A Crash Course in the Neuropsychology of Music
Peter Cariani
Enrollment limited: first come, first served
Limited to 60 participants.
Participants welcome at individual sessions (series)
These two lectures provide an overview of the current state of the neuropsychology of music
Part I: What We Hear - Structural Aspects of Music
Part II: The Neural Bases for Music's Psychological Functions.
Contact: Joseph R Stein, E25-518, 452-4091, jrstein@mit.edu
Sponsor: Health Sciences & Technology
What We Hear - Structural Aspects of Music
Peter Cariani
In the first lecture we will introduce basic questions, such as what is music? What are the many psychological and social functions that music fulfills? We will then take a look at the basic auditory qualities that music utilizes: loudness, pitch, timbre, consonance, harmony, melody, rhythm, meter, the time sense. Basic Gestaltist mechanisms group together sounds with harmonic structure, sonic events having similar qualities, and repeating sequences of events (chunks). We will survey the respective uses of these auditory qualities, groupings, and patterns in music and examine some of the auditory and general brain codes and computations that may subserve them.
Wed Jan 11, 07:30-09:30pm, 32-124
Part II: The Neural Bases for Music's Psychological Functions
Peter Cariani
In this lecture, we look at the neural bases for music's psychological functions. Sequences of sonic contrasts create expectancies, violations & reconfirmations that are experienced as tensions/relaxations. Music engages brain circuits associated with emotion, pleasure, temporal prediction/reward, and semantic/syntactic processing. Developmental studies suggest newborns have basic music percepts (pitch, melody, harmony, rhythm) not acquired through learning.
However, music has hard-to-explain, diverse effects: cognitive interest; emotion/mood/arousal/motivation control; dancing/exercise/motoric engagement; meditation/trance/sleep; analgesia; mnemonics/nostalgia. Instead, music may speak the "language of the brain" by structurally coupling to brain circuits, imposing repeating temporal patterns not unlike those of normal bodily & mental activities. Temporal patterns may be essential to central neural codes. Like other artificial means of inducing pleasure, taking direct structural control of our brains becomes its own reward.
Wed Jan 18, 07:30-09:30pm, 32-124
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Collective Intelligence 101
Yiftach Nagar
Wed Jan 18, 10:30am-01:00pm, E62-262
No enrollment limit, no advance sign up
Single session event
Prereq: none
\*\*\* NOTE: ROOM CHANGE. Morning session meets in E62-262! \*\*\*
If you are curious, or puzzled about what “collective intelligence” means, in both research and practice, here you will learn what a lot of other people have said, and probably get even more confused! I will try, however, to create a comprehensive and cohesive picture by synthesizing:
1. Theoretical Ideas (spanning philosophy of mind, distributed cognition, psychology and… robotics),
2. Empirical Evidence (including neuro-science and social psychology), and
3. Applications and Implications for research and practice.
No background needed. This may be of interest to students and guests from any discipline.
Yiftach Nagar is a Doctoral Candidate at Sloan, working at the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence.
Web: http://web.mit.edu/~ynagar/www/teaching/IAP2012/IAP2012.htm
Contact: Yiftach Nagar, ynagar@mit.edu
Sponsor: Yiftach Nagar, E62-427, ynagar@mit.edu
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Collective Intelligence Research Brainstorm
Yiftach Nagar
Wed Jan 18, 01:30-03:00pm, E62-450
Single session event
Prereq: Collective Intelligence 101 (offered in IAP, same day in the
This session is a an open, guided brainstorm/group discussion targeted for people who have participated in the introductory session (Collective-intelligence 101), and aimed to discuss two important questions:
1. What are the most interesting / important / burning issues for collective-intelligence research?
2. If we are to study group intelligence – what are the best ways to do that?
Guaranteed to be an interesting discussion!
Web: http://web.mit.edu/~ynagar/www/teaching/IAP2012/IAP2012.htm
Contact: Yiftach Nagar, ynagar@mit.edu
Sponsor: Yiftach Nagar, E62-427, ynagar@mit.edu
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MITing of the Minds 2012
8th Annual MIT Philosophy Alumni Conference
Arden Ali
No enrollment limit, no advance sign up
Participants welcome at individual sessions (series)
Prereq: none
This year's MITing of the Minds is the Eighth Annual MIT Philosophy Alumni Conference. The conference will showcase recent work in a variety of areas in contemporary philosophy. Presentations will cover topics in ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of language, and social philosophy and will be accessible to a broad audience. Each day will feature talks by MIT faculty members, current students, and alumni of the graduate program.
Web: http://web.mit.edu/philos/www/mm/
Contact: Arden Ali, 32-D912, 253-2690, ardenali@mit.edu
Sponsor: Linguistics and Philosophy
Arden Ali
Please see website for more details:
http://web.mit.edu/philos/www/mm/
Thu Jan 26, 11am-06:00pm, 32-D461
Arden Ali
Please see website for more details:
http://web.mit.edu/philos/www/mm/
Fri Jan 27, 09:30am-04:00pm, 32-D461
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