Keynote Speakers

"Bach to the blues: Music, color, emotion and synesthesia"

Steve Palmer, Ph.D.

Professor, Department of Psychology

University of California Berkeley

Stephen Palmer received his B.A. in Psychology at Princeton University in 1970 and his PhD in Psychology at UCSD in 1975, where he worked with Donald Norman and David Rumelhart.  Since then, he has taught in Psychology and Cognitive Science at UC Berkeley, where he headed the Cognitive Science programs from 1990-2000. He is best known for his research on perceptual organization in vision and for his interdisciplinary book, Vision Science: Photons to Phenomenology (MIT Press, 1999).  He now studies visual aesthetics of color and spatial composition as well as cross-modal associations between music and vision in synesthetes and non-synesthetes.  Together with Arthur Shimamura, he edited Aesthetic science: Connecting minds, brains, and experience (Oxford University Press, 2012), and he is currently co-authoring an interdisciplinary book on color together with Michael Webster and Karen Schloss titled, Reversing the Rainbow: Reflections on Color and Consciousness.

"Physically embodied music cognition"

Edward Large, Ph.D.

Professor, Department of Psychology

University of Connecticut

Edward Large directs the Music Dynamics Laboratory at the University of Connecticut, where he is Professor of Psychological Sciences and Professor of Physics. His research areas include music psychology, auditory neuroscience and nonlinear dynamical systems. He uses theoretical modeling in conjunction with experimental techniques to understand how the rhythmic and tonal structures of music interact with the dynamics of the brain and body. He currently serves as President of the Society for Music Perception and Cognition and he is the Founder of Oscilloscape, a software startup based in the Hartford, Connecticut area. His current projects include studies of driven oscillator networks, rhythm perception-action in humans and nonhuman animals, perception of pitch and tonality, auditory pattern recognition and learning, and emotional communication in music.