A proposal that an embodied cognition approach to music research—drawing on work in computer science, psychology, brain science, and musicology—offers a promising framework for thinking about music mediation technology. Digital media handles music as encoded physical energy, but humans consider music in terms of beliefs, intentions, interpretations, experiences, evaluations, and significations. In this book, drawing on work in computer science, psychology, brain science, and musicology, Marc Leman proposes an embodied cognition approach to music research that will help bridge this gap. Assuming that the body plays a central role in all musical activities, and basing his approach on a hypothesis about the relationship between musical experience (mind) and sound energy (matter), Leman argues that the human body is a biologically designed mediator that transfers physical energy to a mental level—engaging experiences, values, and intentions—and, reversing the process, transfers mental representation into material form. He suggests that this idea of the body as mediator offers a promising framework for thinking about music mediation technology. Leman proposes that, under certain conditions, the natural mediator (the body) can be extended with artificial technology-based mediators. He explores the necessary conditions and analyzes ways in which they can be studied. Leman outlines his theory of embodied music cognition, introducing a model that describes the relationship between a human subject and its environment, analyzing the coupling of action and perception, and exploring different degrees of the body's engagement with music. He then examines possible applications in two core areas: interaction with music instruments and music search and retrieval in a database or digital library. The embodied music cognition approach, Leman argues, can help us develop tools that integrate artistic expression and contemporary technology.

| The steep rise in music downloading over CD sales has created a major shift in the music industry away from physical media formats and towards online products and services. Music is one of the most popular types of online information and there are now hundreds of music streaming and download services operating on the World-Wide Web.Some of the music collections available are approaching the scale of ten million tracks and this has posed a major challenge for searching, retrieving, and organizing music content.Research efforts in music information retrieval have involved experts from music perception, cognition, musicology, engineering, and computer science engaged in truly interdisciplinary activity that has resulted in many proposed algorithmic and methodological solutions to music search using content-based methods. This paper outlines the problems of content-based music information retrieval and explores the state-of-the-art methods using audio cues (e.g., query by humming, audio fingerprinting, content-based music retrieval) and other cues (e.g., music notation and symbolic representation), and identifies some of the major challenges for the coming years.

Western tonal music relies on a formal geometric structure that determines distance relationships within a harmonic or tonal space. In functional magnetic resonance imaging experiments, we identified an area in the rostromedial prefrontal cortex that tracks activation in tonal space. Different voxels in this area exhibited selectivity for different keys. Within the same set of consistently activated voxels, the topography of tonality selectivity rearranged itself across scanning sessions. The tonality structure was thus maintained as a dynamic topography in cortical areas known to be at a nexus of cognitive, affective, and mnemonic processing.

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Auditory modeling is used to investigate the role of short-term memory in probe-tone experiments. A framework for auditory modeling is first defined, based on a distinction between auditory images, processes, and stimulus-driven inferences. Experiments I and II of the probe-tone experiments described by C. Krumhansl and E. Kessler (1982) are simulated. The results show that a short-term memory model, working on echoic images of periodicity pitch, may account for the probe-tone ratings. The simulations challenge the claim that probe-tone experiments provide evidence that listeners familiar with Western music have abstracted tonal hierarchies in a long-term memory.

The classical, disembodied approach to music cognition conceptualizes action and perception as separate, peripheral processes. In contrast, embodied accounts of music cognition emphasize the central role of the close coupling of action and perception. It is a commonly established fact that perception spurs action tendencies. We present a theoretical framework that captures the ways in which the human motor system and its actions can reciprocally influence the perception of music. The cornerstone of this framework is the common coding theory, postulating a representational overlap in the brain between the planning, the execution, and the perception of movement. The integration of action and perception in so-called internal models is explained as a result of associative learning processes. Characteristic of internal models is that they allow intended or perceived sensory states to be transferred into corresponding motor commands (inverse modeling), and vice versa, to predict the sensory outcomes of planned actions (forward modeling). Embodied accounts typically refer to inverse modeling to explain action effects on music perception (Leman, 2007). We extend this account by pinpointing forward modeling as an alternative mechanism by which action can modulate perception. We provide an extensive overview of recent empirical evidence in support of this idea. Additionally, we demonstrate that motor dysfunctions can cause perceptual disabilities, supporting the main idea of the paper that the human motor system plays a functional role in auditory perception. The finding that music perception is shaped by the human motor system and its actions suggests that the musical mind is highly embodied. However, we advocate for a more radical approach to embodied (music) cognition in the sense that it needs to be considered as a dynamical process, in which aspects of action, perception, introspection, and social interaction are of crucial importance.

