Dr. Christina Roeske

Main research areas
- Animal Communication
- Vocal learning
- Rhythm and melody in music and birdsong
- Aesthetic aspects of music and birdsong
- Social interactions during song learning
- Neural mechanisms of song learning
Vita
Academic Education
2004–2008 | PhD in Behavioral Neurobiology Free University Berlin and MPI for Molecular Genetics Berlin (Beharioral Biology group of Prof. Constance Scharff) |
1996–2004 | State Examination for Lectureship in Biology, German Language and Literature (Staatsexamen, Lehramt Gymnasium), Free University and Humboldt University Berlin |
2000–2001 | Exchange student in Linguistics, Université Paris 7, Denis Diderot Focus on structural phonetics and syntax, cognitive linguistics and psycholinguistics |
Career
03/2015–10/2020 | Post-doctoral researcher Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics |
2008–2015 | Post-doctoral researcher City University New York (CUNY), City College and Hunter College (Animal Behavior group of Prof. Ofer Tchernichovski) |
Publications
Publications
Buren, V., Müllensiefen, D., Roeske, T.C., & Degé, F. (2021). What Makes Babies Musical? Conceptions of Musicality in Infants and Toddlers. Frontiers in Psychology, 12:736833. doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.736833
Wald-Fuhrmann, M., Pearson, L., Roeske, T., Grüny, C., & Polak, R. (2021). Music as a trait in evolutionary theory: A musicological perspective. Behavioral and Brain Sciences,44, E93. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X20001193
Durojaye, C., Fink, L., Roeske, T. C., Wald-Fuhrmann, M., & Larrouy-Maestri, P. (2021). Perception of Nigerian Dùndún talking drum performances as speech-like vs. music-like: The role of familiarity and acoustic cues. Frontiers in Psychology,12: 652673. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.652673.
Buren, V., Müllensiefen, D., Roeske, T., & Degé, F. (2021). What makes a child musical? Conceptions of musical ability in childhood. Early Child Development and Care, 1-16. Online First. doi:10.1080/03004430.2020.1866566
Roeske, T. C., Larrouy-Maestri, P., Sakamoto, Y., & Poeppel, D. (2020). Listening to birdsong reveals basic features of rate perception and aesthetic judgements. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences (London),287(1923): 20193010. doi:10.1098/rspb.2019.3010.
Roeske, T. C., Tchernichovski, O., Poeppel, D., & Jacoby, N. (2020). Categorical rhythms are shared between songbirds and humans. Current Biology,30(18), 3544-3555.e6. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2020.06.072.
Roeske, T. C., Kelty-Stephen, D., and Wallot, S. "Multifractal analysis reveals music-like dynamic structure in songbird rhythms." Scientific reports 8, no. 1 (2018): 4570.
Roeske, T. C., Kelty-Stephen, D., Wallot, S. (2017): Birds have swing: Multifractal analysis reveals expressive timing in birdsong. BioRxiv June 29, 2017. doi: 10.1101/157594
Roeske, T. C., Scharff, C., Olson, C. R., Nshdejan, A., & Mello, C. V. (2014). Long-distance retinoid signaling in the zebra finch brain. PLoS ONE, 9(11), e111722. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0111722
Rothenberg, D., Roeske, T. C., Voss, H. U., Naguib, M., & Tchernichovski, O. (2014). Investigation of musicality in birdsong. Hear Res, 308, 71-83. doi: 10.1016/j.heares.2013.08.016
Pelz, D., Roeske, T., Syed, Z., de Bruyne, M., & Galizia, C. G. (2006). The molecular receptive range of an olfactory receptor in vivo (Drosophila melanogaster Or22a). J Neurobiol, 66(14), 1544-1563. doi: 10.1002/neu.20333
Projects
- Beautiful sounds across species: How do birdsong and human music drive their listeners’ emotions?
For thousands of years people have admired the beauty of birdsong. But scientific understanding of this phenomenon is still restricted to studying learning and production mechanisms, as well as ecological function (how songs are used to attract ...
- Musical development in children
How do children learn to sing melodies and produce rhythms? How do they develop musical taste? How do they learn to understand and use music in various situations? Can we boost spontaneous, implicit musical learning with educational ...