Conferences, Symposiums, Workshops     view all upcoming

• The McMaster Institute for Music & the Mind announces the 10th Annual NeuroMusic Conference: Performance, Gesture and Social Interaction in Music, to be held on Sunday, September 28, 2014 from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. The LiveLab is directed by AIRS co-investigator Laurel Trainor and AIRS co-investigator Steven Brown is a key collaborator.  Blair Ellis is a graduate student in the MIMM Music and Neuroscience Program. Poster Abstracts deadline has been extended to September 8. Click here for a poster about this event. Click here for a PDF with the registration link.
  

• Ninth Triennial Conference of the European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music (ESCOM),  17-22 August 2015, Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester, UK. Abstract deadline 29 December 2014. NB -  Singing is one of the topic areas for submissions.  Link
  

• Opera and Media of the Future: October 24 & 25 2014 at Glyndebourne, Lewes, East Sussex, UK.      Link  for further information on the event, including programme, registration details, etc.
  

  The Centre for Research in Opera and Music Theatre at the University of Sussex is pleased to announce a new research initiative to examine the challenges and opportunities of new media technologies for the future of opera. The project will be launched by a two-day event hosted by Glyndebourne Opera bringing academics, artists and opera professionals together to examine a wide range of issues from opera cinecasts and webcasts to the use of new media platforms for audience development, marketing and education, and the implications of new media for the forms of opera itself.
   

AIRS News

• Dr. Karen Ludke who has been working on the AIRS Digital Library in a postdoctoral position is now moving on to a faculty position at Edge Hill University in the UK.  While working full-time with AIRS,  Karen with team-mates Tom Germaine and Ryan Sampson created the new functional prototype  for the AIRS Digital Library  allowing for batch entry and permissions, two key functions required by the AIRS Collaboration. The system is being tested before a more general release to the AIRS community.   Karen also assisted on many other projects of AIRS including the Student Early-Career Workshop, the AIRS Multicultural Choir, AIRS Book Project,  research with Dr. Bing-Yi Pan  on the role of singing in language learning, and AIRS social media such as Twitter.  Karen will be greatly missed and fortunately she will be staying connected with AIRS.  We wish her much continued success in her new position and thank her for her many contributions to AIRS.
  

• Jane Ginsborg, AIRS Co-investigator and President of ESCOM informs AIRS of the Ninth Triennial Conference of the European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music (ESCOM)  17-22 August 2015, Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester, UK. Abstract deadline 29 December 2014. NB -  Singing is one of the topic areas for submissions.  Link
  

• SSHRC Postdoctoral Opportunity - Canadian Citizens and Permanent Residents  Deadline September 24.  Link
  

   
  

​Recent Publications

• Rhythmic Priming Enhances Speech Production Abilities: Evidence From Prelingually Deaf Children.  Cason, Nia; Hidalgo, Céline; Isoard, Florence; Roman, Stéphane; Schön, Daniele. Neuropsychology, Jul 28 , 2014, DOI: 10.1037/neu0000115      Link 
  

  Objective: Following recent findings that rhythmic priming can enhance speech perception, the aim of this experiment was to investigate whether this extends to speech production. Method: The authors measured the influence of rhythmic priming on phonological production abilities in 14 hearing impaired children with hearing devices. Children had to repeat sentences that were or were not preceded by a rhythmical prime. In addition, this rhythmic prime either matched or mismatched the meter (i.e., stress contrasts) of the sentence. Results: Matching conditions resulted in a greater phonological accuracy of spoken sentences compared to baseline and mismatching conditions. Cochlear implant users were also more sensitive to rhythmic priming than hearing aid users. Conclusions: These results suggest that musical rhythmic priming can enhance phonological production in HI children via an enhanced perception of the target sentence. Overall, these findings suggest that musical rhythm engages domain-general expectations which can enhance both in perception and production of speech. 

• Auditory Temporal Processing Skills in Musicians with Dyslexia. Paula Bishop-Liebler, Graham Welch, Martina Huss, Jennifer M. Thomson and Usha Goswami. Dislexia, vol 20, issue 3. DOI: 10.1002/dys.1479  Link
  

The core cognitive difficulty in developmental dyslexia involves phonological processing, but adults and children with dyslexia also have sensory impairments. Impairments in basic auditory processing show particular links with phonological impairments, and recent studies with dyslexic children across languages reveal a relationship between auditory temporal processing and sensitivity to rhythmic timing and speech rhythm. As rhythm is explicit in music, musical training might have a beneficial effect on the auditory perception of acoustic cues to rhythm in dyslexia. Here we took advantage of the presence of musicians with and without dyslexia in musical conservatoires, comparing their auditory temporal processing abilities with those of dyslexic non-musicians matched for cognitive ability. Musicians with dyslexia showed equivalent auditory sensitivity to musicians without dyslexia and also showed equivalent rhythm perception. The data support the view that extensive rhythmic experience initiated during childhood (here in the form of music training) can affect basic auditory processing skills which are found to be deficient in individuals with dyslexia.