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Cognitive abilities Music Music expertise

Musicians’ and nonmuscians’ memory skills

Background Becoming a musician requires a great and constant effort. Usually a musician has started at a very young age to learn an instrument. Learning to play an instrument involves multiple cognitive faculties and abilities, such as memory, attention, executive functions, motor coordination, all simultaneously active. It is no surprising that psychologists and neuroscientists have […]

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Emotion Music

Music emotions and congruency effects

Has it ever happened to you to feel an emotion while listening to a piece of music? I’m sure it did. Music is in fact known to be a powerful mean to evoke emotions. Emotions felt during listening to music can be assessed subjectively (by asking individuals to report the emotions they feel) or objectively […]

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Cognitive abilities Music Music perception

Contour Perception

When you listen to music, a salient element that helps you processing and remembering a certain music piece is the melodic contour. This can be defined as the up and down pattern that is created by the pitch change direction. For example, if the notes in the melody are increasing in pitch one after the other, […]