Peter Vuust
Biographic Data
| ID | 6462133 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Peter Vuust |
| GIVEN NAMES | Peter |
| FAMILY NAME | Vuust |
| SIGNATURE | VUUST P |
| AFFILIATIONS | Aarhus University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4908-735X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 6 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 16 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Beat perception in polyrhythms is influenced by spontaneous motor tempo, musicianship, and played musical style
No two people perceive the same music alike. This may apply especially to polyrhythms, which consist of two or more rhythms with indivisible regular pulses, such as three over four (3:4). Either of these pulses can be perceived as the underlying beat. Previously, we showed that people naturally tap along to pulses that can be subdivided into groups of two or four equally spaced units (i.e., binarized pulses). This propensity for binarized pulses …
Motivations for Using Music for Sleep
Traditionally, sleep music is viewed as being soft, calm, and with minimal pitch and dynamic changes. However, recent research has shown that this is not necessarily the case. This variation could be due to people’s various motivations for using music to help them sleep, such as improving one’s mood, distracting oneself, or relaxing. To investigate the link between sleep music motivations and musical characteristics, we analyzed the YouTube comme…
Examining the relationships between musical sophistication, musical engagement, and empathy in samples of Italian and Spanish preadolescents
Music and empathy are intrinsically linked, both fostering communication. Research has shown that music serves as a nonverbal medium for mutual understanding and synchronization and that musical training and music-induced emotions correlate with empathy skills. In this study, we explored if musical sophistication and musical engagement can be predictors of the four Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) empathy subcomponents (i.e., Personal Distres…
Beyond syncopation: The number of rhythmic layers shapes the pleasurable urge to move to music
People experience the strongest pleasurable urge to move to music (PLUMM) with rhythms of medium complexity, showing an inverted U-shaped relationship. Rhythmic complexity is typically defined by syncopation but likely interacts with the number and instrumentation of rhythmic layers (e.g., snare only vs snare and bass drum) in affecting PLUMM. This study investigated this interaction by comparing PLUMM ratings of rhythms with varying rhythmic lay…
How Culture and Musical Engagement Shape Musical Reward Sensitivity in Danish Teens: A Validation Study of the Danish Barcelona Musical Reward Questionnaire With 4641 Adolescents
The ability to convey emotions and induce pleasure is one of the most important aspects of the way that music becomes meaningful to humans. Affective responses to music are specific to both cultural and personal preferences, but little is known about the individual variability in adolescence. The Barcelona Music Reward Questionnaire (BMRQ) is a psychometric measure that identifies five factors associated with musical pleasure: Musical Seeking, Em…
Investigating the impact of age on auditory short-term, long-term, and working memory
Cognitive aging is characterized by the gradual decline of a number of abilities, such as attention, executive functioning, and memory. Research on memory aging has reported age-related deficits in short-term (STM), long-term (LTM), and working memory (WM) and linked these to structural and functional changes in the brain that occur with aging. However, only a few studies have drawn direct comparisons between these memory subsystems in the audito…
Beauty is in the brain networks of the beholder: An exploratory functional magnetic resonance imaging study
Listening to music while appreciating its beauty is a common activity in daily life. Only a few studies have explored the association between such aesthetic processes with brain activity and the related patterns of brain connectivity states. Here, we exploratorily applied a recent algorithm for extracting the dynamic changes in time-varying functional connectivity (FC) by measuring functional magnetic resonance imaging responses from 36 participa…
Worlds apart? Testing the cultural distance hypothesis in music perception of Chinese and Western listeners
According to the cultural distance hypothesis (CDH), individuals learn culture-specific statistical structures in music as internal stylistic models and use these models in predictive processing of music, with musical structures closer to their home culture being easier to predict. This cultural distance effect may be affected by domain-specific (musical ability) and domain-general individual characteristics (openness, implicit cultural bias). To…
Swinging the Score? Swing Phrasing Cannot Be Communicated via Explicit Notation Instructions Alone
Jazz musicians usually learn to play with “swing” phrasing by playing by ear. Classical musicians—who play more from musical scores than by ear—are reported to struggle with producing swing. We explored whether classical musicians play with more swing when performing from more detailed swing notation. Thereby we investigated whether a culturally specific improvisational social procedure can be scripted in detailed music notation for musicians fro…
Perceived Motor Synchrony With the Beat is More Strongly Related to Groove Than Measured Synchrony
The sensation of groove can be defined as the pleasurable urge to move to rhythmic music. When moving to the beat of a rhythm, both how well movements are synchronized to the beat, and the perceived difficulty in doing so, are associated with groove. Interestingly, when tapping to a rhythm, participants tend to overestimate their synchrony, suggesting a potential discrepancy between perceived and measured synchrony, which may impact their relativ…
The effect of mental practice on music memorization
Mental practice (MP) in music refers to the ability to rehearse music in the mind without any muscular movements or acoustic feedback. While previous studies have shown effects of the combination of MP and physical practice (PP) on instrumental performance, here we aimed to assess MP and PP effects on memory abilities. During a 1-week music practice protocol, classical guitarists were asked to practise a new musical piece using either a combinati…
