March 13, 2008

Scientist to talk about how the mind hears music

Aniruddh D. Patel, the Esther J. Burnham Fellow at the Neurosciences Institute in San Diego, will present "Music and the Brain: 3 Links to Language" at 3:30 p.m. in Stewart Center, Room 206. A reception precedes the talk at 3 p.m.

"Interest in music and the mind dates back as least as far as Plato, but research on the cognitive neuroscience of music has recently been at the center of debate concerning the contributions musical abilities may have made to the eventual evolution of the human brain and the fundamental capacity of language," says Ronnie Wilbur, a Purdue professor of linguistics. "Purdue is fortunate to have Aniruddh Patel here as his new book, 'Music, Language and the Brain,' has just been published.

"This area is exciting because advanced techniques are allowing empirical approaches to old questions, such as the relationship of music to other cognitive abilities. Studying relations between music and other mental domains can be revealing about the mechanisms underlying music processing and can provide new avenues for exploring how these mechanisms work in the brain."

Patel's talk will explore links between the processing of music and language.

The Steer Lecture Series is named for the late Max (Mack) Steer, who founded the Purdue Department of Audiology and Speech Sciences, which is now known as the Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences. Steer served as the first department head from 1963 to 1970. The talk is sponsored by the Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences.

Writer: Amy Patterson Neubert, (765) 494-9723, apatterson@purdue.edu

Source: Ronnie Wilbur, (765) 494-3822, wilbur@purdue.edu

Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; purduenews@purdue.edu

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