EP/16: MUSIC & THE BRAIN
How to Stop an Earworm and Why We Love Music with Dr. Robert Zatorre
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In this episode we speak to Dr. Robert ZatoRre. Dr. Zatorre is a cognitive neuroscientist at the Montreal Neurological Institute of McGill University. He helped to pioneer a new field of study that focuses on the intersection of music and the brain and is a founder and the co-director of an international laboratory for Brain, Music, and Sound research.
We all know that music gives us pleasure but you’ll be fascinated to find out exactly why. What is happening inside our heads when we listen to music? Why do some people like music more than others? Why do some songs become earworms and get stuck in our head? In this episode we sit down with a world renowned expert to answer these and many other fascinating questions.
Visit Dr. Zatorre’s Auditory Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory at: zlab.mcgill.ca/ to learn more and access the lab’s original research publications.
About DR. ROBERT ZATTORE
Robert Zatorre is a cognitive neuroscientist whose laboratory studies the neural substrate for auditory cognition, with special emphasis on two complex and characteristically human abilities: speech and music. He and his collaborators have published over 280 scientific papers on topics including pitch perception, auditory imagery, absolute pitch, perception of auditory space, and the role of the mesolimbic reward circuitry in mediating musical pleasure. His research spans all aspects of human auditory processing, from studying the functional and structural properties of auditory cortices, to how these properties differ between the hemispheres, and how they change with training or sensory loss. His lab makes use of functional and structural MRI, MEG and EEG, and brain stimulation techniques, together with cognitive and psychophysical measures. In 2006 he became the founding co-director of the international laboratory for Brain, Music, and Sound research (BRAMS), a unique multi-university consortium with state-of-the art facilities dedicated to the cognitive neuroscience of music. In 2011 he was awarded the IPSEN foundation prize in neuronal plasticity. In 2013, he won the Knowles prize in hearing research from Northwestern University, and in 2017 he was elected to the Royal Society of Canada. In 2020, he was awarded the C.L. de Carvalho-Heineken
McGill Reporter - Mcgill University