A new study reveals how we convey meaning through vocal intonation. (Illustration: MPIEA / L.Bittner)

“Between the lines”—that’s how we describe unspoken messages that the actual text may omit but that are conveyed, for example, through word choice or tone of voice. A research team led by the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics (MPIEA) in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, has investigated how we convey meaning through speech intonation and identified different listener profiles. The results have been recently published in Cognition.

Prosody—the melody of speech—conveys meaning to what is said beyond the spoken words. Intonation, or changes in pitch, plays an important role in this process. However, it is unclear which intonation features are crucial and if everyone perceives them the same way. To address these questions, the interdisciplinary research team conducted a multi-stage study.

First, 41 native German speakers heard pairs of the German word for “beer,” where the pitch had been randomly generated in each version. In one session, participants selected which version of each word pair sounded more like criticism to them, in another session, they decided which version sounded more like a suggestion. The sum of these decisions revealed patterns showing how the participants imagined the sound of criticism or a suggestion, respectively.

Using these reconstructed pitch patterns, the researchers ran a second study, asking a new group of 177 people to rate how much each pattern actually sounded like criticism or suggestion. This allowed the researchers to test which features of the pitch contour mattered most. The results showed that pitch dynamics—that is, how spiky or flat the curve is, and whether it trends upward or downward—were the main drivers of listeners’ judgments. Furthermore, it became apparent that not everyone interpreted the features in the same way.

“Perhaps the most striking finding is how differently people use pitch information—sometimes even in opposite ways from each other,” reports lead author Larrouy-Maestri of the MPIEA. “This variability may be a previously underestimated source of the miscommunication that shows up so often in everyday conversation: how you say something may land completely differently depending on who’s listening.”

Together, these findings offer new insights into how we make sense of sounds more broadly, well beyond speech itself. Furthermore, they offer a more nuanced picture of how intonation conveys meaning: as a flexible, listener-dependent inference, which can bring people together in shared understanding—or pull them apart.  

Publication:

Larrouy-Maestri, P., Ringer, H., Poeppel, D., & Sammler, D. (2027). The Role of Pitch in the Vocal Communication of Intentions. Cognition, 278, 106714. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2026.106714

Contact:

Pauline Larrouy-Maestri

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Source: Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics
Original article: https://www.aesthetics.mpg.de/en/newsroom/news/news-article/article/as-i-said-how-intonation-influences-our-perception.html

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“The average tells only part of the story,” says sole author Eugen Wassiliwizky of the MPIEA. “Although male faces receive lower attractiveness ratings overall, we find a disproportionate group of exceptionally attractive men. Male beauty certainly exists, but it may be distributed differently.”

This observation also offers a possible perspective on an apparent cultural paradox: Male beauty has been celebrated for millennia, from classical sculpture to contemporary popular culture. Such representations may disproportionately draw from the exceptional end of the attractiveness distribution.

But the GAP raises an even more fundamental issue: Researchers use ratings of facial attractiveness as indicators of partner preferences, sexual attraction, or so-called “mate value”—that is, a person’s perceived desirability as a potential partner. Yet the GAP is not restricted to evaluations of potential partners. In fact, it is particularly pronounced when heterosexual women rate female faces.

“For decades, researchers have asked people how attractive they find a face, often interpreting the answer in terms of mate preference,” Wassiliwizky explains. “But the GAP forces us to ask a more basic question: What are people actually judging when they answer this question?”

The new research article argues that attractiveness ratings may reflect a broader system of aesthetic evaluation rather than sexual desire alone. This perspective could change how attractiveness is studied in the future. Researchers interested specifically in sexual attraction might employ more direct measures, while same-sex evaluations could provide valuable insights into how people generally perceive and evaluate beauty.

Publication:

Wassiliwizky, E. (2026). What Are We Measuring When We Measure Attractiveness? Current Opinion in Psychology, 73, 102416. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2026.102416

Contact:

Eugen Wassiliwizky

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Source: Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics
Original article: https://www.aesthetics.mpg.de/en/newsroom/news/news-article/article/the-perception-of-male-beauty.html

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What makes a live performance distinctive? And which aspects of a concert have the greatest impact on the audience’s experience? “About the Feeling” has been exploring questions like these since its inception as an experimental concert series rooted in research. Now, for the first time, the organizers are bringing together the findings to date at a conference on October 15, 2026, at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics (MPIEA), followed by a concert evening at the Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Preparations are already underway: Researchers have until September 6 to submit their work for the conference’s poster session.

