Empathy in Musical Interaction

2013

Entrainment has been linked to positive affect and pro-sociality, e.g. empathy. Empathy and entrainment are facets of the “shared manifold”, mirroring and mental simulation system allowing us to automatically share emotions and intentions, and to understand others. They are foregrounded in music, which is very efficacious in communicating emotions and intentions. We perceive the intentional, expressive motor acts behind the sounds of music. Music therapists take advantage of this and use musical interaction to work with their clients. The cognitive foundations of synchronisation have been studied extensively, but its emotional aspects only rarely and the methods of entrainment research have…