Our primary stream of “basic research” seeks to understand music perception and production from an embodied perspective. A diverse range of methods is brought to bear on these questions including perceptual, social-experimental, peripheral physiological, neural, and computational. Click here to learn more about our philosophical and methodological approach to research.

Representative Publications:

• Gilmore, S. A., & Russo, F. A. (2021). Neural and behavioral evidence for vibrotactile beat perception and bimodal enhancement. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 33(4), 635-650.
• Wood, E. A., Rovetti, J., & Russo, F. A. (2020). Vocal-motor interference eliminates the memory advantage for vocal melodies. Brain and Cognition, 145, 105622.
• Livingstone, S. R., & Russo, F. A. (2018). The Ryerson Audio-Visual Database of Emotional Speech and Song (RAVDESS): A dynamic, multimodal set of facial and vocal expressions in North American English. PloS one, 13(5), e0196391.
• Good, A., Choma, B., & Russo, F. A. (2017). Movement synchrony influences intergroup relations in a minimal groups paradigm. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 39(4), 231-238.
• Ammirante, P., Patel, A. D., & Russo, F. A. (2016). Synchronizing to auditory and tactile metronomes: a test of the auditory-motor enhancement hypothesis. Psychonomic bulletin & review, 23(6), 1882-1890.
• Russo, F. A., Thompson, W. F., & Cuddy, L. L. (2015). Effects of emergent-level structure on melodic processing difficulty. Music Perception, 33, 96-109.
• McGarry, L. M., Pineda, J., Russo, F. A. (2015). The role of the extended MNS in emotional and non-emotional judgments of human song. Cognitive, Behavioral and Affective Neuroscience, 15, 32-44.
• Good, A., Reed, M. J., & Russo, F. A. (2014). Compensatory plasticity in the deaf brain: Effects on the perception of music. Brain Sciences, 4(4), 560-574. doi:10.3390/brainsci4040560
• Chan, L., Russo, F. A., & Livingstone, S. (2013) Automatic facial mimicry of emotion during perception of song. Music Perception, 30, 361-367.
• Sandstrom, G. M., & Russo, F. A. (2013). Absorption in music: A scale to identify individuals with strong emotional responses to music, Psychology of Music, 41, 216 – 228.
• Russo, F. A., Ammirante, P. & Fels, D. I. (2012).Vibrotactile discrimination of musical timbre. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 38, 822-826.
• Tierney, A., Russo, F. A., & Patel, A. D. (2011). The motor origins of human and avian song structure. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) of the United States of America, 108, 15510-15515..doi:10.1073/pnas.1103882108
• Livingstone, S., Thompson, W.F., & Russo, F. A. (2009). Facial expressions and emotional singing: A study of perception and production with motion capture and electromyography. Music Perception, 26, 475-488.
• Thompson, W.F., & Russo, F.A. (2007). Facing the music. Psychological Science, 18, 756-757.
• Russo, F.A., & Thompson, W.F. (2005). An interval-size illusion: The influence of timbre on the perceived size of melodic intervals. Perception & Psychophysics, 67, 559-568.