The starting point for “About the Feeling” was the academic work of Nikita Kudakov, a rapper and researcher at the MPIEA. In his doctoral dissertation, he examined recurring body movements and verbal phrases in rap performances, as well as their function in communication between performing artists and the audience. “About the Feeling” became an important part of this research: Kudakov and his colleagues recorded the performances at the concerts and analyzed them, along with audience perceptions before and after the shows. Thus, the stage served not only as an artistic space but also as a field of research.

Over time, the idea emerged to apply the findings not only scientifically but also to make them available to artists, so that they could design their performances more consciously and build a stronger connection with their audience. This approach gave rise to the “Great Gig Group,” a spin-off project of the MPIEA. The group translates findings from empirical aesthetics into coaching and technology solutions for singers, rappers, DJs, and instrumentalists. At its core is an app that analyzes live performances and provides specific feedback on how to engage the audience. In addition, the team supports musicians in developing their stage presence and concert dramaturgy.

In April 2025, the “Great Gig Group” was accepted into the Max Planck Society’s MAX!mize incubation program. In addition to further developing the app and the consulting services, expanding “About the Feeling” is also one of the central goals. The October 15 conference and concert mark a milestone in this process. For the first time, researchers, artists, and music industry representatives will come together for keynote speeches, panel discussions, and a poster session. In the late afternoon, “About the Feeling” will then move to the Mousonturm artists’ center, where live performances and DJ sets spanning various musical genres will continue until midnight. This marks a logical continuation of the story: The research findings presented will meet the practical reality of the stage on the very same day—and the feeling that unfolds only through the shared concert experience.

Call for Papers

• Conference: About The Feeling 2026, a conference on live performance (approx. 80 participants) with an accompanying music festival (approx. 500 visitors) • Date: 15 October 2026 • Venue: Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, Frankfurt am Main, Germany • Format: Poster session with approx. 15 contributions, DIN A0 portrait • Language: English • Submission deadline: 6 September 2026 • Notification by 14 September 2026 • Organizer: Great Gig Group

You will find detailed information on the Conference, the Call for Papers and the submission link  here.

Contact:

Great Gig Group

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Source: Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics
Original article: https://www.aesthetics.mpg.de/en/newsroom/news/news-article/article/it-s-all-about-the-feeling-where-research-meets-live-music.html

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Wester, J., & Larrouy-Maestri, P. (2026). Perception of Humanness is Affected by Speech Content. Speech Communication, 181, 103398. Link.

The post Perception of Humanness Is Affected by Speech Content first appeared on Max Planck Neuroscience.

Starting this summer, the concert series “Notes and Neurons: Music for Brain Health” will go on tour in Germany. During six concerts, the University Hospital Bonn (UKB), UK Bonn Musik e.V., the Medical Faculty of the University of Bonn, the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics (MPIEA), and the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) will present high-level live performances alongside insights into the impact of music on the human brain and its potential to promote mental fitness. Venues include Berlin, Bonn, Dortmund, and Cologne. This event series is part of the “Science Year 2026: Medicine of the Future,” organized by the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology, and Space (BMFTR).

Lifestyle choices can reduce the risk of dementia and positively influence its progression. Music, in particular, is credited with having a beneficial effect on brain health. “In our event series, we explore the power of music from a neuroscientific perspective and demonstrate it to the audience,” explains Bernd Weber, dean of the Bonn Faculty of Medicine, which is leading the project in collaboration with the UKB. Uwe Reuter, Chairman of the Board and Chief Medical Officer of the UKB, adds: “To accomplish this, we bring live music and current brain research to the stage in a popular science format.” At the same time, participation is encouraged. For instance, visitors can participate in a digital memory test. The accompanying smartphone app is already being used in doctors’ offices to detect cognitive disorders early on. In the not-too-distant future, such tech tools could become part of everyday medical practice.

Classical, Film, and Pop

The concert series covers various musical genres. Depending on the venue, different orchestras, together with the UKB Choir, present a program of classical compositions, film music, and more. “We want to arouse interest in brain research and whet the appetite for great music. We don’t just play Mozart and Beethoven; we also play John Williams and Hans Zimmer,” says Theodor Rüber, the initiator of “Notes and Neurons.” The neurologist is a group leader in neuroradiology at the UKB and is also a trained conductor.

Drivers of Mental Reserve

“We can all do our part to reduce our risk of dementia. With our event series, we aim to raise awareness about prevention and motivate people to take action. There are many ways to do this, but music is a concrete starting point for prevention,” says Joachim Schultze, a systems medicine specialist and scientific director of the DZNE. “Playing an instrument, listening to music, or singing all engage the brain and can help build mental reserves, as music can lead to lasting changes in brain structure and function. When this happens in a band, orchestra, or choir, it also promotes social interaction. This has also been proven to be good for the brain and strengthen mental resilience.”

