Dr. Janata's research into music and memory featured in Wall Street Journal Online
Music
Up one levelMusic shapes our emotions, makes us move, and helps us remember times past. Our research examines how perceptual, cognitive, motoric, and emotional functions of the brain combine to give rise to our musical experiences.
Music, Spirituality, Religion, and the Human Brain
The connection between music, spirituality, and religion is so widespread as to be nearly universal. Since the dawn of humanity and across a broad spectrum of cultures around the world, music and musical experience have been an integral part of spirituality and religion. Strangely, there has been very little scholarly research on this topic. In this project, Drs. Janata & Sylvan, together with a group of leading researchers, will examine the relationship between these integral aspects of human culture in terms of underlying psychological and neuroscientific principles. Their approach is to examine this relationship at three levels of analysis. Accordingly, their project is arranged into three themes.
Exploring the Mind Speaker Series - Dr. Paul Ekman, UC San Francisco