The concept of cultural evolution was fundamental to the foundation of academic musicology
and the subfield of comparative musicology, but largely disappeared from discussion after …

The processes underwriting the acquisition of culture remain unclear. How are shared
habits, norms, and expectations learned and maintained with precision and reliability across …

Speech and song have been transmitted orally for countless human generations, changing
over time under the influence of biological, cognitive, and cultural pressures. Cross-cultural …

An argument that the meaning of written or auditory linguistic signals is not derived from the
input but results from the brain's internal construction process. When we read a text or listen …

To understand why music is structured the way it is, we need an explanation that accounts
for both the universality and variability found in musical traditions. Here we test whether …

In recent years, there has been renewed interest in the biological and cultural evolution of
music, and specifically in the role played by perceptual and cognitive factors in sha** core …

One of the fundamental questions of cultural evolutionary research is how individual-level
processes scale up to generate population-level patterns. Previous studies in music have …

The intergenerational stability of auditory symbolic systems, such as music, is thought to rely
on brain processes that allow the faithful transmission of complex sounds. Little is known …

Investigating the transmission of information between individuals is essential to better
understand how humans communicate. Coherent information transmission (ie, transmission …

Why does musical rhythm have the structure it does? Musical rhythm, in all its cross‐cultural
diversity, exhibits commonalities across world cultures. Traditionally, music research has …