Music Matters

Exploring music and the mind.

by Henkjan Honing

German Babies Cry Differently From French Babies, Research Shows

German babies cry differently from French babies. But why? A recent TED talk explains... Read More

We’re All Musical Creatures

There are many misunderstandings about musicality. People who consider themselves to be unmusical, say that they have no feel for rhythm, or that they can’t sing in tune. However, most of them are quick to view birdsong, or a cockatoo that can dance in time to music, as 'musical.' But can animals really be musical? And what is musicality, actually? Read More

Music Might Well Precede Language

Babies cry differently. Read More

First listening experiences

De do do do, de da da da... Read More

Do you have friends that say "Oh, but I'm not musical at all"?

Of most people that claim things like ‘Oh, but I'm not musical at all', ‘I'm hopeless at keeping a tune' or ‘I have no sense of rhythm', only a small percentage turn out to be unmusical. The condition is known as amusia, and those who suffer from it are literally music-deficient. Read More

Can infants recognize melodies heard in the womb?

Ongoing research into the effects of listening to music in the womb. Read More

Was Steven Pinker right after all?

Our talent for music might have survived natural selection in order to stimulate and develop our mental faculties. Read More

Are emotions in music universal?

Intriguing study on the induction of emotions by music in our Western and the African Mafa culture. Read More

Crying of newborn babies: A sign of inborn musical skill?

Even the crying of newborn babies seems to be more musical than we might think...

Is Snowball listening or imitating? Read More

How well would you do as an expert?

In the Netherlands (and I'm sure there are versions of it in the UK and the US as well) there is a weekly radio show containing a returning item in which music experts are asked to compare and judge two or three CD recordings of the same piece, without knowing who the musicians are. They have to guess the performers and describe why they do (or don't) like that particular performance. Read More

What makes a theory compelling?

Can a theory be surprising in itself? Karl Popper was a philosopher of science that was very much interested in this question. He tried to distinguish 'science' from 'pseudoscience', but got more and more dissatisfied with the idea that the empirical method could effectively mark this distinction. Read More

Do newborn infants have a sense of rhythm?

It might look somewhat disturbing, but the picture that accompanies this entry is a snapshot of a two day old baby that is healthy and sound asleep! She is one of fourteen newborns that participated in a recent listening experiment, a collaboration between the Institute for Psychology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and our research group at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. Read More

A 2006 recording of Glenn Gould?

A well-known recording company recently released a new recording of Glenn Gould performing the Goldberg Variations. The recording date was summer 2006. Curious, not? Read More

Rhythm Makes You Move

Why do some people dance more rhythmically to music than others? Are these differences genetically or culturally determined? The link between musical rhythm and movement has been a fascination for a small yet passionate group of researchers. Early examples, from the 1920s, are the works by Alexander Truslit and Gustav Becking. Read More

De do do do, de da da da?

For a long time I thought of it as quite a peculiar phenomenon: grown-ups who, the moment they spot a baby, start talking in a curious dialect. A dialect that has unclear semantics, little or no grammar, and is full of exaggerated rhythmic and melodic diversions. Nevertheless, babies love it! Read More

Can music save your life?

To explore a research finding I'm about to present, I asked my girlfriend some time ago to think of the film Saturday Night Fever and the song Stayin' Alive. Being of the generation that grew-up in the late seventies, she could sing it immediately. When I measured with a metronome the tempo at which she sang, it was 105 beats per minute (bpm). Read More

Does Mozart make you smarter?

Mozart's Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major (KV 448) is one of the most used compositions in music psychology research. Since the publication of the study Music and Spatial Task Performance in Nature in 1993, numerous researchers have tried to replicate the so-called "Mozart effect" using this composition. And often with little success. Read More