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Come and join our choir (Saturdays from 11 am to 1 pm for 8 weeks)!
Participants will:
Fill out a short questionnaire
Have their understanding of French assessed
Have their mood and sense of belonging evaluated
Have a brief interview about what they liked and didn’t like at the end
Join a choir or a waitlist for a choir
+ Everybody is welcome!
+ Participants will receive a weekly Snack during the pause and have the chance to win $100!
Click for details: Comunicate in harmony
If you are 18 + and new to Montreal and not yet fluent in French, but can understand basic English, please click this link to a short questionnaire to find out if you’re eligible for the study: eligibility questionnaire
This study aims to develop new musical interventions for people with heart conditions
Cette étude s’intéresse à la perception du rythme chez les personnes dyslexiques
The Peretz Lab is pleased to invite children aged 3 to 8 to participate in a short online singing game (10-15 minutes).
To thank you for contributing to this research, your child can earn a $5 gift card, or enter a raffle for a 1-in-10 chance to win a $50 gift card for the bookstore of their choice.
For more information, please contact us at:
child.improvisation.study@gmail.com
Please click the link only when you are ready to begin. If you need to pause or restart the study, you must return to this page, click this link again, and start over. You will not be able to refresh the page mid-study.
We thank you for your participation!
Le laboratoire Peretz a le plaisir d’inviter les enfants de 3 à 8 ans à participer à un petit jeu de chant en ligne (10 à 15 minutes).
Pour vous remercier de contribuer à cette recherche, votre enfant peut gagner une carte-cadeau de 5 $ ou participer à un tirage pour une chance sur 10 de gagner une carte-cadeau de 50 $ dans la librairie de son choix.
Pour plus d’informations, veuillez nous contacter à l’adresse suivante : child.improvisation.study@gmail.com
Veuillez cliquer sur ce lien uniquement lorsque vous êtes prêt à commencer. Si vous devez interrompre ou reprendre l’étude, vous pourrez le faire en revenant sur cette page et en cliquant à nouveau sur le lien. Il n’est pas possible d’actualiser la page en cours d’étude.
Merci pour votre participation !
We continue to study learning disorders, such as amusia and dyslexia, because they provide one of the best sources of evidence regarding the learning of complex systems. The logic of this approach is one of reverse-engineering, whereby the behavioural breakdown patterns coupled with precise neuroimaging techniques can reveal the inner working of the musical and language brain.
Based on recent research, Peretz (TiCS, 2016) has proposed that unreliable feedback provided by the frontal cortex is the cause of the learning deficits in congenital amusia of which the most studied form is pitch deafness that affects fine-grained pitch processing in 1 to 4% of the population. Beat deafness is a more recently discovered form and affects fine-tuning of timing. There is also substantial evidence that beat processing is impaired in dyslexia and likely represents impaired bottom‐up connections from auditory to frontal regions.
We plan to combine electroencephalography (EEG) and online feedback in these learning disorders, in order to establish a causal relationship between the behavioural effects of error correction and the brain signatures of the disorders.
Here are three key questions:
What is the musical knowledge captured in the auditory cortex without frontal feedback?
Can error correction alleviate musical disorders?
Can feedback fine-tune timing in beat deafness and in dyslexia?
Supported by a discovery grant, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)
«The role of feedback: from amusia to dyslexia», 2021-2025
This project aims to better characterize the impact of environmental and genetic factors in the emergence of exceptional musical talent, as well as talent in different fields. We examine different factors such as family musical background, personality, absolute pitch, synesthesia, autistic traits as well as expertise in different fields.
This project is supported by the Canada Research Chair in neurocognition of music
For centuries, the role of “innate talent” versus training in the expression of music abilities has intrigued musicians and researchers alike, with our general capacity to perceive, produce, and enjoy music in the absence of formal training suggesting that music may be “hardwired” in our genetic makeup.
Singing is the most universal means of music making and an ideal paradigm for investigating the genetic basis of music abilities. Anecdotally, it appears to cluster in families (e.g., the Jackson 5), with some individuals possessing a natural talent to sing in-tune, as reflected by their pitch accuracy. There is also an emerging understanding of the neurobiological basis of singing and how this varies with training and expertise [6]. This provides a fruitful opportunity to address the fundamental aim of this project; to investigate the molecular genetic basis of singing ability.
In 2017, our team was awarded ARC Discovery Project funding to perform the world’s first objective investigation of the heritability of singing using a twin study design. This formed the first crucial stage in our research program, which points to the likelihood of obtaining evidence for the molecular genetic basis of singing ability. This underscores the specific aims of the second stage of our research program, as follows:
To characterise the phenotype of ‘in-tune’ singing ability
To examine large multiplex families with a high incidence of high singing ability to determine the mode of inheritance
To use molecular genetic approaches of linkage analysis and whole genome sequencing to identify chromosomal regions and genetic variants associated with high singing ability.
This project is supported by a Discovery Project, Australian Research Council, 2020-2023
“Discovering genes for singing ability in Australian families”
Wilson (P.I.), G. McPherson, S. Berkovic, I Peretz.
Although there is tremendous diversity in music, growing evidence indicates there are numerous commonalities or “universals” in musical structures. These commonalities underscore that music is rooted in fundamental biological processes (e.g., auditory and reward processing, motor control) that are shared across humans. While similar fundamental processes are also present in non-human animals, the degree to which the structure and evaluation of animal communication signals resembles music universals and human aesthetic preferences remains unclear. We Aim to discover acoustical universals shared between animal communication and music (Aim 1) and to address the evolutionary links between universals and aesthetics (Aims 2 & 3).
Supported by a Research team grant, Fonds de recherche du Québec – Nature et Technologies (FRQ-NT), 2021-2024, Wooley,S. (PI), Sakata,J., Peretz, I., O’Donnel,T.
Adults living with communication disorders face formidable challenges to social wellbeing. Foremost among these is the social isolation and loneliness that can arise as a downstream consequence of impaired communication. In particular, they may develop a disability focus, believing that they are no longer able to have meaningful communication, or engage in social activities and relationships. Here we define a communication disorder (CD) broadly as any condition that affects an individual’s ability to produce, perceive, or understand verbal and nonverbal aspects of speech to engage in discourse effectively with others (i.e., aphasia, stuttering, hearing loss, Parkinson’s disease, breathing disorders).
The current project considers group singing as a meaningful social activity for people living with CDs that has potential to support communication skills (production, perception and understanding) as well as social wellbeing. While other effective interventions already exist, they are highly medicalized, costly to deploy, not widely available in remote communities, and generally not effective with regard to combating social wellbeing issues related to CD. Thus, group singing for CD appears to be worthy of further consideration from scientific, practical, economic, and ethical standpoints.
Supported by a Partnership Grant, Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), 2021-2028, Russo (PI)
