Beat Perception and Meter Induction in Vision and Spatial Audition

Abstract: His ongoing thesis is entitled “Neural and Evolutionary Correlates of Rhythm Processing through Beat and Meter.” The neural correlates of timing mechanisms are observed through electroencephalographic recordings and frequency analyses. The main goal is to better understand how our brain processes beat and meter across modalities, and attest the role of attention and the impact of formal music training on rhythmic perception. The evolutionary bases of these timing mechanisms are observed through behavioral studies with rats. We try to disentangle which rhythmic components are human-specific (and maybe related to language) and which are shared with other animals. Future studies will also look at the evolution of the tonal-harmonic structure of music.

Bio: Alexandre Celma Miralles is a Ph.D. candidate in Biomedicine in the Center for Brain and Cognition at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona, Spain). He is currently working on music cognition in the “Language & Comparative Cognition Group” under the supervision of J. M. Toro. After a Music Professional degree in violin (2010) and a BA in Catalan Philology (2012), he pursued an M.A. in Cognitive Science and Language (2014) and a M.Sc. in Brain and Cognition (2015), which led him into the research of “syntactic” structures in the framework of biolinguistics and biomusicology. He is also an associate member of the “Grammar & Cognition Lab”, directed by W. Hinzen & J. Rosselló at the Universitat de Barcelona.