The Neurosciences and Music III conference - Part 1

I just got back from the the 3-day Neurosciences and Music-III conference in Montreal, June 26th-28th, 2008. Held, once every three years, this is THE conference to go to for researchers in music cognition interested in the neuroscience aspect of the domain. The conference was packed with seven symposia and two poster sessions. The most current research in various domains of music cognition and neuroscience was presented in these sessions by some of its biggest scientists.

The good part about attending a conference like this is the fact that you get to witness quality research directly from its source; without merely relying on published papers. In addition, every conference provides us with an opportunity to network with peers, and established researchers, thereby sowing the seeds for possible collaborative efforts. Now for the bad part....and this probably applies to most conferences. Too much information is presented in too short a time, hardly leaving the audience with enough time to process all the information. On the one hand I hated skipping some of the talks...especially after having traveled all the way to Montreal (and traveling to these conferences isn't cheap for a graduate student), but on the other hand I saw no other solution after having crossed the threshold beyond the point of information overload. So the conference always puts you in the position of having to choose the talks you want to listen to wisely.

I will attempt to summarize my version of the events on all 3 days of the conference in my next few blogs.