About Psychology of Music

In a world where vision and natural language dominate, how is it that music – an auditory, non-verbal stimulus – can impart powerful and subtle effects on the mind, brain and body? Music psychologists have made important progress on this question, but have also reached impasses on a range of stimulating questions since the subdiscipline became established nearly half a century ago. 

Questions about music making people more intelligent was hotly debated in the 1990s, and still draws interest with research that now investigates how and why music can improve non-musical performance and health. Physiological markers and brain imaging demonstrate the multitude of ways music experience links to the body. Further, the powerful, and at times contradictory, experiences associated with music listening and performing has left mysteries that researchers are still trying to unfurl. Additionally, despite its commonly held status as an auditory stimulus, questions about the multisensory aspects of music perception and action have also drawn increasing interest. 

This Collection welcomes recent attempts to address these and other questions in music psychology. The areas of investigation invited for this Collection include, but are not limited to:

• How music can help people (music and health)
• How music works (empirical and theoretical approaches)
• How musicians create music (music performance science)
• How people process music while listening (music perception)

These diverse areas of research embrace the interdisciplinarity and variety that is a hallmark of music psychology, including brain imaging, physiological response, sound-recording analysis, self-report, motion tracking and other observations, interview techniques and music analysis.

Keywords: Music psychology, musicology, music performance, music perception, multisensory, brain imaging, physiological response, sound-recording analysis, self-report, motion tracking, interview techniques, music analysis

Any questions about this Collection? Please email editorial@routledgeopenresearch.org