Research

Psychologists study how the brain responds to music

Psychologists at the University have embarked on an ambitious project to study how the brain follows the pitch of musical melodies.

Professor Ray Meddis and Dr Lowel O'Mard have been awarded a £220,000 grant by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council to test their theory of how the brain detects and follows the pitch of sounds in speech and music.

Professor Meddis explained: 'Most people accept that the brain is involved in our conscious experience, but scientists have only sketchy ideas as to how the brain does what it does. In the Psychology Department we do have a theory as to how the brain deals with some simple aspects of hearing.'

The model response to the word 'ouch'

The researchers' approach is to write computer programmes that model all the stages that sound goes through on its way through the ear, along the auditory nerve and up through the brainstem.

Each stage is painstakingly modelled in minute detail. Careful checks are necessary at each stage to make sure that the model agrees with physiological measurements made in other laboratories using animals.

The models have been in development over a 20-year period and have progressed to the point where physiologists would be hard put to distinguish between data collected from animals and data generated by the models.

Their aim extends beyond animal physiology, however; they want to explain human conscious response to sounds. This new project is an ambitious attempt to show how tens of thousands of brain cells co-operate to tell the difference between different notes on the musical scale.

The model will require considerable computing power if it is to remain physiologically correct. Some of the funding will be used to explore suitable computing arrangements.

Dr O'Mard has been responsible for some years for generating the highly-specified and portable computer code. This is now available over the internet to any laboratory that wishes to do its own modelling without a 20-year code writing effort. A large and growing number of laboratories around the world are taking advantage of this facility and many individual collaborations are currently in progress.

Prestigious award for political scientist

Professor David McKay of the Department of Government was recently awarded the WJM Mackenzie Prize by the Political Studies Association for best book published in political science in 2001.

His Designing Europe: Comparative Lessons from the Federal Experience, published by Oxford University Press, makes systematic comparisons between the European Union (EU) and the historical evolution of five federal states: the US, Canada, Switzerland, Germany and Australia. He concludes that because, like Switzerland, the EU is both highly decentralised and heterogeneous, existing institutional arrangements that limit central power should be maintained or even strengthened. Professor McKay is now refining his approach by applying theories of federal sustainability to other countries, including India.

David McKay is a longstanding member of the Department and was Executive Director of the European Consortium for Political Research from 1983 to 1991. He is the third member of the Department to receive the prize. Professors Anthony King and Ivor Crewe jointly received the award in 1997 for their 1995 book SDP: The Birth, Life and Death of the Social Democratic Party. With three recipients in just six years, the Department hopes the award could become established as a Departmental tradition.

Also in the printed June edition of Wyvern:

• Literary honours
• Internet take up is slowing