About
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Introduction
Frank Russo is Professor of Psychology, NSERC-Sonova Senior Industrial Research Chair in Auditory Cognitive Neuroscience, and Director of the SMART Lab at Toronto Metropolitan University. His research investigates the neuro-cognitive, neuro-affective, and socio-biological aspects of music, speech and hearing. He is also actively engaged in the application of psychological and brain sciences in the development of real-world interventions and technologies.
Additional affiliations
September 2010 - April 2016
August 2006 - August 2007
August 2006 - September 2010
Education
September 1995 - June 2002
Publications
Publications (209)
The RAVDESS is a validated multimodal database of emotional speech and song. The database is gender balanced consisting of 24 professional actors, vocalizing lexically-matched statements in a neutral North American accent. Speech includes calm, happy, sad, angry, fearful, surprise, and disgust expressions, and song contains calm, happy, sad, angry,...
Vocal emotion perception is an important part of speech communication and social interaction. Although older adults with normal audiograms are known to be less accurate at identifying vocal emotion compared to younger adults, little is known about how older adults with hearing loss perceive vocal emotion or whether hearing aids improve the percepti...
Listening effort may be reduced when hearing aids improve access to the acoustic signal. However, this possibility is difficult to evaluate because many neuroimaging methods used to measure listening effort are incompatible with hearing aid use. Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), which can be used to measure the concentration of oxygen...
Prior studies have demonstrated musicianship enhancements of various aspects of auditory and cognitive processing in older adults, but musical training has rarely been examined as an intervention for mitigating age-related declines in these abilities. The current study investigates whether 10 weeks of choir participation can improve aspects of audi...
Background and objectives
Music and auditory beat stimulation (ABS) in the theta frequency range (4–7 Hz) are sound-based anxiety treatments that have been independently investigated in prior studies. Here, the anxiety-reducing potential of calm music combined with theta ABS was examined in a large sample of participants.
Methods
An open-label ran...
Driving collisions are a top cause of accidental death globally and adults aged 65+ are overrepresented. Driving is a highly complex task, requiring sensory processing, motor control, and divided attention. Driving is especially challenging when simultaneously listening to a passenger. Age-related declines in sensory (e.g., hearing) and cognitive a...
Even with the use of hearing aids (HAs), speech in noise perception remains challenging for older adults, impacting communication and quality of life outcomes. The association between music perception and speech-in-noise (SIN) outcomes is of interest, as there is evidence that professionally trained musicians are adept listeners in noisy environmen...
Background
Unaddressed age-related hearing loss is highly prevalent among older adults, typified by negative consequences for speech-in-noise perception and psychosocial wellbeing. There is promising evidence that group singing may enhance speech-in-noise perception and psychosocial wellbeing. However, there is a lack of robust evidence, primarily...
Undergraduate students report a high level of trait anxiety, which is a risk factor for further psychological decline if unmanaged. Common psychological treatments such as cognitive-behavioural therapy are highly effective in improving symptoms of anxiety for those who are motivated to engage in psychotherapy, but they can be costly. Music-based in...
Cannabis use has long been associated with enhanced music experiences, yet scientific research on its effects on auditory perception remains limited. This mixed-methods retrospective study investigated how recreational cannabis users experience audition and music, while high. A total of 104 participants completed an online questionnaire, 15 of whic...
There is broad consensus that listening effort is an important outcome for measuring hearing performance. However, there remains debate on the best ways to measure listening effort. This study sought to measure neural correlates of listening effort using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) in experienced adult hearing aid users. The study...
While music is primarily experienced through audition, many aspects of music can also be experienced through somatosensation. Vibrotactile stimulation occurs when a tactile stimulus displaces the skin at a specific carrier frequency. When the carrier is frequency modulated, it can create a complex waveform and when it is amplitude modulated, it can...
Where does a listener's anticipation of the next note in an unfamiliar melody come from? One view is that expectancies reflect innate grouping biases; another is that expectancies reflect statistical learning through previous musical exposure. Listening experiments support both views but in limited contexts, e.g., using only instrumental renditions...
