Wired for music: The sequel…
McGill researchers to study concert audience in second phase of brain experiment
On April 8, 2006, McGill University researchers Dr. Daniel Levitin and Dr. Stephen McAdams made international headlines with a world first: they wired the conductor of the Boston Pops, as well as Boston Symphony Orchestra musicians and audience members, to dozens of electrodes to measure the real-time physiological and emotional responses of human beings to music.
Now, Levitin and McAdams want to know whether the emotional impact of that same performance is altered when an audience is played a recorded version of the music rather than experiencing the concert live. The second and final part of this unique experiment takes place Tuesday, June 6, at 12 noon at McGill University, as 50 volunteer audience members are wired up to the same measuring equipment that audience members wore at the live concert in Boston. A high-definition digital video (HDDV) and high-fidelity digital audio recording of the performance conducted by Keith Lockhart will be played in the University's new Tanna Schulich Hall (527 Sherbrooke St. W., Montreal), a unique high-tech concert hall at the Schulich School of Music designed to integrate music, technology and science.
As in the first part of the experiment, sensing equipment attached to 16 audience members will record heart rate, blood pulse volume and galvanic skin response. A set of "slider boxes" will be manipulated by a separate group of 32 audience members who will adjust a knob continuously to indicate their real-time emotional reactions to the concert.
The interdisciplinary McGill University team conducting this research is led by McAdams, a composer-turned-cognitive psychologist, and Levitin, a musician, former record producer/engineer for Stevie Wonder, Santana and Steely Dan, among others, and now a cognitive neuroscientist.
"As people are increasingly listening to music on their computers or home theatre systems, we want to know whether that evokes a different music experience than a live concert does," Levitin explained. "If it does," McAdams continued, "we want to quantify that, and be able to understand how the experiences differ. Maestro Lockhart added, "Everyone knows that a live concert has a certain excitement to it that a taped one doesn't — maybe it's the engagement that the audience feels with the performers, maybe it's knowing that anything can happen. Experiments like this will help us to understand the most important musical instrument of all: the human brain."
McGill University's Schulich School of Music is among the leading centres in the world for the scientific study of music. McAdams is Director of McGill's Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT), a $50-million integrated set of laboratories employing 20 researchers, including Levitin.
