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--></style><title>TODAY: "Music, Brain and Culture" -
Jamshed Bharucha, 5:30</title></head><body>
<div>Public Lecture: "Music, Brain and Culture"</div>
<div>by Jamshed Bharucha</div>
<div>Provost and Senior Vice President of Tufts University as well as
Professor in the Psychology Department.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>5:30 pm in Franklin Patterson Hall, East Lecture Hall<br>
<br>
Bharucha is Provost and Senior Vice President of Tufts University as
well as Professor in the Psychology Department. His research is on the
perception of music, using computational neural net modeling and brain
imaging techniques. He has co-developed two successful software
products for teaching. Bharucha is a Trustee of the International
Foundation for Music Research and was Editor of the interdisciplinary
journal Music Perception.<br>
<br>
LECTURE ABSTRACT: Culture is learned automatically by the brain. The
brain then uses this implicit knowledge to filter subsequent
perception through "cultural lenses". This is true of all
aspects of culture, including music. Our brains internalize the
structural patterns and emotional associations that are pervasive in
the musical cultures to which we are exposed. My students and I tested
this hypothesis with brain imaging using functional magnetic resonance
(fMRI). We tracked the brain activity of volunteers from India and the
United States while they listened to samples of Indian and Western
music, as well as samples of spoken Hindi and English. Our results
suggest that for both music and language, the brain responds
differently to music that is culturally familiar than to music that is
culturally unfamiliar, although the results are more complex for music
than for language. In my talk I will also critique the co-called
"Mozart effect" - the belief that listening to Mozart or
other forms of music affects the brain in ways that affect spatial
reasoning and other non-musical cognitive skills.<br>
</div>
<div>For more information on Bharucha, visit
http://www.tufts.edu/sackler/facultyIntros/bharuchaJ.html</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>This lecture is sponsored by Hampshire College's Program in
Culture, Brain, and Development http://cbd.hampshire.edu</div>
<div><br></div>
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<div>Paula Harmon, Coordinator<br>
Foundation for Psychocultural Research-Hampshire College Program in
Culture, Brain, and Development (CBD)<br>
Adele Simmons Hall, Room 100<br>
Hampshire College, Amherst, MA 01002<br>
phone: 413-559-5501; fax: 413-559-5438<br>
email: cbd@hampshire.edu<br>
http://cbd.hampshire.edu</div>
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