Research Interest: Music is universal, and like other arts is part of what defines us as humans. It is clearly, one of the most widespread cultural phenomena which has been studied from numerous perspectives including the social, anthropological, historical, aesthetic, semiotic and theoretic. However, music also presents a unique example of complex human behavior requiring an exquisite orchestration of mental, emotional and motor processes.  Moreover, it has recently been suggested that music may be biologically rooted and that at least in its origin it may have had evolutionary adaptive functions related to social bonding. In my research I use behavioral and brain measures to study a number of questions related to music cognition and its neural substrates: What is the relationship between music theory and cognition? On which level (scales, tonality, musical form), does music theory describe a cognitive reality? Neural substrates of emotional reactions to music with a special focus on notions of expectancy and surprise. The role of vasopressin in musical memory. Neural substrates of octave equivalence and the phenomenon of pitch class. The role of cross-modal interactions in music, particularly in the associations of music with physical space and bodily motion.   Out of tune singing. Consonance and dissonance perception as a biological versus cultural percept.   My collaboration with ICNC members can be seen in co-supervision of Doctoral students (see CV) and especially in a joint seminar "Music and the Brain" offered at the ICNC by  Prof. Israel Nelken, Prof. Naphtali Tishby, Prof. Naphtali Wagner (musicology Dept.,) and myself (2010 and 2012) and in the international workshop we organized with Nori Jacoby and Prof. Globerson titled "Music and Brains: The Surprising Link -- An Interface between Music, Cognition and Neuroscience", which took place in Jerusalem , February 10-13, 2013.