News & Events Philosopher Isabelle Peretz To Speak on “The Nature of Music from a Biological Perspective” at Amherst College Feb. 22

February 5, 2007
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AMHERST, Mass.—Isabelle Peretz, professor of psychology at the Université de Montréal, will give a talk on “The Nature of Music from a Biological Perspective” at 4:30 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 22, in Pruyne Lecture Hall (Fayerweather 115) at Amherst College. Organized by the Amherst College Department of Philosophy and funded by the Forry and Micken Fund in Philosophy and Science, Peretz’s talk is free and open to the public.

A professor of psychology and director of the Laboratory of Neuropsychology of Music and of Auditory Cognition at the University of Montreal, Peretz studies the biological sources and neural aptitudes involved in the individual’s perception of music. She is co-director of the Centre for Brain, Music and Sound(BRAMS), a research and teaching center at the University of Montreal and McGill University devoted to the neuroscience of auditory cognition. She has co-authored two books on the subject of musical cognition, The Cognitive Neuroscience of Music (2003) and The Biological Foundations of Music (Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, V. 930, 2001). The former is one of the first books to explore the neural processes involved in music. Peretz is respected for breaking new ground in this growing field.

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