Music Professionals in the Scanner

“Notes and Neurons” will offer insights into modern technologies, particularly the possibilities of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). In the lead-up to the event, some of the participating music professionals will undergo brain scans. “We plan to present these images at our science concerts. They give us the opportunity to show the audience specific features in the brain that are likely attributable to intensive musical training,” says neurologist Theodor Rüber. Additionally, a mobile brain scanner will be used during the events. “This is a cutting-edge development in medical technology. Conventional MRI machines weigh tons, but a mobile scanner fits into an ambulance. Therefore, its use is not limited to hospitals or neurology practices. This opens up new possibilities for medical care. Such devices offer a concrete glimpse into the future of medicine.”

Aha Moments

Music is a global phenomenon that has accompanied humans—the only species for which this is true—since the Stone Age, according to archaeological findings. Music has a strong social and cultural component and a motivating effect. “In sports, the right sound can spur us on, and singing together can lift the mood. Yet music isn’t really about the notes and sound waves. To a large extent, music is created in our minds. In our science concerts, we aim to convey this concept to the audience,” explains Daniela Sammler, a neuropsychologist and research group leader at the MPIEA in Frankfurt am Main. “Our goal is for all visitors to experience a few ‘aha’ moments and realize why music can be good for our health.”

Contributors, Supporters, Sponsors

“Notes and Neurons: Music for Brain Health” is a joint event series organized by UKB, the Medical Faculty of the University of Bonn, MPIEA, and DZNE. Supporters include the companies neotiv GmbH and Hyperfine, Inc. The Federal Ministry of Research, Technology, and Space (BMFTR) is funding this series of science concerts as part of the “Science Year 2026: Medicine of the Future.” More information: www.notenundneuronen.de

The post “Notes and Neurons” Brings Music and Brain Research to the Stage first appeared on Max Planck Neuroscience.

A total of 75 people took part in the online study. Participants listened to different versions of a sentence spoken by eight voices. Four of the voices were human, and four were artificially generated Text-To-Speech (TTS) voices. Each voice presented the sentence in four expressed emotions: neutral, happy, sad, or angry. Participants rated the voices’ attractiveness and indicated how much they would like to interact with them. They also described the emotion they perceived in each case.

First author Camila Bruder of the MPIEA states: “Overall, happy-sounding voices were rated more positively than those perceived as sad or angry, regardless of whether they were human or artificially generated. This suggests that perceived emotion influences the evaluation of all voices similarly, or that AI voices are handled in a similar way as human ones.”

Participants were also asked to classify each voice as human or AI-generated. Human voices were identified correctly 86 percent of the time, while AI voices were only identified correctly 55 percent of the time. The most obvious misjudgments occurred with AI voices that were perceived as angry. This may be because participants expected “emotionless” synthetic voices.

Furthermore, age was also found to play a role in the assessment. Older participants had greater difficulty distinguishing between human and AI-generated voices. However, the fact that most participants were “fooled” by the TTS voices indicates significant progress in the expressiveness and naturalness of these systems.

Senior author Pauline Larrouy-Maestri of the MPIEA concludes: “Overall, human voices were perceived as more attractive and socially appealing than synthetic ones. However, there were significant individual differences in the assessment. This result highlights the need for further studies with more nuanced evaluation methods and further exploration of listener diversity to reflect the complexity of human voice perception.”

Bruder, C., Breda, P., & Larrouy-Maestri, P. (2025). Attractive Synthetic Voices. Computers in Human Behavior: Artificial Humans, 6, Article 100211. Read

The post How Attractive Do AI Voices Sound? first appeared on Max Planck Neuroscience.

The first release includes intracranial EEG (iEEG) data from 38 patients across three international sites, all recorded under a standardized protocol designed to test competing theories of consciousness. With high-resolution brain recordings, synchronized eye tracking and behavioral data, this is one of the largest public iEEG datasets available to the global research community. Cogitate researcher, Alex Lepauvre, PhD student at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics (MPIEA) in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, went the extra mile and prepared a Jupyter notebook (https://github.com/Cogitate-consortium/iEEG-data-release/blob/main/notebooks/ieeg-data-release.ipynb), which serves as both a tutorial and a reproducible analysis pipeline. This valuable resource enables other researchers to quickly explore the dataset, adapt the workflows to their own hypotheses, and build upon the provided code with ease.

