NEUROBIOLOGY OF MUSIC STUDY GROUP
Chair of Aesthetics and Philosophy of Culture
in cooperation with the Department of Neurosurgery, Medical University of Gdansk, Poland, Moniuszko Academy of Music in Gdansk, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan and inomed Medizintechnik GmbH Emmendigen, Germany.
Neurobiology of speech is frequently seen as opposed to neurobiology of music. However, there are grounds for tying neural speech-processing networks to music-processing circuits. The brain's processing of music can also be considered one of the brain's highest functions. Therefore, the study of perception and music-making can be a model for research into the highest functions of the brain. We assume that the dynamic development of the neurobiology of music will contribute to the emergence of new models of thinking, mental processes and phenomena (including consciousness, aesthetic experience, creativity). The founders of our interdisciplinary research group are musicologists, philosopher/musician and neurobiologist (professionally active as a neurosurgeon).
We are pleased to announce that members of our research group are involved in the participation and organization of the International Conference ‘Meaning of Music’
Date: October 10–11, 2024
Location: Academy of Music in Gdańsk, ul. Łąkowa 1–2 / online
Language: English
The conference is addressed to: academic community, students and postgraduate students
Invitation to online participation
All those interested in listening to 4 lectures and 6 papers each day of the conference via Zoom, please contact us at meaningofmusic2024@amuz.gda.pl, preferably by October 7. We will send an email on October 8 or 9 with a link to connect.
THEME
One of the most fundamental questions emerging from our relationship with music is: can music mean? Those who try to answer this represent two radically different schools called formalism and referentialism, but recently a third one has emerged that situates itself between these two. This third school owes its existence to relatively new cognitive linguistic theories such as conceptual metaphor and conceptual blending. The earlier of them (G. Lakoff and M. Johnson 1980) asserts that metaphor is not a literary, stylistic device, but one of the basic forms of thinking, whose characteristic feature is one-way mapping between mental spaces. In turn, the later theory (G. Fauconnier and M. Turner 2002) assumes that mapping between mental spaces is bidirectional, and a blended space emerges from the interaction of concepts of both input spaces. Meanings that are constructed in this way are mostly unconscious, but they are at the heart of both everyday meanings and unique human creativity.
All details, the list of participants and the book of abstracts can be found at the link leading to the conference website:
Zapraszamy historyków filozofii, historyków sztuki, filozofów sztuki, estetyków oraz wszystkich zainteresowanych badaczy na ogólnopolską konferencję Filozofia, sztuka i medycyna. Podczas wydarzenia zastanowimy się nad wielością znaczeń i funkcji pełnionych przez rozmaite teksty kultury, a szczególnie przedstawienia wizualne, które miały ilustrować, unaoczniać, przekonywać, a wreszcie – inspirować do dalszych badań. Nie wykluczamy perspektywy współczesnej, proponując prelegentom eksplorowanie wciąż rzadko podejmowanych tropów interdyscyplinarnych na przecięciu wyżej wymienionych dyscyplin.
W słynnym stwierdzeniu otwierającym Badania dotyczące rozumu ludzkiego David Hume przestrzega czytelników, że jego filozofia przypomina raczej pracę anatoma ujawniającego niewidoczne dla ludzkiego oka szczegóły ludzkiej natury niż dzieło malarza oddające jej powaby; zaraz potem dodaje, że jedynym lekarstwem na fałszywą i zepsutą metafizykę jest właściwe rozumowanie. Choć uwagi te miały źródło w osobistym zawodzie wywołanym początkowymi niepowodzeniami pisarskimi, powiązanie namysłu filozoficznego z pracą anatoma, lekarza i artysty miało długą tradycję i było stałym motywem myśli nowożytnej.
Wysiłek ilustratorów i malarzy pozwalał po raz pierwszy ujawnić to, co niewidzialne, pomijane, niezauważone, skryte lub niezmysłowe, to: Melancholia Albrechta Dürera, kwinkunks Thomasa Browne’a, skryte powłoką skóry szczegóły ludzkiej anatomii pieczołowicie oddane przez Andreasa Vesaliusa, zielniki i atlasy zawierające precyzyjnie oddany wygląd pozornie dobrze znanych roślin i zwierząt czy ilustracje ukazujące świat widziany po raz pierwszy, gdy odsłaniał się przed okiem uzbrojonym w mikroskop i lunetę. Wszystko to wymagało przedstawienia, aby mogło być dostępne oczom publiczności. Frontyspisy Baconowskiego Novum organum, Hobbesowskiego Lewiatana, ryciny przedstawiające kartezjańskie wiry czy trzymającego w rękach kije ślepca przemawiały do wyobraźni i pozwalały lepiej zrozumieć nowe idee, dając podnietę do intelektualnego namysłu. Związki te były zresztą wzajemne, skoro można wskazać na rolę obrazów mikroświata dla Locke’owskiego pomysłu mikroskopowych oczu czy dla rozważań zawartych przez Leibniza w jego Monadologii.
