The Neuroscientific Study of Music: A Burgeoning Discipline

Abstract

Numerous pioneers laid the groundwork for current neuromusical research. Beginning with Franz Joseph Gall in the eighteenth century, and continuing with John Hughlings Jackson, August Knoblauch, Richard Wallaschek, and others, these early forerunners were interested in localizing musicality in the brain and learning more about how music is processed in both healthy individuals and those with dysfunctions of various kinds. Since then, research literature has mushroomed, especially in the latter part of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The current volume features the work of fifty-four authors who have contributed over 350,000 words in thirty-three chapters. These chapters are organized into sections on music, the brain, and cultural contexts; music processing in the human brain; neural responses to music; musicianship and brain function; developmental issues in music and the brain; music, the brain, and health; and the future.