By: Elizabeth Turner
The 2015 Conference of the Society of Music Cognition & Perception (SMPC) will begin on Saturday, Aug. 1, with the Vanderbilt Music & Mind Kickoff to SMPC, open to the public from 1:00-7:00 p.m.at Ingram Hall, located at Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music, 2400 Blakemore Ave., Nashville.
The kickoff will offer something for everyone -- music industry professionals, musicians, researchers, music scholars, science lovers, and anyone interested in why and how music affects us. Presentations and discussions throughout the day will explore many of the concerns of research in the field of music cognition, including why listeners like what they like, how music training changes the brain and affects academic performance, and how music can be used to treat developmental and communication disorders.
Musical duo So We Are will open the event with a live performance. Irish singer-songwriter Colin Dempsey and New York University Neuroscience professor Joseph LeDoux perform songs about love and life with a twist, peppering their music with insights drawn from research about the brain and mental disorders.
The keynote address by TED Talk contributor Dr. Charles Limb will discuss “The Neuroscience of Musical Creativity.” Limb, a professor at the University of California San Francisco, combines interests in auditory science, clinical treatment of hearing loss, and complex sound perception, especially music, and will focus his talk on what’s happening in the brain during musical improvisation.
The event will feature current Vanderbilt research in a series of presentations representing the music research and clinical activities of more than three dozen scholars and health professionals across campus. After, attendees will have opportunities to meet, discuss, and ask questions at themed networking stations; the event aims to foster connections and inspire continued discussion and collaboration between the scientific and musical communities, both in Nashville and across the international scientific community.
Advance registration is required; Tickets to the Aug. 1 Music & Mind Kickoff are $5 each and can be purchased by clicking here.
For more information about the Music & Mind Kickoff to SMPC, click here. For more information about the 2015 SMPC Conference (Aug. 1-5), visit the SMPC website or e-mail smpc2015Nashville@gmail.com.
Last Updated: 7/2/2015 10:58:16 AM
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