Dear all
We held the international online conference entitled Brain, Cognition, Emotion, and Music (BCEM) on May 20th and 21st, exploring the effects of music on people and the human connection with music, bringing in research and expertise from a number of fields including Psychology, Musicology, and Ethology. Despite original plans being interrupted by Covid-19, we moved the conference online with great success, seeing over 600 attendees.
Five keynote speakers from the top of their fields gave interesting and innovative talks around the four topics of BCEM and the links between them. Talk titles included ‘How Does Expectation Influence Aesthetic Experience of Music?’, ‘Emotion: Insights from Ethology’, and ‘Brain Correlates of Music-evoked Emotions’.
- Prof David Huron, The Ohio State University, USA
- Prof Stefan Koelsch, University of Bergen, Norway
- Prof Joydeep Bhattacharya, Goldsmiths University of London, UK
- Prof Andrea Halpern, Bucknell University, USA
- Dr Marcus Pearce, Queen Mary University of London, UK
A further five talks were presented by students and/or early career academics on an array of interesting topics including music and speech perception, harmony perception in different cultures and the emotive effects of music video watching. Over 40 posters were also included online from students, early academics, and established researchers on a wide range of topics including clinical applications, influence of musical training, and cognitive and perceptual mechanisms.
Despite the challenges of moving the conference online at the last minute, BCEM ran smoothly using recent digital technologies allowing attendees to watch and interact with speakers live. Although being online may have reduced the usual networking and social elements of a conference, it also allowed people to attend from all over the world, with recorded attendees from the UK, other European countries, North America, Asia, and Oceania. Overall, BCEM received overwhelmingly positive feedback, with attendees and speakers appreciating the conference as a refreshing and stimulating forum in the current uncertain and stressful times.
For further information and to watch the lectures please visit
http://bcem.uk/ Co-organisers
Amir-Homayoun Javadi
Amelia Turrell
Andrea Halpern
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Amir-Homayoun Javadi | Senior Lecturer in Cognitive Neuroscience | University of Kent
School of Psychology, Keynes College, University of Kent, Canterbury, CT2 7NP, UK