises/TBA
March 24th Grant Presentations (All written proposals due at 12 pm)
March 31st Grant Presentations (All peer reviews due at 12 pm the following Friday, Apr 3rd, online)
* = required reading, Supplementary reading is strongly recommended but not required
8.0 STATEMENT ON ACADEMIC OFFENCES
Students are responsible for understanding the nature and avoiding the occurrence of plagiarism and other scholastic offenses. Plagiarism and cheating are considered very serious offenses because they undermine the integrity of research and education. Actions constituting a scholastic offense are described at the following link: http://www.uwo.ca/univsec/pdf/academic_policies/appeals/scholastic_discipline_undergrad.pdf
As of Sept. 1, 2009, the Department of Psychology will take the following steps to detect scholastic offenses. All multiple-choice tests and exams will be checked for similarities in the pattern of responses using reliable software, and records will be made of student seating locations in all tests and exams. All written assignments will be submitted to TurnItIn, a service designed to detect and deter plagiarism by comparing written material to over 5 billion pages of content located on the Internet or in TurnItIn’s databases. All papers submitted for such checking will be included as source documents in the reference database for the purpose of detecting plagiarism of papers subsequently submitted to the system. Use of the service is subject to the licensing agreement, currently between Western and Turnitin.com http://www.turnitin.com
Computer-marked multiple-choice tests and/or exams may be subject to submission for similarity review by software that will check for unusual coincidences in answer patterns that may indicate cheating.
Possible penalties for a scholastic offense include failure of the assignment, failure of the course, suspension from the University, and expulsion from the University.
9.0 POLICY ON ACCOMMODATION FOR MEDICAL ILLNESS
Western’s policy on Accommodation for Medical Illness can be found at:
http://www.westerncalendar.uwo.ca/PolicyPages.cfm?PolicyCategoryID=1&Command=showCategory&SelectedCalendar=Live&ArchiveID=#Page_12
The full policy for consideration for absences can be accessed at: https://www.uwo.ca/univsec/pdf/academic_policies/appeals/Academic_Consideration_for_absences.pdf
Students must see the Academic Counsellor and submit all required documentation in order to be approved for certain accommodation:
http://counselling.ssc.uwo.ca/procedures/medical_accommodation.html
If you experience an extenuating circumstance (e.g., illness, injury) sufficiently significant to temporarily make you unable to meet academic requirements, you may request accommodation through the following routes:
- Submitting a Self-Reported Absence form (for circumstances that are expected to resolve within 48 hours);
- For medical absences, submitting a Student Medical Certificate (SMC) signed by a licensed medical or mental health practitioner in order to be eligible for Academic Consideration;
For non-medical absences, submitting appropriate documentation (e.g., obituary, police report, accident report, court order, etc.) to Academic Counselling in their Faculty of registration in order to be eligible for academic consideration. Students are encouraged to contact their Academic Counselling unit to clarify what documentation is appropriate.
Students must see the Academic Counsellor and submit all required documentation in order to be approved for certain accommodation. The self-reported absence form may NOT be used for absences longer than 48 hours; coursework/tests/exams/etc., worth more than 30% of the final grade; or exams scheduled in the December or April final-exam periods: http://counselling.ssc.uwo.ca/procedures/medical_accommodation.html
Students seeking academic consideration:
- are advised to consider carefully the implications of postponing tests or midterm exams or delaying handing in work;
- are encouraged to make appropriate decisions based on their specific circumstances, recognizing that minor ailments (upset stomach) or upsets (argument with a friend) are not normally an appropriate basis for a self-reported absence;
must communicate with their instructors no later than 24 hours after the end of the period covered by either the self-reported absence or SMC, or immediately upon their return following a documented absence
10.0 OTHER INFORMATION
Office of the Registrar web site: http://registrar.uwo.ca
Student Development Services web site: http://www.sdc.uwo.ca
Please see the Psychology Undergraduate web site for information on the following:
http://psychology.uwo.ca/undergraduate/student_responsibilities/index.html
- Policy on Cheating and Academic Misconduct
- Procedures for Appealing Academic Evaluations
- Policy on Attendance
- Policy Regarding Makeup Exams and Extensions of Deadlines
- Policy for Assignments
- Short Absences
- Extended Absences
- Documentation
- Academic Concerns
- 2019-2020 Calendar References
No electronic devices, including cell phones and smart watches, will be allowed during exams.
Copyright Statement: Lectures and course materials, including power point presentations, outlines, and similar materials, are protected by copyright. You may take notes and make copies of course materials for your own educational use. You may not record lectures, reproduce (or allow others to reproduce), post or distribute lecture notes, wiki material, and other course materials publicly and/or for commercial purposes without the instructor’s written consent.