Równie trwałe były wspomniane związki filozofii z medycyną – dość przypomnieć pomysły rozwijającego idee Kartezjusza, lekarza i filozofa, Antoine Le Camusa, współpracę pomiędzy Thomasem Sydenhamem i Locke’iem czy dyskusję Kanta nad relacją obu tych dziedzin w Sporze fakultetów. Nowożytni myśliciele byli przekonani, że zadaniem medycyny jest opis funkcjonowania ludzkiego ciała i narzucanie zdrowego stylu życia, a gdy ciało niedomaga – wskazywanie procedur leczniczych. Podobną diagnostyczną, profilaktyczną i terapeutyczną rolę miała odgrywać, rozpoznająca sposób funkcjonowania ludzkiego umysłu, filozofia, w której szukano także pouczenia w kwestii tego, jak zawiadywać ludzkim rozumem. Gdy zaś człowiek go tracił, miała dostarczyć lekarstw, by - niczym na obrazie Hieronima Boscha - usunąć „kamień głupoty” z ludzkich głów.
Prosimy o nadsyłanie abstraktów wystąpień (ok. 250-500 słów) do 21 marca 2024 r. na adres: filozofia.sztuka.medycyna@gmail.com
Konferencja odbędzie się w Instytucie Filozofii Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego w dniach 17-18 kwietnia br. Opłata konferencyjna wynosi 300 zł.
Kierownictwo naukowe: dr hab. Anna Chęćka, prof.UG, dr hab. Anna Wolińska UW, prof. dr hab. Adam Grzeliński UMK. Sekretarz konferencji: Anna Prus, GUMed / UG.
THE LATEST NEWS
We are happy to announce that our team's project Musical Thinking was presented as part of a prestigious 8th Conference of the Royal Musical Association Music & Philosophy Study Group in London (July 2022, King’s College London) https://musicandphilosophy.ac.uk/events/mpsg22/
Session abstract
Our session covers a wide spectrum of musical thinking, from sensory and pre-conceptual experiences through the specificity of wordless thinking to conceptual approaches to musical experience. Human conscious experience consists of many forms of awareness, from simple sensations to different kinds of emotions and elaborate visual and conceptual categories. An increasing number of scholars admit that not only humans, but also other animals, possess different types of consciousness. This suggests that human consciousness evolved from simpler forms of awareness. The aim of the first speaker’s proposal is to indicate that the emotional reactions to musical syntax represent a form of preconceptual proto-consciousness that preceded the appearance of the human conceptual mind. Following the trail set by Jerrold Levinson, the second speaker focuses on purely instrumental music as one that perfectly realizes the ideal of wordless thought of the composer, performer and listener − taking into account not only intellectual processes, but also the bodily and pre-reflective response to musical stimuli. Subsequently, the third speaker introduces Fauconnier and Turner’s hypothesis that human beings blend what they already know to create new, tractable ideas. The most obvious blends in music are major and minor scales, the circle of fifths and meanings of programme works. Apart from the theory, our scholar presents one purely instrumental work by contemporary Polish composer Paweł Szymański, and two blends explaining the construction and semantics of the work. Finally, the fourth scientist considers whether, in the light of modern neurobiology, we are able to maintain the belief that musical thinking exemplifies the extremely complex brain activity engaging the whole brain and all levels of its hierarchical structure. If this is proven, then the implication is that musical thinking could be one of the measures of the highest brain functions with all its practical implications in modern medicine.
