Welcome to the official website for the research programme “Humans making music – culture and heritage in interaction” financed by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond. The project leader is Fredrik Ullén (Karolinska Institutet) and other leading researchers are Professor Guy Madison (Umeå universitet), Professor Nancy Pedersen (Karolinska Institutet) and Professor Töres Theorell (Karolinska Institutet).
The purpose of the programme is to study the interaction between heritage and environment to reveal the connection between musical engagement and physical and psychological health. The term musical engagement covers everything that has to do with music; for example listening to music, teaching music, going to concerts, or making music at all levels from amateur to professional. Some of the questions central to the programme concern how personality, cognitive ability and environmental factors contribute to musical engagement and expertise; how genetic and environmental factors contribute to the established connection between musical engagement and health; how genetic and environmental factors contribute to various abilities such as problem solving, reaction time, timing and precision, melody, rythmn, pitch perception and the development of a musical ear.
Research areas: Cognition research, Neurobiology, Genetics, Neuroscience, Community medicine, Professional medicine, Psychiatry
Scientific program description