Future releases will include MEG (102 subjects) and fMRI (122 subjects) datasets, which will become available following the publication of their respective Scientific Data papers (currently under review).

This ambitious effort reflects years of coordinated, global collaboration, bringing together researchers, theorists, clinicians, and software engineers to make high-quality neuroscience data freely available to all, regardless of geography or institutional resources.

“When I was doing my PhD in Chile, intracranial data felt like science fiction. It was something only labs in the Global North had access to. That feeling of being outside the conversation stuck with me. Today, we’re helping change that. This dataset is for everyone , wherever you’re based, whatever resources you have. It’s not just open science. It’s inclusive science,” says Lucia Melloni of the MPIEA.

Researchers are also invited to register their ideas via the Cogitate Project Registry, an open-science platform to claim credit, prevent scooping, build collaborations, and trace the evolution of scientific ideas over time.

Seedat, A., Lepauvre, A., Jeschke, J., Gorska-Klimowska, U., Armendariz, M., Bendtz, K., Henin, S., Hirschhorn, R., Brown, T., Jensen, E., Kozma, C., Mazumder, D., Montenegro, S., Yu, L., Bonacchi, N., Das, D., Kahraman, K., Sripad, P., Taheriyan, F., Devinsky, O., Dugan, P., Doyle, W., Flinker, A., Friedman, D., Lake, W., Pitts, M., Mudrik, L., Boly, M., Devore, S., Kreiman, G., & Melloni, L. (2025). Open Multi-Center Intracranial Electroencephalography Dataset With Task Probing Conscious Visual Perception. Scientific Data, 12, 854.

Paper: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-025-04833-z
Data: https://www.arc-cogitate.com/data-release
Code: https://github.com/neurologic/cogitate-msp1

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What is consciousness? For centuries, scientists and philosophers have tried to understand how the brain creates our inner world—how neural activity translates into the taste of coffee, for example, or the sting of pain. Now, an international, theory-neutral research consortium, led by the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics (MPIEA) in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, has put two of today’s most studied theories of consciousness to the test. The results, published in Nature, challenge core assumptions of both models and propose a new way to study complex scientific questions.

The study was carried out by the Cogitate Consortium (Collaboration On GNWT and IIT: Testing Alternative Theories of Experience), which set out to rigorously test the Global Neuronal Workspace Theory (GNWT) and the Integrated Information Theory (IIT). Both theories aim to explain how conscious experience arises from neural activity, but offer starkly different answers. GNWT suggests that consciousness emerges when information is globally broadcasted across the brain, particularly in prefrontal and parietal regions. IIT, by contrast, places consciousness in the posterior cortex, where information is integrated into unified experiences.

Rather than working in isolation, theory leaders joined forces with an international team of researchers to design a study that would provide an objective, falsifiable test of their predictions. This adversarial collaboration—an approach first championed by Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman—is a radical departure from the status quo in neuroscience, where confirmation bias and methodological silos have long hindered progress.

All hypotheses, analyses, and interpretations were preregistered in advance. Independent research teams conducted the study across seven laboratories worldwide. Using three complementary neuroimaging techniques—functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), magnetoencephalography (MEG), and intracranial electroencephalography (iEEG)—they tested a total of 256 participants. All researchers agreed beforehand to accept the outcome, whatever it may be.

“The strength of this approach is that we put the theories on the line—together,” says Lucia Melloni, co-senior author of the MPIEA. “This isn’t about crowning a winner. It’s about raising the bar for how we test scientific ideas.”

The results show that both theories were challenged. IIT’s key prediction, that conscious perception depends on sustained synchronization in posterior brain regions, was not supported by the data. In the case of GNWT, although some conscious information appeared in the prefrontal cortex, key features were missing, and the predicted “ignition” at the offset of the conscious experience could not be confirmed.

“This is a humbling reminder that even our most established ideas need to be rigorously tested. If we’re serious about understanding consciousness, we have to let the data lead,” Melloni continues.

Building on its previous work, the Cogitate team is already finalizing a second large-scale experiment to further probe GNWT and IIT. In a further commitment to transparency, the team is making the dataset freely available to researchers around the world.

“There are over twenty theories of consciousness out there. We’ve tested two,” concludes Alex Lepauvre, co-author of the MPIEA. “Now we invite others to take this rich dataset and help push the field forward.”

The paper was co-authored by 41 researchers, including nine co-first-authors. A full list of authors and contributions can be found on the consortium’s website.

