Welcome to the website of the Music & Science Lab at Durham University! The Music & Science Lab comprises an interdisciplinary group of researchers with backgrounds in systematic and computational musicology, music psychology, and ethnomusicology. We employ a range of empirical methods to investigate questions related to the perception and cognition of music and its role in human interactions. We are also committed to collecting, annotating, and sharing collections of audiovisual music performance recordings to support cross-cultural scientific music research. Our lab is situated within the Music Department at Durham University. READ MORE
About
Learn more about our research, facilities, and opportunities to work with us here.
Projects
The Music & Science Lab in Durham has several ongoing research projects.
Is the Perception of Consonance and Dissonance Universal?
In 1996 the prestigious Nature journal published an intriguing report by Marcel Zentner and Jerome Kagan entitled Perception of Music by Infants. The results suggested that infants prefer consonance (the relative attractiveness of different pitch combinations) over dissonance (the relative unattractiveness of different pitch combinations). The findings brought some much-needed light on the age-old debate regarding the role of…
Read more Is the Perception of Consonance and Dissonance Universal?
