The seminars held in the context of the “Neuroscience and Neuromodeling” course are open to anyone who is interested in these topics. Please check the details below and feel free to show up, however, due to capacity constraints, please drop an email to Alexandre Andrade if you are planning to go. Thanks!

/Alexandre Andrade

"Does Music Training Lead to Nonmusical Benefits?"

Nov 7th, 15:00, room 8.2.15

Speaker: Prof. César Lima, MUVE Lab, Department of Psychology, ISCTE– University Institute of Lisbon

Bio:

César Lima is an Associate Professor with Habilitation in the Department of Psychology at Iscte – University Institute of Lisbon, where he coordinates the MUVE Lab, a research groups focused on the psychology and neuroscience of music, voice and emotion. He has published over 50 peer-reviewed articles in journals including Emotion Review, Cerebral Cortex, Brain, Current Biology, Trends in Neurosciences, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, and Annual Review of Psychology. César Lima is on the Editorial Board of Scientific Reports (category Neuroscience) and Royal Society Open Science (category Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience). Before joining ISCTE, César Lima completed his Ph.D. in Psychology at the University of Porto (2011), was a Research Associate at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience – University College London (2012-2016), and a Senior Research Associate at the University of Porto (2016-2017). His work as principal investigator has been funded by the British Academy and by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology.

Abstract: The possibility that music training improves nonmusical abilities generates a lot of excitement among scientists, the media, and the public. Longitudinal evidence is inconclusive, however, and the advantages of musicians in correlational studies could stem from preexisting factors. In this talk, I will present a series of correlational and longitudinal studies asking whether music training improves linguistic and emotion recognition skills. Correlational data confirm an advantage for musically trained children and adults on these domains, but a similar advantage is apparent for musically untrained individuals with naturally good musical abilities. Moreover, longitudinal data reveal no evidence for a causal relationship. Based on these findings and on a broader review of existing evidence, I will argue that observed associations between music training and nonmusical abilities are more likely to stem from preexisting musical abilities than they are from training. I will discuss the implications of this view for current debates on plasticity and transfer of learning.