Cadence Podcast: What Music Tells us About the Mind

In this episode we continue our exploration of how musicians tell time and how anyone embodies pulse. We talk to Dean Buonomano, a neuroscientist who studies time at UCLA and we hear from previous guests: music cognition researcher Jessica Grahn, percussionist Jack van Geem, and film director Jonathan Lynn.

How do our brains tell where the pulse is in music? Can we improve our sense of rhythm or is it something we're just born with? In this episode, we learn how professional percussionist Jack Van Geem became a precision timing machine, and how he teaches his student, Katrina Shore, to develop her skills. We also talk to music cognition researcher Jessica Grahn to find out what's happening in our bra...

You often hear people say that music is good for your brain because it's the only activity that uses all of it. That's not true. And the truth is actually much more interesting. In this episode, we talk to auditory neuroscientist Nina Kraus, who explains how musical training changes what we hear, or, more specifically, how we listen.

Is there music that is considered universally great? Why do some composers from 18th century European countries still sell out concert halls hundreds of years later, while most of their contemporaries have been forgotten? Is their music really that much better? Or have we convinced ourselves that it’s better because we know that we're supposed to like it?

We take a step back from neuroscience and psychology to listen to what artists have to say about what music is for.

Last episode we met George Shin, who not too long ago received a cochlear implant and started to take piano lessons as part of a study at the University of California in San Francisco. This week we will learn more about his journey, the purpose and results of the study, and we’ll start exploring how people find meaning in music.

This week we attempt to find out if there are any universals in music, how the same sounds can go from speech to song, and how our auditory system processes music.

What is music? How would you define it? Does it defy definition?  In this episode we try to get answers to those questions from from a pioneer in music cognition research, a musicologist, and an otolaryngologist who surgically restores hearing and studies the brain basis of musical improvisation.   theensembleproject.com/cadence facebook.com/cadencepodcast  twitter.com/cadencep...