Special Issue - Dance and the Brain: The Neural and Social Bases of Creative Movement

Shihab Shamma, PhD, University of Maryland, USA

Dr Shamma is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Institute for Systems Research, and the Cognitive Studies Department at the Ecole Normale Superieure (Paris). He is a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America and of the Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers. He has conducted research into the neural basis of auditory cognition from many viewpoints, and with interdisciplinary approaches combining neuroscience, psychoacoustics, and computational modeling and engineering. Recent projects have focused on rapid neuroplasticity of speech and music perception, their decoding during imagination from EEG and MEG signals, and exploring the neurobiology underlying auditory-motor interactions while speaking and playing musical. On the computational side, he has developed signal processing algorithms inspired by the auditory system that have been applied in audio systems of speech segregation and recognition, diagnostics in industrial manufacturing, and underwater acoustics. Other research interests include design of neuromorphic hardware and robotic systems for auditory tasks.
 

Jonathan Fritz, PhD, University of Maryland, USA

Jonathan is a behavioral neuroscientist whose research has focused on the neural basis of auditory perception, attention, learning, and memory. He received his PhD on the cortical computations underlying bat echolocation, and has also worked on auditory processing, sensorimotor interactions, and brain plasticity in animal models at NIH and University of Maryland. He served as a Program Director in Cognitive Neuroscience at the National Science Foundation and is currently a Visiting Scholar at New York University. Admittedly a dance neophyte, Jonathan’s modest dance background arises from being an amateur naturalist, fascinated by dance in the animal world, as an enthusiastic folk dancer for years, and as a terpsichorean aficionado who enjoys attending traditional and modern dance performances. Notwithstanding his lack of dance expertise, it was a sheer joy to help organize the Workshop, edit the contributions, and meet and learn from the extraordinary community of wonderful artists and dancers and scientists who came together for this Workshop.