Inspired by a theory of embodied music cognition, we investigate whether music can entrain the speed of beat synchronized walking. If human walking is in synchrony with the beat and all musical stimuli have the same duration and the same tempo, then differences in walking speed can only be the result of music-induced differences in stride length, thus reflecting the vigor or physical strength of the movement. Participants walked in an open field in synchrony with the beat of 52 different musical stimuli all having a tempo of 130 beats per minute and a meter of 4 beats. The walking speed was measured as the walked distance during a time interval of 30 seconds. The results reveal that some music is ‘activating’ in the sense that it increases the speed, and some music is ‘relaxing’ in the sense that it decreases the speed, compared to the spontaneous walked speed in response to metronome stimuli. Participants are consistent in their observation of qualitative differences between the relaxing and activating musical stimuli. Using regression analysis, it was possible to set up a predictive model using only four sonic features that explain 60% of the variance. The sonic features capture variation in loudness and pitch patterns at periods of three, four and six beats, suggesting that expressive patterns in music are responsible for the effect. The mechanism may be attributed to an attentional shift, a subliminal audio-motor entrainment mechanism, or an arousal effect, but further study is needed to figure this out. Overall, the study supports the hypothesis that recurrent patterns of fluctuation affecting the binary meter strength of the music may entrain the vigor of the movement. The study opens up new perspectives for understanding the relationship between entrainment and expressiveness, with the possibility to develop applications that can be used in domains such as sports and physical rehabilitation.

Music is known to be capable of reducing perceived exertion during strenuous physical activity. The current interpretation of this modulating effect of music is that music may be perceived as a diversion from unpleasant proprioceptive sensations that go along with exhaustion. Here we investigated the effects of music on perceived exertion during a physically strenuous task, varying musical agency, a task that relies on the experience of body proprioception, rather than simply diverting from it. For this we measured psychologically indicated exertion during physical workout with and without musical agency while simultaneously acquiring metabolic values with spirometry. Results showed that musical agency significantly decreased perceived exertion during workout, indicating that musical agency may actually facilitate physically strenuous activities. This indicates that the positive effect of music on perceived exertion cannot always be explained by an effect of diversion from proprioceptive feedback. Furthermore, this finding suggests that the down-modulating effect of musical agency on perceived exertion may be a previously unacknowledged driving force for the development of music in humans: making music makes strenuous physical activities less exhausting.sport | civilization | emotional motor control | jymmin' | aesthetics A thletes often use music in fitness studios and during preparation for sport competitions (1). The reason for this is probably that music can have positive effects on sports performance. The musical parameters tempo and rhythm, for example, have been shown to have a motivating and ergogenic influence on performance in sports (2, 3). Also, the perceived exertion during strenuous physical tasks can be diminished by music listening (4, 5), at least in a specific range of aerobic metabolism (6). The modulating influence of music on perceived exertion is thought to be due to a distracting effect of the music, such that the athlete pays less attention to (partly unpleasant) proprioceptive sensations that go along with bodily exhaustion (6, 7). Here, we question whether the diminishing effect of music on perceived exertion is due only to distraction from proprioceptive feedback. For this, we varied musical agency during a sports activity with fitness machines. In the present study, among a number of control tasks, the participants either created musical sounds while working out or just listened to similar music produced by others during their workout.Importantly, during the musical agency condition the participants are not simply distracted from the proprioceptive feedback. On the contrary, the proprioceptive feedback is essential to the source of agency that we introduce.In the current study, we adapt a definition of agency as a performance of bodily movement guided by an agent and governed by a goal or intention. We use the term "musical agency" because the goal/intention in the agency condition is a modulation of musical sounds. Musical agency is an essential aspect of many (if not most) rituals i...