Music and Language

Dave Munger has posted a very good description of recent research on the interactions in the cognitive processing of music and language. A team of music psychologists at the Université de Bourgogne found that musical expectancies affected listeners abilities to judge language expectancies. Many studies have shown that music processing and language processing occur in different parts of the brain. This study shows that these processing center may be separate, but they do still interact with each other. This French team presented some of their research at the Neurosciences and Music II conference I attended. I was particularly impressed with Emmanuel Bigand's experimental design for examining judgments of emotional content.