Friday, October 2, 2026
| Time | Session |
|---|---|
| 8:15–9:00 a.m. | Registration & Coffee |
| 9:00–9:15 a.m. | Opening Remarks |
| 9:15–10:25 a.m. | Robert Zatorre (McGill) Why Do We Love Music? A View from Cognitive Neuroscience |
| 10:25–11:10 a.m. | Dorit Bar-On (UConn) Expression, Communication, and Origins of Meaning |
| 11:10–11:25 a.m. | Coffee |
| 11:25–11:55 a.m. | Piotr Podlipniak (Poznan) Acoustic Ecology and the Divergence of Music and Language |
| 11:55 a.m.–12:25 p.m. | Jorge Bonet Gomez (Wollongong) A Pluralistic Hypothesis of How Expressions Became Communicative Acts |
| 12:25–12:40 p.m. | Transition to Nursing Building |
| 12:40–1:55 p.m. | Lunch |
| 1:55–3:05 p.m. | Gabriel Greenberg (UCLA) TBA |
| 3:05–3:35 p.m. | Micah Mooney (Michigan) The Ups and Downs of Tone-Tune Bigram Analysis in Thai Song Text-Setting |
| 3:35–3:50 p.m. | Coffee |
| 3:50–5:00 p.m. | Erin Hannon (UNLV) Development, Enculturation, and Musical Meaning |
| 5:00–5:45 p.m. | Stefanie Acevedo (UConn) Understanding Authenticity of Live Performance |
| 5:45–6:05 p.m. | Day 1 Wrap-up |
| 6:30–8:30 p.m. | Music Evening and Reception |
Saturday, October 3, 2026
| Time | Session |
|---|---|
| 9:00–9:30 a.m. | Coffee |
| 9:30–10:40 a.m. | Assal Habibi (USC) The Brain's Crescendo: How Music Engagement Enriches Neurocognitive Development |
| 10:40–11:10 a.m. | Ali Bebry (New School) I Made You a Mixtape: Relational Communication in Music Sharing |
| 11:10–11:25 a.m. | Coffee |
| 11:25–11:55 a.m. | Justyna Skop-Wach (Dundee) Effects of Rhythmic Priming on Grammaticality Judgment |
| 11:55 a.m.–12:25 p.m. | Ji Chul Kim (UConn) Why Does Music Make Us Move? An Embodied Dynamical Account |
| 12:25–1:40 p.m. | Lunch |
| 1:40–2:50 p.m. | Nori Jacoby (Cornell) Mapping Cross-Cultural Internal Representations in Music |
| 2:50–3:20 p.m. | Carmen Wong (UIC) Combinatoriality Before Propositionality: Music, Language, and Representation |
| 3:20–3:35 p.m. | Coffee |
| 3:35–4:45 p.m. | Steven Mithen (Reading) When and What Were the First Words? How They Caused Music and Language to Diverge |
| 4:45–5:45 p.m. | Closing Discussion |
Location Information
Please note, this event takes place over various locations on the Storrs campus:
|
Date
|
Time/Activity
|
Location
|
|---|---|---|
|
Friday, October 2
|
Morning Session
|
Great Hall, Alumni Center
|
|
Friday, October 2
|
Afternoon Session
|
Nursing Building, Carolyn Ladd Widmer Wing
|
|
Friday, October 2
|
Evening Reception
|
Zachs Family Fine Arts Administration Building, Room 103
|
|
Saturday, October 3
|
All Sessions
|
Nursing Building, Carolyn Ladd Widmer Wing
|