OUR TEAM
ANNA CHĘĆKA
A pianist, doctor habilitatus of humanities (philosophy), professor at the Institute of Philosophy, University of Gdańsk. She has completed piano studies at the Academy of Music in Gdansk and studied with Bernard Ringeissen in Paris on a French government scholarship. In 2005 she completed her Ph.D. studies in philosophy (dissertation On criticizing music. Metacritical aspects of musical performance’s evaluations). In 2014, she got her habilitation in philosophy. She has published four books: Dysonanse krytyki. O ocenie wykonania utworu muzycznego, [Critical Dissonances. Evaluating Performances of Musical Work] Gdansk 2008, Ucho i umysł. Szkice o doświadczaniu muzyki [Ear and Mind. Sketches of Musical Experience] Gdansk 2012, A jak Apollo. Biografia Alfreda Cortota [A as in Apollo: A Biography of Alfred Cortot] Warszawa 2019, and Słuch metafizyczny [Ear for metaphysics] Warszawa 2020. Anna’s current research interests oscillate around neuroaesthetics. She co-edited a special neuroaesthetic issue of "Polish Journal of Art and Philosophy" (Sztuka i Filozofia, 56/2020) and published several papers about music and the brain in collaboration with Piotr Zieliński (see below).
VIOLETTA KOSTKA
Trained as musicologist at the University of Poznań, she received PhD degree and habilitation from the Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. Currently works as Professor at the S. Moniuszko Academy of Music in Gdańsk. She has won scientific scholarships from the University of Cambridge, the Polish Library in Paris and the State Committee of Scientific Research in Poland. Her research achievements include books on Tadeusz Kassern’s and Paweł Szymański’s music, and about 100 articles, published in Poland and abroad, among others in "Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart" (Germany) and „Tempo. A Quarterly Review of Modern Music” (UK). She is co-editor of the book Intertextuality in Music: Dialogic Composition published in 2021 by Routledge. In recent years, she has given several author lectures in Poland and abroad, organised three conferences and began teaching a subject called Music Cognition. Her current research interests oscillate around music cognition, meanings of musical works, musical emotions, intertextuality in music, multimedia and different problems of contemporary music.
PIOTR PODLIPNIAK
A professor at the Institute of Musicology, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland. His main areas of interest are the cognitive basis of music, biological sources of human musicality, musical universals, vocal communication, hearing and music, music and emotions, musical semiotics, the origin of music and language, the evolution of preconceptual and conceptual meaning, music perception, and methodology of musicology. He is author of two books: Uniwersalia muzyczne [Musical universals] Poznań 2007, and Instynkt tonalny. Koncepcja ewolucyjnego pochodzenia tonalności muzycznej [Tonal Instinct. The Concept behind the Evolutionary Origin of Musical Tonality] Poznań 2015, and the numbers of articles. In his musicological research, he refers to such academic disciplines as cognitive science, evolutionary biology, ethology, evolutionary psychology, cognitive psychology, psycholinguistics, and comparative anthropology. He is an editor-in-chief of the journal “Interdisciplinary Studies in Musicology”.
PIOTR ZIELIŃSKI
Neurosurgeon, head of the Department of Neurosurgery, Medical University in Gdansk, Poland. A graduate of the Medical University of Gdańsk. He worked in the Clinic of Neurosurgery of the 10th Military Hospital in Bydgoszcz and Tooting Medical Centre in London. He has experience in the full range of neurosurgical surgeries. Scientifically interested in intraoperative neurophysiology, the spine in sport and neuroaesthetics. He published articles with Anna Chęćka: Musical thinking: philosophy of music versus neurobiology, “Sztuka i Filozofia” [Art and Philosophy, 56/2020], Mnemosyne, music and brain. Humanities and neurobiology on the traces of memory and forgetting [Forgotten art. The art of remembering, ed. Teresa Pękala, Lublin 2019] and Discourse of touch: between automatism and creation [Discourses of art. Discourses on art, ed. Teresa Pękala, Lublin 2018]. More important medical publications: Influence of intraoperative neurophysiologic monitoring on the development of surgical dissection techniques, "Expert review of medical devices" 2012, 9 (6), Nucleus accumbens stimulation in pathological obesity, "Polish Neurology and Neurosurgery " 2016. 50 (3), Full spinal cord regeneration after total transection is not possible due to entropy change, "Medical hypotheses" 2016. He has more than 400 citations.
A medicine student at Medical University of Gdańsk and a student of Interfaculty Individual Studies in the Humanities at University of Gdańsk. Her current main fields of interest are neuroethics (and bioethics in general), transhumanism, neurophysiology and neuromodulation technologies. She is a National Coordinator of Medical Law in International Federation of Medical Students' Associations and a students’ representative at Medical University of Gdańsk. In neurobiology of music she is especially interested in emotional facets of musical appreciation, amusia, the impact of music on people’s memory and identity and music therapy in neurodegenerative diseases.
CONTACT US
Institute of Philosophy, University of Gdansk, Bazynskiego 4 Str, 80-309 Gdansk, Poland
(+48) 58 523 45 15
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