Listening effort is a long-standing area of interest in auditory cognitive neuroscience. Prior research has used multiple techniques to shed light on the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying listening during challenging conditions. Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) is growing in popularity as a tool for cognitive neuroscience resear...
Hearing loss is associated with challenges such as listening in noise, misinterpreting emotion, distorted music perception, and poorer quality of life outcomes relative to hearing peers. Despite this, research examining perceptual abilities for individuals with hearing loss has overwhelmingly focussed on measuring a narrow representation of speech...
Prior research has revealed a native-accent advantage, whereby nonnative-accented speech is more difficult to process than native-accented speech. Nonnative-accented speakers also experience more negative social judgments. In the current study, we asked three questions. First, does exposure to nonnative-accented speech increase speech intelligibili...
Absolute pitch (AP) is the ability to rapidly label pitch without an external reference. The speed of AP labeling may be related to faster sensory processing. We compared time needed for auditory processing in AP musicians, non-AP musicians, and nonmusicians (NM) using high-density electroencephalographic recording. Participants responded to pure t...
The greying of the world is leading to a rapid acceleration in both the healthcare costs and caregiver burden that are associated with dementia. There is an urgent need to develop new, easily scalable modalities of support. This perspective paper presents the theoretical background, rationale, and development plans for a music-based digital therape...
Objectives
Parkinson's disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disease leading to motor impairments and dystonia across diverse muscle groups including vocal muscles. The vocal production challenges associated with PD have received considerably less research attention than the primary gross motor symptoms of the disease despite having a substantial eff...
Objectives:
Given the low rates of hearing aid adoption among individuals with hearing loss, it is imperative to better understand the decision-making processes leading to greater hearing aid uptake. A careful analysis of the existing literature on theoretical approaches to studying these processes is needed to help researchers frame hypotheses an...
Empirical research of community‐based music interventions has advanced to investigate the individual, social, and educational implications of arts‐for‐wellbeing practices. Here, we present the motivations, aims, hypotheses, and implications of this complex field of inquiry. We describe examples of recent large‐scale investigations to reflect on the...
Several studies support the notion that singing the songs of a foreign culture can reduce prejudice and improve intergroup relations in elementary school children. The current article presents theoretical and empirical support for one potential mechanism underpinning this effect, namely, that singing songs may highlight commonalities and generate a...
Driving simulators are highly valuable tools for various applications such as research, training, and rehabilitation. However, they are also known to cause simulator sickness, a special form of traditional motion sickness. Common side effects of simulator sickness include nausea, headache, dizziness, eye-strain, and/or disorientation, all symptoms...
Minimizing simulator sickness is crucial for ensuring the well-being of users and for guaranteeing the integrity of driving performance data. Here, we compared the effect of direct and indirect airflow as potential countermeasures against simulator sickness in a high-fidelity driving simulator, further exploring the relationship between airflow, bo...
Interindividual differences in music‐related reward have been characterized as involving five main facets: musical seeking, emotion evocation, mood regulation, social reward, and sensory‐motor. An interesting concept related to how humans decode music as a rewarding experience is music transcendence or absorption (i.e., music‐driven states of compl...
This study aims to clarify unresolved questions from two earlier studies by McGarry et al. Exp Brain Res 218(4): 527–538, 2012 and Kaplan and Iacoboni Cogn Process 8: 103–113, 2007 on human mirror neuron system (hMNS) responsivity to multimodal presentations of actions. These questions are: (1) whether the two frontal areas originally identified by...
Objective
To evaluate remote testing as a tool for measuring emotional responses to non-speech sounds.
Design
Participants self-reported their hearing status and rated valence and arousal in response to non-speech sounds on an Internet crowdsourcing platform. These ratings were compared to data obtained in a laboratory setting with participants wh...
