Revealed more than two millennia ago by Pythagoras, consonance and dissonance (C/D)
are foundational concepts in music theory, perception, and aesthetics. The search for the …

Language is typically viewed as fundamental to human intelligence. Music, while
recognized as a human universal, is often treated as an ancillary ability–one dependent on …

Why do humans make music? Theories of the evolution of musicality have focused mainly
on the value of music for specific adaptive contexts such as mate selection, parental care …

Discusses general conceptual growth, with special emphasis on the contributions of Piaget.
Other areas discussed—including social cognition, perception, and memory—are based …

In the first comprehensive study of the relationship between music and language from the
standpoint of cognitive neuroscience, Aniruddh D. Patel challenges the widespread belief …

Anyone sufficiently motivated to take an undergraduate or graduate course in this area
should find [in this book] a great deal to intrigue the imagination and stimulate further interest …

The study of musical abilities and activities in infancy has the potential to shed light on
musical biases or dispositions that are rooted in nature rather than nurture. The available …

Tonal languages differ from other languages in their use of pitch (tones) to distinguish
words. Lifelong experience speaking and hearing tonal languages has been argued to …

Intrinsic perceptual biases for simple duration ratios are thought to constrain the
organization of rhythmic patterns in music. We tested that hypothesis by exposing listeners …

Some scholars consider music to exemplify the classic criteria for a complex human
adaptation, including universality, orderly development, and special‐purpose cortical …