EmCAP

Emergent Cognition through Active Perception

Keywords
music cognition / active perception / music technology / computational modelling / interactive
music system

Overview
Our starting point is the hypothesis that perception is an active process. Based on
previous experience and current context we perceive, understand and interact with the
world by actively anticipating upcoming sensory events. The need for making better
predictions is what drives the development of useful representations, processes and
cognitive structures. Conversely, perceptual phenomena and processing in the brain can
best be understood in relation to the structure of the environment.
In EmCAP we will explore these ideas within the world of music through a
multifaceted approach including perceptual experiments and computational modelling
studies, leading to the construction of an emergent interactive music system, the Music
Projector.

Artificial
Artificial
behaviour
behaviou

Emergent
Music System

Computational
Computational
principles
principles

Perceptual
Experiments

Innate
& adult
Innate & adult
abilities
abilities

Neurocomputational
Neurocomputational
Modelling
Modelling

Goals
Our goal is to understand how complex cognitive behaviour in an artificial system
can emerge through active engagement with an environment. Music offers the ideal
domain in which to explore cognition, since music like language is universal, and is built
of temporally extended structures with clear stylistic rules of conventions. Perception
evolves in time, influenced both by the current context and long -term knowledge.

Dr Susan Denham
Project Coordinator

Centre for Theoretical and Computational

Neuroscience
University of Plymouth
Portland Square, Drake Circus
Plymouth, Devon PL4 8AA
Tel +44 (0)1752 233 359 Fax +44 (0)1752 233 349
sdenham@plymouth.ac.uk www.iua.upf.edu/mtg/emcap

EmCAP
Emergent Cognition through Active Perception

In focusing on music cognition, EmCAP will directly address many important

problems in cognition such as the autonomous development of representations; the
segregation and recognition of salient events and patterns of events in a continuous
stream of sound; the development of categories and useful abstractions; the
representation of context, interactions between long-term knowledge structures and
working memory; the role of attention in optimising processing, the representation of
temporal expectancies; and the integration of events across many different time scales.
Outputs
Perceptual experiments providing new insights into:
innate processing of musically relevant features (pitch, rhythm, sequential
grouping), and the creation of expectations in response to acoustic stimuli;
relationships between language and formal structures in music, and the
influence of timbre on the perception of musical form.
A large-scale neurocomputational model of auditory processing, including sub-cortical
and cortical processing.
Modelling studies investigating:
the development of experience-dependent representations and response
fields;
rhythmic perception and the timing of expectancies;
the emergence of perceptual categories of timbre, rhythm and pitch;
a biased competition account of auditory attention;
active control of peripheral auditory processing.
Proposals for a generic functional computational architecture for perception and
cognition.
An emergent interactive music processing system, the Music Projector.

PARTNERS
University of Plymouth: Dr Sue Denham, Prof Mike Denham, Prof Eduardo Miranda
Fundaci Barcelona Media Universitat Pompeu Fabra: Prof Gustavo Deco, Prof Xavier
Serra
Magyar Tudomnyos Akadmia Pszicholgiai Kutatintzet: Prof Istvn Winkler
Universiteit van Amsterdam: Dr Henkjan Honing
If you would like to find out more about the project or collaborate with us please visit our
web site at: http://www.iua.upf.edu/mtg/emcap/

Project Reference: IST-FP6-013123

1 October 2005 30 September 2008, Duration: 36 months, Total Budget: 1,950,000
EmCAP is funded by the European Commission under the IST Programme (Information Society
Technologies), 6th Framework.