Abstract
It’s easy for a song to send us somewhere else, into a personal memory or a vividly imagined scene. This talk summarizes work from our lab on what we called Music-Induced Spontaneous Thought, or MIST. Although MIST can feel quite individual and idiosyncratic, we show that it is often actually closely shaped by the music, and broadly shared within, but not across, cultures. This talks addresses the insights and questions that come out of this line of work, with a focus on the directions we hope to go next.
Bio
Elizabeth Margulis is Professor and Acting Chair of the Department of Music at Princeton University, where she directs the Music Cognition Lab. Her book On Repeat: How Music Plays the Mind (Oxford) won the Wallace Berry Award from the Society for Music Theory. Her book The Psychology of Music: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford) serves as a concise introduction to the field, and has been translated into seven languages. Her co-edited volume The Science-Music Borderlands (MIT) won the Ruth A. Solie Award from the American Musicological Society. Her first book for general audiences Transported: The Everyday Magic of Musical Daydreams appeared with Liveright in May.