What is BRAMS ?

BRAMS HISTORY

BRAMS was created in June 2004, from the dream of several Montreal scholars, affiliated to McGill, Concordia and University of Montreal, to create a research centre that would unite their highly complementary backgrounds and common interest in understanding the neural substrates of human auditory cognition, and of music processing in particular.

BRAMS exists to address the following questions: Why is the brain musical? How does the structure and function of the nervous system allow us to listen to, remember, play, and respond to music? How are these functions related to others such as understanding speech? How do these processes change during development, and how do they breakdown in disease?

BRAMS MEMBERS

Such questions have concerned BRAMS founding co-directors, Isabelle Peretz (Professor, Dept. of Psychology, University of Montreal) and Robert Zatorre (Professor, Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University), for over twenty years. Dr. Peretz has particular expertise in the cognitive processes underlying music, while Dr. Zatorre has concentrated on the structure and function of the auditory cortex.

Today, BRAMS is home to 25 internationally renowned faculty members dedicated to auditory cognitive neuroscience. Eight of them hold a Canada Research Chair: Isabelle Peretz, Pierre Jolicoeur, Stephen McAdams, Caroline Palmer, Jorge Armony, Nathalie Fernando, Debra Titone and Karsten Steinhauer; and Robert Zatorre holds a James McGill Research Chair. Such a concentration of experts in the neuroscience of music and auditory cognition is unique in North America. BRAMS members’ research covers the spectrum from perception of music, speech, and voice to memory and performance.

BRAMS MISSION

The objectives of BRAMS are to undertake research on the organisation, function and dysfunction of the nervous system in relation to basic and complex auditory processes. Special emphasis is placed on research concerning perceptual, mnesic, affective, cognitive, and motor aspects of music.

BRAMS’s main vocation is three-fold: to facilitate research collaborations between Montreal, national and international scholars; to elaborate research projects on a grander scale; and, thanks to its international profile, to attract the best world experts in the field as well as the brightest trainees specializing in the neuro-cognition of music. Furthermore, we foresee clinical involvement dealing with persons with musical and auditory disorders, tinnitus or cochlear implants, for instance.  

Thanks to a 14 million dollars Canadian Foundation for Innovation grant received in February 2007, BRAMS offers its Members, postdoctoral fellows and graduate students the best infrastructure currently available worldwide for experimental approaches to the neuroscience of auditory cognition. The multi-site laboratory has more than 2000 sq.m. dedicated to research at its disposal, distributed in the following four locations:

• Pavillon 1420 Mont Royal, Université de Montréal (BRAMS main laboratory)
• Department of Psychology, McGill University 
• CIRMMT Research Centre, McGill University
• The Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University