Hei Jose!

I would argue that there are innate and universal psychoacoustical properties that underlie all aspects of perception and cognition. For example, we can perceive only a specific range of frequencies, our ear has mechanical properties that filter the sound in various ways, and then convert this to nerve firings, which are then processed by the central auditory system. The further 'in' we go, the harder it is to model what goes on, and the more impact learning has on the final perception, and therefore, the more variable and personal these things become.

I've also tried to find a robust definition of the difference between perception and cognition, and not found one - though perception is usually concerned with sensation, and cognition with thought. I suppose both may be concerned with emotion. I think a more useful (possibly related) distinction can be made between nature (bottom-up) processes that directly 'map' the currently heard musical event to a sensation, feeling, or thought; and nurture (top-down) processes that 'map' the currently heard musical event as a function of its salience in long-term memory.

For example, in a nature process there is a mapping from frequency to the sensation of pitch, from spectra to timbre; from the similarity of an musical event to a non-musical event (e.g., fast bouncy music is similar to our speech patterns/body movement when excited); possibly even from complexity of the stimulus to pleasure/displeasure, so a stimulus that is too simple is boring, a stimulus that is too complex is unpleasant.

In a nurture process we might learn, over time, that a specific characteristic of music (e.g., melodic contour or mode, etc) is frequently used in the 'sad' bit of films; or that a specific sequence of tones might be particularly common, so we expect to hear it and are surprised if we do not. Despite the use of longterm memory in nurture processes, psychoacoustics still plays a role because it determines, in part, which events and patterns are stored in longterm memory.

Andy

Perception is hearing a melody intelectually and maybe emotionally without recognition of the melody. Cognition is perception but in some way recognizable. Example When you heard a few melodies of mozart and you hear an unknown composition of him you wil recognize that it is Mozart although you do not know that specific melody. Affection is different from perception and cognition. Music gives you than the feeling that you are on an other world. It touches you emotionally, you are involved in the music with your whole body. Unfortunately this feeling is difficult to describe.

Hi Jose,

Perception (from the Latin perceptio, percipio) is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to fabricate a mental representation through the process of transduction, which sensors in the body transform signals from the environment into encoded neural signals. -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perception

Cognition is a group of mental processes that includes attention, memory, producing and understanding language, solving problems, and making decisions. -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognition

Affection or fondness is a "disposition or rare state of mind or body" that is often associated with a feeling or type of love. -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affection

Love is an emotion of a strong affection and personal attachment. -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love

You're welcome ;)

Another thought about "cognition". I am currently reading an excellent book - Computational Modeling in Cognition (Lewandowski, Farrell 2011) – and all (I think) the models discussed are of behavioural not subjective phenomena. For example, how well can participants remember items presented in a list, how well can faces be categorized, etc). There is no discussion of models that are designed to predict subjective responses (e.g., sensations and feelings) to stimuli – for example, relating frequency to pitch height, or mode to emotional valence – that sort of thing. However, that may just be the focus of this book.

So can this latter type of modelling – the modelling of subjective states of mind – be called "cognitive"? "Perceptual" modelling works fine when talking about things like pitch height or timbre or loudness, but doesn't seem right if we're looking at feelings/emotions. Is there any term that can include modelling of all types of subjective experience such as sensations, feelings, thoughts - those things that we can observe through introspection? I think it would be useful to have some sort of umbrella term...

Musical perception is the hereditary response from with randomly picked up by the present status of mind.

Cognition is the pulse formed by the voluntary and nonvoluntary muscles instructed my neurons.

Affections is the natural phenomena evoked by instant of time with resonance concept.

Heart is the frontiers for all three as Oxygen exchange with carbondioxide and flow around the body system via blood and neurals instant response

These are the three domains of the three basic components of our brain: 1) the one dealing with our Body: Action and Perception loops 2) our Reflective Brain: Cognition and 3) our Predisposition, what we like or hate and do intuitively and immediately. It is of course difficult to separate them as they always work as one agent. But people differ in the degree their Self is closer or farther removed from these three poles. The same can be said about musical pieces. They can speak more to our Body (e.g. dance and marching music), to our Reflective Brain (e.g. symphonic works) or to our Predisposition (e.g. love songs, lullabies). Their messages are modulated by the attitudes and moods of the Self. If you want to know more about this: look out for my writings in the pipeline.

Thank you all for the great inputs. Now, kindling even more the discussion, is it possible to evoke emotion with music without musical appraisal?

I would say yes - in some occasions. This relates to the "brain stem reflex" -mechanism proposed by Juslin & Västfjäll (2008). In their words: "[brain stem reflex] refers to a process whereby an emotion is induced by music because one or more fundamental acoustical characteristics of the music are taken by the brain stem to signal a potentially important and urgent event. (...) Such responses reflect the impact of auditory sensations – music as sound in the most basic sense." (Juslin & Västfjäll, 2008, p. 564).

Juslin, P. N. & Västfjäll, D. 2008. Emotional responses to music: The need to consider underlying mechanisms. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 31, 559-575.

Music is absolutely able to evoke emotions, even without special esteem or attention comes up. Especially concerning the volume it has to be marked, that above 65 phone an elementary effect of the music on physiological and psychological parameters is widely inevitable (Hesse, 2003, 156). In case of conscious listening to music, there is a need to consider between the emotion, which is transported by a piece and is intended by the composer, and the emotion subjectively evoked in the listener. The perceived emotions and the individually experienced emotions can be very different from each other (Gabrielsson, 2002, 144). This view is confirmed by Juslin and Västfjäll by which was shown, that an emotion induction of music happens by mechanisms that are not exclusive used by the cognition of music (see above, cf. Vuoskoski) (Juslin, Västfjäll, 2008, 564, 573). Nevertheless, the expressed emotions in the music seem to exercise a "contagious" effect and to evoke this directly in the recipient (Lundqvist, Carlsson, Hilmersson, Juslin, 2009, 87f.).

Anton Gabrielsson: Emotion perceived and emotion felt same or different? In: Musicae Scientiae (Special issue 2001-2002), 2002, 123-147

Horst-Peter Hesse, Musik und Emotion: Wissenschaftliche Grundlagen des Musik-Erlebens, Springer Verlag, Wien, New York, 2003

Patriks N. Juslin, Daniel Västfjäll: Emotionally of response to music: The need to consider underlying mechanisms. In: Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 31 (5), 2008, 559-575

Lars-Olov Lundqvist, Fredrik Carlsson, Per Hilmersson, Patrik N. Juslin: Emotional Responses to Music: Experience, Expression, and Physiology. In: Psychology of Music, 37(1), 2009, 61-90