Creating and Experiencing the Arts
The Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics (MPIEA) investigates why and how people create art and how they perform, experience, and evaluate it. The Institute’s focus is on music, but we also engage with other performing arts such as dance and film.
The MPIEA explores the underlying genetic, biological, and psychological processes that underlie the production and perception of art, as well as their interaction with the cultural, social, and historical factors and functions of aesthetic practices and discourses.
Departments
Music
Director: Prof. Dr. Melanie Wald-Fuhrmann
Using a variety of methods, the Department of Music researches the processing, experiencing and evaluation of music, as well as behaviour during its reception.
Cognitive Neuropsychology
Director: Prof. Dr. Fredrik Ullén
The Department of Cognitive Neuropsychology investigates the neuropsychological mechanisms of musical expertise, skill learning and creativity, as well as relations between cultural engagement, well-being and health.
Research Groups
Histories of Music, Mind, and Body
The "Histories of Music, Mind, and Body" Research Group seeks to historicize specific philosophical, embodied, and medical understandings of the experience of music.
Neural Codes of Intelligence
The Neural Codes of Intelligence research group investigates the neural processing principles that underlie central aspects of human intelligence in order to understand how information processing supports intelligent behavior and shapes cognitive abilities.
Computational Auditory Perception
Focusing largely on the auditory modality, the "Computational Auditory Perception" Research Group explores the roles of experience and exposure in creating and affecting our perception of the world.
Neurocognition of Music and Language
The Research Group “Neurocognition of Music and Language” explores perceptual, cognitive, and expressive similarities and differences between music and language, as well as their neural grounding and links with aesthetics.
Neural Circuits, Consciousness, and Cognition
The Research Group Neural Circuits, Consciousness, and Cognition seeks to understand why some experiences feel the way they do (consciousness) and how such experiences are imprinted on our brain (learning and memory).