Empathy but not musicality is at the root of musical reward: A behavioral study with adults and children
Music is one of the most pleasurable human experiences. However, the determinants of the variation in individual sensitivity to musical reward are not yet fully unraveled. Empathy has been identified as a determinant of musical affect, including consciously experiencing pleasure from listening to sad music. Additionally, higher musical expertise may enhance pleasurable responses to music, whereas aging decreases individual sensitivity to musical …
Higher empathy is associated with stronger social bonding when moving together with music
Empathy—understanding and sharing the feelings and experiences of others—is one of our most important social capacities. Music is a social stimulus in that it involves communication of mental states, imitation of behavior, and synchronization of movements. As empathy and music are so closely linked, we investigated whether higher empathy is associated with stronger social bonding in interpersonal interactions that feature music. In two studies, p…
A Critical Cross-cultural Study of Sensorimotor and Groove Responses to Syncopation Among Ghanaian and American University Students and Staff
The pleasurable desire to move to a beat is known as groove and is partly explained by rhythmic syncopation. While many contemporary groove-directed genres originated in the African diaspora, groove music psychology has almost exclusively studied European or North American listeners. While cross-cultural approaches can help us understand how different populations respond to music, comparing African and Western musical behaviors has historically t…
The Pleasure of Making Sense of Music
Music is an integral part of life's highly pleasurable activities and has the ability to stimulate intellect as well as emotions. The neural mechanisms that allow for music to be considered as meaningful by humans are, however, poorly understood. Some musicologists have proposed that the creation of anticipatory structures modifying figure/ground relations is at the heart of what allows music to be meaningful and to convey emotion. Here, we revie…
The pleasure of reading
Pleasure is central to life. While many species share some of the same brain networks for pleasure, there are clearly species-specific routes to pleasure, of which language and music are among the most important in humans. Reading and writing are very useful interfaces to these temporal human pleasures, which allow us to communicate, record, experience and imagine the hedonic experiences of other humans across time and space. While we have yet to…
The Pleasure of Making Sense of Music
Music is an integral part of life's highly pleasurable activities and has the ability to stimulate intellect as well as emotions. The neural mechanisms that allow for music to be considered as meaningful by humans are, however, poorly understood. Some musicologists have proposed that the creation of anticipatory structures modifying figure/ground relations is at the heart of what allows music to be meaningful and to convey emotion. Here, we revie…
The pleasure of reading
Pleasure is central to life. While many species share some of the same brain networks for pleasure, there are clearly species-specific routes to pleasure, of which language and music are among the most important in humans. Reading and writing are very useful interfaces to these temporal human pleasures, which allow us to communicate, record, experience and imagine the hedonic experiences of other humans across time and space. While we have yet to…
The pleasure of reading
Pleasure is central to life. While many species share some of the same brain networks for pleasure, there are clearly species-specific routes to pleasure, of which language and music are among the most important in humans. Reading and writing are very useful interfaces to these temporal human pleasures, which allow us to communicate, record, experience and imagine the hedonic experiences of other humans across time and space. While we have yet to…
The Pleasure of Making Sense of Music
Music is an integral part of life's highly pleasurable activities and has the ability to stimulate intellect as well as emotions. The neural mechanisms that allow for music to be considered as meaningful by humans are, however, poorly understood. Some musicologists have proposed that the creation of anticipatory structures modifying figure/ground relations is at the heart of what allows music to be meaningful and to convey emotion. Here, we revie…
A Critical Cross-cultural Study of Sensorimotor and Groove Responses to Syncopation Among Ghanaian and American University Students and Staff
The pleasurable desire to move to a beat is known as groove and is partly explained by rhythmic syncopation. While many contemporary groove-directed genres originated in the African diaspora, groove music psychology has almost exclusively studied European or North American listeners. While cross-cultural approaches can help us understand how different populations respond to music, comparing African and Western musical behaviors has historically t…
Swinging the Score? Swing Phrasing Cannot Be Communicated via Explicit Notation Instructions Alone
Jazz musicians usually learn to play with “swing” phrasing by playing by ear. Classical musicians—who play more from musical scores than by ear—are reported to struggle with producing swing. We explored whether classical musicians play with more swing when performing from more detailed swing notation. Thereby we investigated whether a culturally specific improvisational social procedure can be scripted in detailed music notation for musicians fro…
Perceived Motor Synchrony With the Beat is More Strongly Related to Groove Than Measured Synchrony
The sensation of groove can be defined as the pleasurable urge to move to rhythmic music. When moving to the beat of a rhythm, both how well movements are synchronized to the beat, and the perceived difficulty in doing so, are associated with groove. Interestingly, when tapping to a rhythm, participants tend to overestimate their synchrony, suggesting a potential discrepancy between perceived and measured synchrony, which may impact their relativ…
