The Music Cognition Group (MCG) is part of the Department of Musicology, the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC), and Amsterdam Brain and Cognition (ABC) of the University of Amsterdam (UvA) and is housed at LAB42, Science Park Amsterdam.
Our research offers interdisciplinary perspectives on the capacity to perceive, make, and appreciate music. It asks what music is for and why every human culture has it, whether musicality is a uniquely human capacity, and what biological and cognitive mechanisms underlie it.
The current research program aims to identify the basic neurocognitive mechanisms that constitute the cognitive and biological basis of musicality, as well as developing theoretical, computational and empirical methods for analyzing various musicality phenotypes.
Meet our researchersResearch agendaMedia attention
What is music cognition?
We are all born with a predisposition for music, a predisposition that develops spontaneously and is refined by listening to music. Nearly everyone possesses the musical skills essential to experiencing and appreciating music. Think of “relative pitch,” recognizing a melody separately from the exact pitch or tempo at which it is sung, and “beat perception,” hearing regularity in a varying rhythm. Even human newborns turn out to be sensitive to intonation or melody, rhythm, and the dynamics of the sounds in their surroundings. Everything suggests that human biology is already primed for music at birth with respect to both the perception and enjoyment of listening.
Human musicality is clearly special; Musicality being a set of natural, spontaneously developing traits based on, or constrained by, our cognitive abilities (attention, memory, expectation) and our biological predisposition. But what makes it special? Is it because we appear to be the only animals with such a vast musical repertoire? Is our musical predisposition unique, like our linguistic ability? Or is musicality something with a long evolutionary history that we share with other animals? (Honing, 2019).
Latest news
ABC Colloquium with dr Samuel Mehr
On 12 September 2023 dr Sam Meher (School of Psychology, University of Auckland and Child Study Center, Yale University) will give a lecture entitled "Some principles of music perception". Free drinks afterwards.
Keynote by dr Adam Rutherford
In the context of the Musicality Genomics Consortium Conference, scientist, writer and broadcaster, Dr. Adam Rutherford will give a Keynote Lecture on 8 September 2023.
TuneTwins: A fun game testing your musical memory!
Researchers from the Music Cognition Group are currently working on a series of musical versions of Memory. It’s called TuneTwins . It was developed to help answer some important scientific questions about what we are listening for when we hear music.
New website of MCG is now online!
The website of the Music Cognition Group has an unusually long history. Dating back to 1994, it served as the website of the Music, Mind, Machine (MMM) project until 2003. The 2003-website is archived here. After 2003 it became the website of the Music Cognition Group (MCG) at the University of Amsterdam, online from 2003 till 2023, a website that is archived here. The current website incorporates most information of both former websites, build on up-to-date technology that will make it more sustainable.
Media attention
Kan AI de winnaar van het Songfestival voorspellen?NPO1
Marathon interview met Henkjan HoningNPO1
Mooie muziek, maar waarom?VPRO Gids
Ieder mens kan muziek herkennen, maken en waarderenNewScientist
Latest publications
Music Matters
Latest posts from Henkjan Honing’s blog Music Matters
Did you enjoy playing the game Memory?
What is the use of the comparative approach in studying the origins of language and music?
![What is your position in the BBS discussion on the origins of music/ality? [update]](/static/daaea44423959292c011a6383ac65b8f/120e1/count-plot-2.webp)
What is your position in the BBS discussion on the origins of music/ality? [update]
