Universal musical harmony
Many forms of Western music make use of harmony, or the sound created by certain pairs of notes. A longstanding question is why some combinations of notes are perceived as pleasant while others sound jarring to the ear. Are the combinations we favor a universal phenomenon? Or are they specific to Western culture? Through intrepid research trips to the remote Bolivian rainforest, researchers in the McDermott lab at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research have found that aspects of the perception of note combinations may be universal, even though the aesthetic evaluation of note combination as pleasant or unpleasant is culture-specific. “Our work has suggested some universal features of perception that may shape musical behavior around the world,” says MIT associate professor of brain and cognitive sciences Josh McDermott, who is also an associate investigator at the McGovern Institute and senior author of the Nature Communications study. “But it also indicates the...