Distinguished Professor Elizabeth Margulis and Chancellor Joe Steinmetz to Lecture on 'Brain and Music'

Professor Elizabeth Margulis and Chancellor Joseph Steinmetz will discuss what it means to listen to music, to make music, and what it takes cognitively to do these things in their lecture, "Brain and Music."

Led Zeppelin will be on the syllabus; Bach and Beyoncé too. ERPs, EEGs and other neuroimaging tools that offer insight into musical enjoyment, the interplay between culture and hearing, and the nature of musical expertise will also be covered in the Spring 2019 Honors College Signature Seminar, Brain and Music. 

All on campus and in the community are invited to attend a free public lecture that previews the course, which will be led by Elizabeth Margulis, a distinguished professor and director of the university's Music Cognition Lab, and Chancellor Joe Steinmetz, a nationally respected behavioral neuroscientist. The lecture will take place at 5:15 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 25, in Gearhart Hall Auditorium (GEAR 26) and will also be streamed via Facebook Live on the Honors College Facebook page.

There will be no textbooks for the course, because "neuroscience is a fairly new field," Chancellor Steinmetz pointed out. Instead, the students will bone up on the subject by reading primary literature — articles from peer-reviewed journals.

"They're going to interrogate what questions are being asked and how findings are interpreted," said Elizabeth Margulis. The course, and the preview lecture, will emphasize aspects of music that impact all of us, every day.

Steinmetz, who played keyboards in a series of rock bands in the early 70s, marvels at the sheer volume of music available today, a far cry from the days when deejays controlled what you listened to and available funds curtailed record collections. 

"It's a memory capacity issue," he said. "Right now, people have tremendous access to music through streaming services, and they can google lyrics. There may be something specific about music and memory that we don't know much about — yet."

"We hope the course, and the lecture, will pique people's curiosity about the brain, and their own listening habits," Margulis added.

Listen to Kyle Kellams' interview with Margulis and Steinmetz on KUAF's Ozarks at Large news program. 

Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis has written two books, both from Oxford University Press: The Psychology of Music: A Very Short Introduction, and On Repeat: How Music Plays the Mind, which received the Wallace Berry Award from the Society for Music Theory, and the ASCAP Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Award. Her current cross-cultural research on narrative perceptions of music is supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation. She recently appeared on the season finale of the Netflix series Explained, in an episode titled "Music, Explained" that corresponds closely to the subject matter of Brain and Music. Her work also has been featured on All Things Considered and Science Friday on NPR, the BBC, and in newspapers ranging from the Boston Globe to the London Times. She is president-elect of the Society for Music Perception and Cognition.

Chancellor Joe Steinmetz has enjoyed a long and distinguished career in academic leadership, filling key faculty and administrative positions at Indiana University, the University of Kansas and Ohio State University before taking the helm at the U of A in January 2016. Prior to these leadership roles, Steinmetz won distinction as a neuroscientist. He was recognized in 1996 by the National Academy of Sciences for his contributions to the fields of experimental psychology and neuroscience, and in 2012 he was named an AAAS Fellow. His research interests include neuroanatomical and neurophysiological substrates of learning and memory; the effects of alcohol on neural and behavioral function; neurobiological and behavioral models of fetal alcohol syndrome; and the neurobiology of simple human learning, memory, and cognitive function.

Next spring, in addition to Brain and Music, the Honors College will offer Signature Seminars on Aging, taught by Michelle Gray, an associate professor of exercise science, and B.S., taught by Jay Greene, Distinguished Professor and head of the Department of Education Reform. The Signature Seminars, designated HNRC 4013H in the university's Catalog of Studies, focus on a wide range of cutting-edge topics, including cancer, water, internet, free speech and bad medicine. Honors students must apply to participate in these courses, and those selected will be designated Dean's Signature Scholars. The application deadline is Thursday, Oct. 25.