LABORATORY NOTE Music cognition research amidst the boreal forest Petri Toiviainen Æ Jaakko Erkkila ¨ Æ Tuomas Eerola Æ Geoff Luck Æ Olivier Lartillot Received: 18 December 2006 / Accepted: 9 January 2007 / Published online: 31 January 2007 Ó Marta Olivetti Belardinelli and Springer-Verlag 2007 Introduction The music cognition team (MCT) is part of the Department of Music of the University of Jyva ¨ skyla ¨ in Finland. The city of Jyva ¨ skyla ¨ is located in the heart of the lake region of Finland, at 62° of Northern latitude. The University of Jyva ¨skyla ¨ is one of the leading re- search universities of Finland. The Department of Music comprises about 40 staff members and provides training in musicology, music education, and music therapy. Moreover, the department runs the Master’s programme on music, mind, and technology, which was started in 2005. The MCT has been active for more than 15 years, and has, during its life span, focussed on a wide range of topics related to the cognition of music. These in- clude various processes related to music perception (especially rhythm, tonality, and melody), improvisa- tion, cross-cultural studies, music therapy, music and movement, as well as computational analysis of music. The research is interdisciplinary, utilizing methods of musicology, psychology, brain research, and computa- tional modelling. To this end, the Department of Music hosts an excellent research infrastructure, comprising, for instance, a state-of-the-art recording studio with Dolby 5.1 surround recording and mixing facilities, a music therapy training and research clinic, an eight- camera infrared motion tracking system, two Yamaha Disklaviers, and a 32-channel EEG device. The MCT is lead by Petri Toiviainen and has currently five senior members with backgrounds in musicology, music therapy, psychology, computer science, and physics, as well as a number of doctoral students. Since 1990, the MCT has co-ordinated a number of research projects funded by the Academy of Finland, the main organization for research funding in the country. Currently, two externally funded research projects are active. The project Music, Movement, Gesture, funded by the Academy of Finland during 2006–2008, investi- gates the relationship between physical and musical gestures, in particular, the role of movement in syn- chronization and emotional expression. During 2006– 2009, the MCT participates in the research project Tuning the Brain for Music, funded by the sixth frame- work programme of the European Union, and co-ordi- nated by the brain and music team (BMT) at the Cognitive Brain Research Unit of the University of Helsinki. In this project, the MCT studies the relation- ship between musical structure and perceived emotion, as well as the effect of music therapy. During 2008–2013, the MCT will work together with the BMT as the Finnish Centre of Excellence in Interdisciplinary Music Re- search, funded by the Academy of Finland. This centre will comprise ca. 30 researchers. In what follows, short accounts of the main branches of research carried out by the MCT will be given. These include music perception, cross-cultural studies, music therapy, music and move- ment, and computational music analysis. Music perception Processes of rhythm perception have been studied by the MCT using both listening experiments and P. Toiviainen (&) Á J. Erkkila ¨ Á T. Eerola Á G. Luck Á O. Lartillot Department of Music, University of Jyva ¨ skyla ¨, P.O. Box 35, 40014 Jyvaskyla, Finland e-mail: ptoiviai@jyu.fi 123 Cogn Process (2007) 8:57–62 DOI 10.1007/s10339-007-0160-4