Psychology 245 - Psychology of Music

Every culture in the world has some form of music, but why did music evolve, and what function does it serve? In this course, we will explore the cognitive and neural processes that underlie music perception and production to ask the following questions: Does music have universal features that cross cultures? How does music convey emotion? What do infants know about music? Is music specifically human? And finally, what are the parallels between music and language? Through these questions, we hope to discover something about the origin of music and what makes it such an integral part of our daily lives.

Prereq: a 100 level course in Psychology