Keynote Speakers
Field of Music Cognition
Marc Leman,
Ghent
Marc Leman has led for several decades the Institute for Psychoacoustics and Electronic Music (IPEM) at Ghent University, where he served as Professor of Systematic Musicology. His work has been widely recognized for pioneering interdisciplinary research in musicology, successfully bridging fields such as computer science, music information retrieval, neuroscience, behavioral science, movement science, music analysis, and acoustics. Over the course of his career, he has authored more than 350 scientific publications, including several influential books published by MIT Press, Routledge, and Springer. Prof. Leman is widely regarded as one of the founding figures of the Embodied Music Cognition framework, following his seminal 2007 book Embodied Music Cognition and Mediation Technology (MIT Press). He has secured numerous national and international research grants, including prestigious Methusalem funding and several Horizon 2020 projects. Throughout his career, he has mentored and launched the careers of many researchers who now hold positions across Europe and internationally, contributing to the continued development of interdisciplinary music research.
Musical Joint Action
Peter M. Keller, Aarhus
Peter E. Keller is Professor of Neuroscience in the Center for Music in the Brain and the Department of Clinical Medicine at Aarhus University, with a joint appointment in the MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour and Development at Western Sydney University.
Combining approaches from psychology, neuroscience, and musicology, Prof. Keller has made influential contributions to understanding how individuals synchronize their actions with others in complex musical contexts.
His work integrates behavioural experiments, motion capture, and neurophysiological methods to investigate ensemble performance, sensorimotor synchronization, and the role of predictive processing in music and social interaction.
Throughout his career, he has worked in several countries and established extensive international collaborations, reflecting the strongly international scope of his research.
Keller has published extensively in leading journals across cognitive science, psychology, and neuroscience, and has led numerous international research collaborations and funded projects.
Through his scholarship and mentorship, he has played a key role in advancing the interdisciplinary field of music cognition and the scientific study of musical interaction.
Abstract
Musical groups as social Gestalts
Collective performance in musical groups is a powerful medium for nonverbal communication, social bonding, and cultural transmission. To fulfill these functions, co-performers typically aim to produce cohesive multipart textures in which separate instrumental or vocal parts mesh together to form auditory Gestalts. My research has addressed how this process is facilitated by ‘ensemble skills’ that allow individuals to predict each other’s sounds via anticipatory auditory imagery, to adapt continuously to variations in timing and intensity via automatic entrainment and deliberate alignment, and to attend simultaneously to one’s own and others’ actions in real time.
I will give an overview of work investigating these ensemble skills, showing (1) how they can be studied behaviorally using controlled laboratory paradigms alongside naturalistic musical tasks, (2) how their complex interplay can be captured via computational modeling, and (3) how neuroscientific tools can shed light on underlying brain processes.
Together, this research has revealed how ensemble skills link basic sensory-motor processes with higher social-cognitive factors (e.g., personality) in a manner that enables interacting individuals to regulate the balance between psychological representations of ‘self’ and ‘others’. Auditory Gestalts in group music-making can hence be conceptualized as manifestations of social relations. The ensemble skills framework provides a mechanistic handle on these social Gestalts, allowing complex patterns of collective behavior to be understood in terms of a gradient of measurable sensory-motor to social processes.
History of Philosophy
Fiorenza Toccafondi,
Florence
Fiorenza Toccafondi is Professor of History of Philosophy at the University of Florence; she previously taught History of Contemporary Philosophy at the University of Parma. Her research focuses on phenomenology, ontology, and early twentieth-century European philosophy, with particular attention to the relations between philosophy and science, the Gestalt tradition, and the thought of authors such as Karl Bühler, Ludwig Klages, and Max Scheler. Since 2002 she has been a member of the Gesellschaft für Gestalttheorie und ihre Anwendungen (GTA). From 2005 to 2016 she served on the Wissenschaftlicher Beirat of the Jahrbuch für Europäische Wissenschaftskultur. She was Editor-in-Chief of Gestalt Theory. An International Multidisciplinary Journal and is currently Co-Editor-in-Chief of Intersezioni. Rivista di Storia delle idee. Among her books are I linguaggi della psiche (1995), L’essere e i suoi significati (2000), Il tutto e le parti (2000), Mente, mondo e affetti (2019), and Max Scheler. L’ambiente, gli altri, i valori (2023).
Abstract
A Program Between Two Worlds: Carl Stumpf and the Berlin Gestalt School.
This contribution aims to bring into focus the distinctive features of Stumpf’s approach and the significance it assumed during his work in Berlin, culminating in his appointment as director of the “Institute of Experimental Psychology.” His approach was characterized by an emphasis on the fruitful interplay between philosophical reflection and empirical investigation. This very approach was adopted by the proponents of Gestalt psychology, who continued to promote it during the years of the Weimar Republic. However, as far as its reception within philosophy is concerned, this program encountered considerable resistance. In the context of the Weimar Republic, the dominant ideal increasingly became that of a “pure” philosophy – understood as a strictly philosophical epistemology and as a transcendental phenomenology – largely devoid of significant engagement with the empirical sciences. The contribution seeks to highlight both the fruitfulness and the ongoing relevance of this approach, as developed by the Berlin Gestalt school along the lines of Stumpf’s model. Alongside this line of continuity, it will also draw attention to points of divergence between Carl Stumpf and the Berlin Gestaltists, with particular reference to issues concerning perception and the concept of sensation.
