The Neuro - Profile: Robert Zatorre

La Fondation Pour l’Audition awards Robert Zatorre its Grand Prix Scientifique

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Honour recognizes his research into asymmetric functioning of the brain for speech and music processing

Professor Robert Zatorre has been recognized for his work by La Fondation Pour l’Audition, a research institute and hearing advocacy organization based in Paris, France. He is this year’s recipient of the Grand Prix Scientifique, which recognizes leading research into the human auditory system.

Neurological disease and brain plasticity research gets major funding boost

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The Canada Foundation for Innovation supports innovative projects that tackle global challenges

Exciting initiatives involving researchers at The Neuro are among the latest getting support under The Canada Foundation for Innovation’s Innovation Fund competition.

Robert Zatorre wins major international award

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C. L. de Carvalho-Heineken Prize recognizes his seminal work in the cognition of music

Cognitive neuroscientist Robert Zatorre has been awarded the C.L. de Carvalho-Heineken Prize in Cognitive Sciences.

The Heineken Prize–given every two years to five different researchers–is considered the most prestigious international science prize in The Netherlands and includes a monetary reward of US$200,000. Previous winners include Nancy Kanwisher of MIT, and Stanislas Dehaene of the Collège de France.

Using a cappella to explain speech and music specialization

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Study suggests humans have developed complementary neural systems in each hemisphere for auditory stimuli

Speech and music are two fundamentally human activities that are decoded in different brain hemispheres. A new study used a unique approach to reveal why this specialization exists.

The unexpected creates reward when listening to music

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Scientists prove difference between expected/actual outcomes cause reward response

If you love it when a musician strikes that unexpected but perfect chord, you are not alone. New research shows the musically unexpected activates the reward centre of our brains, and makes us learn about the music as we listen.

Dopamine and reward responses to music causally linked

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A new study published in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, reveals a causal link between the neurotransmitter dopamine and the reward responses to music. The study was conducted by an international team including researchers from the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital of ��, the University of Barcelona, and the Hospital de Sant Pau of Barcelona.

Philanthropy and government unite to advance research and patient care and to establish leading edge facilities and technologies at The Neuro

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Today, May 23, 2018, The Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital (The Neuro) gratefully acknowledged significant government funding and unveiled the Thinking Ahead Campaign (2007-2013) donor wall as a tribute and thank you to the many people who helped transform The Neuro’s ability to deliver cutting-edge research and clinical care. This ambitious campaign brought people from around the world together to share in one common goal: to accelerate the pace of neuroscience discovery and deliver exceptional care to patients.

Now you like it, now you don’t

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Brain stimulation can change how much we enjoy and value music

Enjoyment of music is considered a subjective experience; what one person finds gratifying, another may find irritating. Music theorists have long emphasized that although musical taste is relative, our enjoyment of music, be it classical or heavy metal, arises, among other aspects, from structural features of music, such as chord or rhythm patterns that generate anticipation and expectancy.

Edith Hamel and Robert Zatorre elected to Royal Society of Canada

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Society recognizes scholarly, research and artistic excellence.

Dr. Edith Hamel and Dr. Robert Zatorre have been elected Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada. Election to the academies of the Royal Society of Canada is the highest honour a scholar can achieve in the Arts, Humanities and Sciences.

Improving memory with magnets

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Discovery expands our understanding of how we remember sound

The ability to remember sounds, and manipulate them in our minds, is incredibly important to our daily lives — without it we would not be able to understand a sentence, or do simple arithmetic. New research is shedding light on how sound memory works in the brain, and is even demonstrating a means to improve it.

Lack of joy from music linked to brain disconnection

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Have you ever met someone who just wasn’t into music? They may have a condition called specific musical anhedonia, which affects three-to-five per cent of the population.

Researchers at the University of Barcelona and the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital of �� have discovered that people with this condition showed reduced functional connectivity between cortical regions responsible for processing sound and subcortical regions related to reward.

Brain responses found to originate from previously unknown source

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Scientists at the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital at �� have made an important discovery about the human auditory system and how to study it, findings that could lead to better testing and diagnosis of hearing-related disorders.

The researchers detected frequency-following responses (FFR) coming from a part of the brain not previously known to emit them. FFRs are neural signals generated in the brain when people hear sounds.

Neuro awarded over $15 M in CIHR funding

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Researchers get inaugural Foundation grants for high-impact, long-term programs

Researchers from the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital, �� have been awarded over $15 million in grants in the latest round of funding by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). The grants are part of over $600 million in national funding, announced July 28 by Minister of Health Rona Ambrose.

Practice doesn’t always make perfect (depending on your brain)

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Study fuels nature versus nurture debate

How do you get to Carnegie Hall? New research on the brain’s capacity to learn suggests there’s more to it than the adage that “practise makes perfect.” A music-training study by scientists at the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital -The Neuro, at �� and colleagues in Germany found evidence to distinguish the parts of the brain that account for individual talent from the parts that are activated through training.