The following authors were principle investigators of the study:

1. Liad Mudrik, co-senior author, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
2. Michael Pitts, co-senior author, Reed College, Portland, Oregon, USA
3. Ole Jensen, University of Oxford, Oxford, England
4. Floris de Lange, Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging, Nijmegen,
The Netherlands
5. Gabriel Kreiman, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
6. Huan Luo, Peking University, Beijing, China
7. Hal Blumenfeld, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA
8. Simon Henin, NYU Langone Health, New York City, New York, USA
9. Giulio Tononi, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, USA
10. Stanislas Dehaene – CEA NeuroSpin, Paris/Saclay, France
11. Christof Koch, Allen Institute, Seattle, Washington, USA

Cogitate Consortium, Ferrante, O., Gorska-Klimowska, U., Henin, S., Hirschhorn, R., Khalaf, A., Lepauvre, A., Liu, L., Richter, D., Vidal, Y., Bonacchi, N., Brown, T., Sripad, P., Armendariz, M., Bendtz, K., Ghafari, T., Hetenyi, D., Jeschke, J., Kozma, C., Mazumder, D. R., Montenegro, S., Seedat, A., Sharafeldin, A., Yang, S., Baillet, S., Chalmers, D. J., Cichy, R. M., Fallon, F., Panagiotaropoulos, T. I., Blumenfeld, H., de Lange, F. P., Devore, S., Jensen, O., Kreiman, G., Luo, H., Boly, M., Dehaene, S., Koch, C., Tononi, G., Pitts, M., Mudrik, L., & Melloni, L. (2025). Adversarial Testing of Global Neuronal Workspace and Integrated Information Theories of Consciousness. Nature. Link

The post Rethinking Consciousness: When Science Puts Itself to the Test first appeared on Max Planck Neuroscience.

Imagine a boxer dodging a punch, a musician perfectly timing a note, or a driver anticipating a green light—the brain can be seen as an amazing tool that is constantly predicting the future. But how does it do this? A team of neuroscientists from the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics (MPIEA), the Ernst Strüngmann Institute (ESI) for Neuroscience, both in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, and the Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany, has shown for the first time how specific brain rhythms predict the timing of future events. The results were recently published in the journal Nature Communications.

The study reveals the key variable shaping our ability to anticipate upcoming events: probability over time. This probability is represented in brain waves that have a certain number of oscillations per second. These oscillations occur in the frequency ranges alpha, with seven to twelve hertz, and beta, with 15 to 30 hertz:

“The results show that brain waves in these frequency ranges forecast the time point at which future events will occur. The more predictable an event, the stronger the neural oscillations. This allows the brain to react faster and more efficiently,” explains first author Matthias Grabenhorst from ESI (formerly MPIEA).

Using magnetoencephalography (MEG), the research team was able to locate three key areas of the brain that track when something is likely to happen: First, the posterior parietal cortex, which is a hub for timing and motor preparation, plays an important role. In addition, the posterior middle temporal gyrus, which is crucial for processing events over time, is active. And also, the sensorimotor cortex plays a role, as it is directly involved in movements to predicted events.

The findings could have wide-ranging implications for our understanding of decision-making and attention, as well as athletic performance and neurological disorders:

“The study opens new doors for exploring the fundamental role of brain rhythms in how we navigate time and the future. For example, these rhythms could one day be used to train the brain to think ahead. Or disruptions in these signals could explain why certain diseases such as ADHD or Parkinson’s affect timing and reaction speed,” concludes senior author Georgios Michalareas of Goethe University, who participated in the study as a researcher at the MPIEA.

The study is part of a larger research project, “The Anticipation of Events in Time,” from which two studies have already been published.

Grabenhorst, M., Poeppel, D., & Michalareas, G. (2025). Neural Signatures of Temporal Anticipation in Human Cortex Represent Event Probability Density. Nature Communications. Link

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Emotional voices attract considerable attention. A search on any browser using “emotional prosody” as a key phrase leads to more than a million entries. Such interest is evident in the scientific literature as well; readers are reminded in the introductory paragraphs of countless articles of the great importance of prosody and that listeners easily infer the emotional state of speakers through acoustic information. However, despite decades of research on this topic and important achievements, the mapping between acoustics and emotional states is still unclear. In this article, we chart the rich literature on emotional prosody for both newcomers to the field and researchers seeking updates. We also summarize problems revealed by a sample of the literature of the last decades and propose concrete research directions for addressing them, ultimately to satisfy the need for more mechanistic knowledge of emotional prosody.

Larrouy-Maestri, P., Poeppel, D., & Pell, M. D. (2024). The Sound of Emotional Prosody: Nearly 3 Decades of Research and Future Directions. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 0(0). Link 

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