History of Psychology
Mauro Antonelli, Milan
Mauro Antonelli is Full Professor of the History of Science at the University of Milano-Bicocca and Privatdozent in Philosophy at the University of Graz. His research focuses on the history and philosophy of psychology, phenomenology, and phenomenological psychology, with particular attention to the development of the phenomenological tradition in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Austria and Germany. He is Editor-in-Chief of the European Yearbook of the History of Psychology (Brepols) and of the book series Studien zur österreichischen Philosophie (Brill/De Gruyter), and Co-Editor of the series Meinong Studien / Meinong Studies (De Gruyter). He has authored numerous books, articles, and essays published nationally and internationally. His recent publications include Vittorio Benussi in the History of Psychology: New Ideas of a Century Ago (2018); Franz Brentano: Critical Assessment (2018, 4 vols., with F. Boccaccini); and Franz Brentano, Gustav Theodor Fechner: Briefwechsel über Psychophysik, 1874–1878 (2015).
Abstract
Gestalt between Science and Worldview:
The Ehrenfels–Wertheimer Correspondence (1914–1932)
This paper offers a re-reading of the emergence of Gestalt theory on the basis of the hitherto unpublished correspondence between Christian von Ehrenfels and Max Wertheimer (1914–1932). Its central thesis is that the difference between the two thinkers should not be understood as a linear development, but rather as the expression of a fundamental tension between science and worldview, a tension that finds its conceptual locus in the very notion of Gestalt. The correspondence serves as a privileged point of access to the constellations within which this paradigm takes shape, while also shedding light on the academic milieu of early twentieth-century Prague, marked by theoretical conflicts and institutional dynamics. In particular, it brings into view Wertheimer’s difficulties in the process of academic consolidation, as well as the ambivalent role of Ehrenfels. At the core of the analysis lies the conceptual problematic of Gestalt itself. Whereas Ehrenfels develops the concept of Gestalt within a cosmologically grounded horizon that extends into the domain of worldview, Wertheimer construes it as a strictly empirically oriented structural principle aimed at the unity of experience. The correspondence thus reveals not only a theoretical divergence but also points to two distinct ways of articulating the relationship between science and philosophy. The emergence of Gestalt theory thus appears as the result of an epistemological tension whose significance extends into contemporary debates.
Philosophy of Science
Vincenzo Fano, Bologna
Vincenzo Fano is Full Professor of Logic and Philosophy of Science at the University of Urbino “Carlo Bo”. His research spans philosophy of physics, epistemology, historyof philosophy, and metaphysics, with a special focus on the interplay between science and philosophy. He currently serves as President of the Italian Society for Logic and Philosophy of Science (SILFS), Director of the Urbino Summer School in Epistemology, and Director of the Urbino International School in Philosophy and Foundations of Physics. He is also a member of the Académie Internationale de Philosophie des Sciences. Author of numerous books and articles in leading journals, he has held visiting positions at institutions such as the University of Western Ontario, the University of Pittsburgh, and Helsinki University.
Abstract
Carl Stumpf as an Epistemologist of Probability
Stumpf’s two 1892 essays on probability are masterpieces of philosophy of science written by a great psychologist and philosopher. Johannes von Kries’s fundamental book on probability had just appeared. Stumpf develops a position for himself between von Kries’s perspective and that of Laplace, proposing an original view in which psychological aspects play an important role. His approach would later be criticized by the frequentist Reichenbach, but even today it remains one of the most interesting ones in the philosophy of science. Fedde Benediktus has characterized it as a form of objective Bayesianism. This proposal will be examined here.
Psychology of Music
Liila Taruffi,
Hong Kong
Liila Taruffi is Assistant Professor at the Academy of Music, Hong Kong Baptist University, with an interdisciplinary background spanning the sciences and humanities. She holds a BA and MA in Philosophy of Music and an MSc and PhD in Music Psychology, and has held research and teaching positions at the Free University of Berlin and Durham University, UK. Her work integrates cognitive psychology, aesthetics, and neuroscience, focusing on internally-oriented mental experiences during music listening—particularly mind-wandering and visual imagery. In 2017 she published the first empirical study linking mind-wandering to emotions during music listening, pioneering this area of research. She has revitalized scholarship on mental imagery through theoretical frameworks, empirical studies, symposia, and the edited volume Music and Mental Imagery (Routledge, 2022). She has published in top-tier international journals, including Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, Music Perception, Musicae Scientiae, PLOS ONE, and Scientific Reports. Her ongoing research projects, supported by the Early Career Scheme grant by the Hong Kong Research Grant Council, investigate the relationship between music listening, mind-wandering and creativity, and the brain connectivity patterns underlying music-evoked visual mental imagery.
Abstract
Tuning the Mind: How Music Shapes Inner Mental Experience
Inner mental experiences during music listening, such as mind-wandering and mental imagery, have recently taken a central role in music psychology. They are common among listeners, can enhance enjoyment of music, and may yield positive outcomes for mental health. To date, most research has focused on how musical characteristics (e.g., perceived or felt emotion, tempo) map onto the phenomenology of listeners’ thoughts and images. However, fundamental questions remain underexplored: (_i_) the music-specific mechanisms by which music affords mind-wandering episodes, including mental imagery; (_ii_) the neural correlates of these subjective experiences; and (_iii_) the potential benefits of such inner cognition for mental health and creativity. Moreover, this literature has only minimally integrated neurocognitive research on mind-wandering, creating a disconnect in both theory and methods.
In this talk, I will present an overview of my recent work addressing these issues using novel methods, including data from listening experiments combined with psychometric network analysis and brain connectivity analyses. I will highlight evidence showing that music uniquely shapes inner mental experiences and their underlying brain‑network dynamics, that the mental space supported by music and sounds fosters creative incubation, and that music‑evoked imagery has impactful, practical applications across a range of real‑world contexts, including therapy and sport.