The effect of mental practice on music memorization
Mental practice (MP) in music refers to the ability to rehearse music in the mind without any muscular movements or acoustic feedback. While previous studies have shown effects of the combination of MP and physical practice (PP) on instrumental performance, here we aimed to assess MP and PP effects on memory abilities. During a 1-week music practice protocol, classical guitarists were asked to practise a new musical piece using either a combinati…
Empathy but not musicality is at the root of musical reward: A behavioral study with adults and children
Music is one of the most pleasurable human experiences. However, the determinants of the variation in individual sensitivity to musical reward are not yet fully unraveled. Empathy has been identified as a determinant of musical affect, including consciously experiencing pleasure from listening to sad music. Additionally, higher musical expertise may enhance pleasurable responses to music, whereas aging decreases individual sensitivity to musical …
Higher empathy is associated with stronger social bonding when moving together with music
Empathy—understanding and sharing the feelings and experiences of others—is one of our most important social capacities. Music is a social stimulus in that it involves communication of mental states, imitation of behavior, and synchronization of movements. As empathy and music are so closely linked, we investigated whether higher empathy is associated with stronger social bonding in interpersonal interactions that feature music. In two studies, p…
Worlds apart? Testing the cultural distance hypothesis in music perception of Chinese and Western listeners
According to the cultural distance hypothesis (CDH), individuals learn culture-specific statistical structures in music as internal stylistic models and use these models in predictive processing of music, with musical structures closer to their home culture being easier to predict. This cultural distance effect may be affected by domain-specific (musical ability) and domain-general individual characteristics (openness, implicit cultural bias). To…
Investigating the impact of age on auditory short-term, long-term, and working memory
Cognitive aging is characterized by the gradual decline of a number of abilities, such as attention, executive functioning, and memory. Research on memory aging has reported age-related deficits in short-term (STM), long-term (LTM), and working memory (WM) and linked these to structural and functional changes in the brain that occur with aging. However, only a few studies have drawn direct comparisons between these memory subsystems in the audito…
Beauty is in the brain networks of the beholder: An exploratory functional magnetic resonance imaging study
Listening to music while appreciating its beauty is a common activity in daily life. Only a few studies have explored the association between such aesthetic processes with brain activity and the related patterns of brain connectivity states. Here, we exploratorily applied a recent algorithm for extracting the dynamic changes in time-varying functional connectivity (FC) by measuring functional magnetic resonance imaging responses from 36 participa…
Examining the relationships between musical sophistication, musical engagement, and empathy in samples of Italian and Spanish preadolescents
Music and empathy are intrinsically linked, both fostering communication. Research has shown that music serves as a nonverbal medium for mutual understanding and synchronization and that musical training and music-induced emotions correlate with empathy skills. In this study, we explored if musical sophistication and musical engagement can be predictors of the four Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) empathy subcomponents (i.e., Personal Distres…
Beyond syncopation: The number of rhythmic layers shapes the pleasurable urge to move to music
People experience the strongest pleasurable urge to move to music (PLUMM) with rhythms of medium complexity, showing an inverted U-shaped relationship. Rhythmic complexity is typically defined by syncopation but likely interacts with the number and instrumentation of rhythmic layers (e.g., snare only vs snare and bass drum) in affecting PLUMM. This study investigated this interaction by comparing PLUMM ratings of rhythms with varying rhythmic lay…
How Culture and Musical Engagement Shape Musical Reward Sensitivity in Danish Teens: A Validation Study of the Danish Barcelona Musical Reward Questionnaire With 4641 Adolescents
The ability to convey emotions and induce pleasure is one of the most important aspects of the way that music becomes meaningful to humans. Affective responses to music are specific to both cultural and personal preferences, but little is known about the individual variability in adolescence. The Barcelona Music Reward Questionnaire (BMRQ) is a psychometric measure that identifies five factors associated with musical pleasure: Musical Seeking, Em…
Beat perception in polyrhythms is influenced by spontaneous motor tempo, musicianship, and played musical style
No two people perceive the same music alike. This may apply especially to polyrhythms, which consist of two or more rhythms with indivisible regular pulses, such as three over four (3:4). Either of these pulses can be perceived as the underlying beat. Previously, we showed that people naturally tap along to pulses that can be subdivided into groups of two or four equally spaced units (i.e., binarized pulses). This propensity for binarized pulses …
Motivations for Using Music for Sleep
Traditionally, sleep music is viewed as being soft, calm, and with minimal pitch and dynamic changes. However, recent research has shown that this is not necessarily the case. This variation could be due to people’s various motivations for using music to help them sleep, such as improving one’s mood, distracting oneself, or relaxing. To investigate the link between sleep music motivations and musical characteristics, we analyzed the YouTube comme…
Neuroscience and Music Perception (14 works) · Psychology (14 works) · Musical (10 works) · Cognitive psychology (9 works) · Art (7 works) · Aesthetics (6 works) · Diverse Music Education Insights (6 works) · Music and Audio Processing (6 works) · Neuroscience (6 works) · Social Psychology (6 works)