Empirical Musical Imagery beyond the “Mind’s Ear”

Abstract

Freya Bailes deals with the topic of musical imagery, and she uses embodied cognition as a framework to argue that musical imagery is a multimodal experience. Existing empirical studies of musical imagery are reviewed and Bailes points to future directions for the study of musical imagery as an embodied-cognition phenomenon. Arguing that musical imagery can never be fully disembodied, Bailes moves beyond the idea of auditory imagery as merely a simulation of auditory experience by “the mind’s ear.” Instead, she outlines how imagining sounds involves kinesthetic imagery and she concludes that sound and music are always connected to sensory motor processing.