Music, emotion and auditory processing : towards new models of musical expression and cognition.

This study represents an interdisciplinary investigation of music cognition from both theoretical
and empirical perspectives drawing principally from research in neuropsychology, and
philosophy. The main aim of the thesis is to produce a coherent model of music cognition,
reconciling empirical findings, current accounts of musical expression, and broader cognitive
models. With this aim the investigation divides into two parts: first, examining musical
expression of emotion, and second, exploring music cognition as a whole and its place within
global models of cognition. A particular focus is the subdivision and independence of music
subsystems, notably the separation of music and language and to what extent these are
functionally, and neuro-anatomically separate cognitive systems.