Sensorimotor brain areas have been implicated in the recognition of emotion expressed on the face and through nonverbal vocalizations. However, no previous study has assessed whether sensorimotor cortices are recruited during the perception of emotion in speech—a signal that includes both audio (speech sounds) and visual (facial speech movements) c...
Group singing elevates mood, increases social bonding, and regulates stress. However, the question remains as to how much of the singer’s mood-boost is derived from social aspects of group singing and how much can be achieved through singing alone. In the current study, we adopted a sociobiological approach to investigate the underpinnings of the m...
Objectives:
Understanding speech-in-noise can be highly effortful. Decreasing the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of speech increases listening effort, but it is relatively unclear if decreasing the level of semantic context does as well. The current study used functional near-infrared spectroscopy to evaluate two primary hypotheses: (1) listening eff...
Objectives: Understanding speech in noise can be highly effortful. Decreasing the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of speech increases listening effort, but it is relatively unclear if decreasing the level of semantic context does as well. The current study used functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to evaluate two primary hypotheses: (1) listen...
This study aims to clarify unresolved questions from two earlier studies (McGarry et al., 2012; Kaplan & Iacoboni, 2007) on human mirror neuron system (hMNS) responsivity to multimodal presentations of actions. These questions are: (1) whether the two frontal areas originally identified by Kaplan and Iacoboni (ventral premotor cortex [vPMC] and inf...
Sensorimotor brain areas have been implicated in the recognition of emotion expressed on the face and through non-verbal vocalizations. However, no previous study has assessed whether sensorimotor cortices are recruited during the perception of emotion in speech, a signal that includes both audio (speech sounds) and visual (facial speech movements)...
Absolute Pitch (AP) is the ability to identify an auditory pitch without prior context. Current theories posit AP involves automatic retrieval of referents. We tested interference in well-matched AP musicians, non-AP musicians, and non-musicians with three auditory Stroop tasks. Stimuli were one of two sung pitches with congruent or incongruent ver...
Background and objectivesMusic and auditory beat stimulation (ABS) in the theta frequency range (4-7 Hz) are sound-based anxiety treatments that have been independently investigated in prior studies. Here, the anxiety-reducing potential of calm music combined with theta ABS was examined in a large sample of participants. Methods
An open-label rando...
The ability to synchronize movements to a rhythmic stimulus, referred to as sensorimotor synchronization (SMS), is a behavioral measure of beat perception. Although SMS is generally superior when rhythms are presented in the auditory modality, recent research has demonstrated near-equivalent SMS for vibrotactile presentations of isochronous rhythms...
The verbal identity n-back task is commonly used to assess verbal working memory (VWM) capacity. Only three studies have compared brain activation during the n-back when using auditory and visual stimuli. The earliest study, a positron emission tomography study of the 3-back, found no differences in VWM-related brain activation between n-back modal...
Reconnecting Indigenous youth with their cultural traditions has been identified as an essential part of healing the intergenerational effects of forced assimilation policies. Past work suggests that learning the music of one's culture can foster cultural identity and community bonding, which may serve as protective factors for well-being. An 8-wee...
a b s t r a c t
Background: Hearing protection devices (HPDs) are often used in the workplace to prevent hearing
damage caused by noise. However, a factor that can lead to hearing loss in the workplace is improper
HPD fitting, and the previous literature has shown that instructing workers on how to properly insert
their HPDs can make a significant...
The present study investigated how valence, arousal, and subjective liking of music affect visually induced motion sickness (VIMS). VIMS is a common side effect when interacting with virtual environments, resulting in discomfort, dizziness, and/or nausea. Music has previously been shown to reduce VIMS, but the precise nature of this effect remains...
Spontaneous motor cortical activity during passive perception of action has been interpreted as a sensorimotor simulation of the observed action. There is currently interest in how sensorimotor simulation can support higher-up cognitive functions, such as memory, but this is relatively unexplored in the auditory domain. In the present study, we exa...
