This is the official website of the research programme Humans Making Music – an interplay between cultural and hereditory factors financed by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond in Sweden. The Project Leader is Professor Fredrik Ullén (Karolinska Institutet) and other project contributors include Professor Guy Madison (Umeå universitet), Professor Nancy Pedersen (Karolinska Institutet) and Professor Töres Theorell (Karolinska Institutet).
The purpose of the project is to study the interaction between hereditory and environmental factors for possible connections with level of musical interest and ability together with physical and psychological health. The scope of the term musical interest covers listening to music, teaching music, attending concerts and playing music at all levels from amateur to professional. Some of the key lines of inquiry in this project concern how personality, cognitive ability, and environmental factors appear to contribute to musical interest and expertise; how genetic and environmental factors contribute to the previously known connection between musical interest and health, how genetic and environmental factors contribute to other abilities such as problem solving, speed of reaction, timing and precision, melody, rythmn, perception of time and perfect pitch.
Research areas: Cognition research, Neuro Biology, Genetics, Neuroscience, Public Medicine, Occupational Medicine,
Psychiatry