Many theorists have proposed that a spontaneous internal motor simulation occurs during the observation of intentional actions, and that this simulation supports action understanding. The simulation is thought to involve a coupling of sensory and motor systems along a dorsal pathway that connects visual and posterior auditory areas with inferior pa...
Note-to-note changes in brightness are able to influence the perception of interval size. Changes that are congruent with pitch tend to expand interval size, whereas changes that are incongruent tend to contract. In the case of singing, brightness of notes can vary as a function of vowel content. In the present study, we investigated whether note-t...
The perception of an event is strongly influenced by the context in which it occurs. Here, we examined the effect of a rhythmic context on detection of asynchrony in both the auditory and vibrotactile modalities. Using the method of constant stimuli and a two-alternative forced choice (2AFC), participants were presented with pairs of pure tones pla...
IN HIS ARTICLE ‘‘THE TERRITORY BETWEEN Speech and Song: A Joint Speech Perspective,’’ Cummins (2020) argues that research has failed to adequately recognize an important category of vocal activity that falls outside of the domains of language and music, at least as they are typically defined. This category, referred to by Cummins as joint speech, s...
Congenital amusia is a condition in which an individual suffers from a deficit of musical pitch perception and production. Individuals suffering from congenital amusia generally tend to abstain from musical activities. Here, we present the unique case of Tim Falconer, a self-described musicophile who also suffers from congenital amusia. We describe...
Ludwig van Beethoven suffered many hardships in his life but the least known among them may be the persistent slivers he endured while handling wood. Yes, wood! Be it through clenching a wooden stick between his teeth or cutting the legs off of a grand piano, he is said to have developed resourceful methods that enabled him to feel mechanical vibra...
This chapter provides an overview of multisensory processing in music by individuals with normal hearing, hearing loss, and deafness. The first section provides an account of theory and evidence regarding the neural mechanisms underpinning multisensory processing. The second section considers auditory-only processing of music with a focus on latera...
Musicians have considerable experience naming pitch-classes with verbal (e.g., Doh, Ré, and Mi) and semiotic tags (e.g., musical notation). On the one end of the spectrum, musicians can identify the pitch of a piano tone or quality of a chord without a reference tone [i.e., absolute pitch (AP) or relative pitch], which suggests strong associations...
This data set contains tracked facial landmark movements from the Ryerson Audio-Visual Database of Emotional Speech and Song (RAVDESS) [RAVDESS Zenodo page]. Motion tracking of actors' faces was produced by OpenFace 2.1.0 (Baltrusaitis, T., Zadeh, A., Lim, Y. C., & Morency, L. P., 2018). Tracked information includes: facial landmark detection, head...
The single-source hypothesis is presented as a unified theory for understanding the processing of simultaneous and sequential pitch combinations. Under the topic of simultaneous pitch combinations, auditory scene analysis and octave equivalence are considered. Under the topic of sequential pitch combinations, surface-level features (e.g., pitch dir...
Note-to-note changes in brightness are able to influence the perception of interval size. Changes that are congruent with pitch tend to expand interval size, whereas changes that are incongruent tend to contract. In the case of singing, brightness of notes can vary as a function of vowel content. In the present study, we investigated whether note-t...
There is growing evidence that singing can have a positive effect on language learning, but few studies have explored its benefit for children who have recently migrated to a new country. In the present study, recently migrated children (N = 35) received three 40-min sessions where all students learnt the lyrics of two songs designed to simulate la...
The question of how hearing loss and hearing rehabilitation affect patients’ momentary emotional experiences is one that has received little attention but has considerable potential to affect patients’ psychosocial function. This article is a product from the Hearing, Emotion, Amplification, Research, and Training workshop, which was convened to de...
Musical rhythms elicits a perception of a beat (or pulse) which in turn elicit spontaneous motor synchronization (Repp & Su, 2013). Electroencephalography (EEG) research has shown that endogenous neural oscillations dynamically entrain to beat frequencies of musical rhythms providing a neurological marker for beat perception(Nozaradan, Peretz, Miss...