Nori Jacoby

Nori Jacoby studies how different cultures use music and sound to make sense of the world around them. Through his research, Nori attempts to create new paradigms for scientific analysis that incorporate techniques from neuroscience, anthropology, and ethnomusicology, particularly in the study of rhythm perception. He earned a PhD in computational neuroscience from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and did postdoctoral research in computational audition at MIT. Dr. Jacoby currently leads the Research Group in Computational Auditory Perception at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt, Germany. 

Project Title

The Cultural Foundations of Auditory Processing

Ana Maria Ochoa, Professor of Music, Columbia University

Sarah Woolley, Professor of Psychology, Columbia University

Presidential Scholars Research Symposium: 3rd-Year Presentations
April 29, 2019

Sound Studies and Auditory Neuroscience: New Perspectives on Listening
May 1, 2017

Harrison, P., Marjieh, R., Adolfi, F., van Rijn, P., Anglada-Tort, M., Tchernichovski, O., ... & Jacoby, N. (2020). Gibbs Sampling with People. Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, 33.

Roeske, T. C., Tchernichovski, O., Poeppel, D., & Jacoby, N. (2020). Categorical rhythms are shared between songbirds and humans. Current Biology, 30(18), 3544-3555.

McPherson, M. J., Dolan, S. E., Durango, A., Ossandon, T., Valdés, J., Undurraga, E. A., ... & McDermott, J. H. (2020). Perceptual fusion of musical notes by native Amazonians suggests universal representations of musical intervals. Nature Communications, 11(1), 1-14.

Jacoby, N., Margulis, E. H., Clayton, M., Hannon, E., Honing, H., Iversen, J., ... & Perlman, M. (2020). Cross-cultural work in music cognition: Challenges, insights, and recommendations. Music Perception, 37(3), 185-195.

Mehr, S. A., Singh, M., Knox, D., Ketter, D. M., Pickens-Jones, D., Atwood, S., ... & Howard, R. M. (2019). Universality and diversity in human song. Science, 366(6468).

Jacoby, N., Undurraga, E. A., McPherson, M. J., Valdés, J., Ossandón, T., & McDermott, J. H. (2019). Universal and non-universal features of musical pitch perception revealed by singing. Current Biology. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2019.08.020

Polak, R., Jacoby, N., Fischinger, T., Goldberg, D., Holzapfel, A., & London, J. (2018). Rhythmic prototypes across cultures. Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 36(1), 1-23.

Elliott, M. T., Ward, D., Stables, R., Fraser, D., Jacoby, N., & Wing, A. M. (n.d.). Analysing multi-person timing in music and movement: Event based methods. Timing and Time Perception: Procedures, Measures, and Applications, 177-215. 

Jacoby, N., & McDermott, J. H. (2017). Integer ratio priors on musical rhythm revealed cross-culturally by iterated reproduction. Current Biology, 27(3), 359-370. 

Langlois, T., Jacoby, N., Suchow, J., & Griffiths, T. (2017). Uncovering visual priors in spatial memory using serial reproduction. Paper presented at Proceedings of the 39th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society.

Mehta, A. H., Jacoby, N., Yasin, I., Oxenham, A. J., & Shamma, S. A. (2017). An auditory illusion reveals the role of streaming in the temporal misallocation of rerceptual objects. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 372(1714), 20160114.

Polak, R., Jacoby, N., & London, J. (2017). Kulturelle Diversität in der empirischen Rhythmusforschung. Drei Analysen eines Audio-Korpus von Percussion-Ensemblemusik aus Mali. Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Musiktheorie [Journal of the German-Speaking Society of Music Theory], 13(2), 195-235.

Murton, O., Zipse, L., Jacoby, N., & Shattuck-Hufnagel, S. (2017). Repetition and a beat-based timingfFramework: What determines the duration of intervals between repetitions of a tapping pattern? Timing and Time Perception, 5(3-4), 244-259. 

Polak, R., London, J., & Jacoby, N. (2016). Both isochronous and non-isochronous metrical subdivision afford precise and stable ensemble entrainment: A corpus study of Malian jembe drumming. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 10.

London, J., Polak, R., & Jacoby, N. (2016). Rhythm histograms and musical meter: A corpus study of Malian percussion music. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 24(2), 474-480.

Singer, N., Jacoby, N., Lin, T., Raz, G., Shpigelman, L., Gilam, G., … Hendler, T. (2016). Common modulation of limbic network activation underlies musical emotions as they unfold. NeuroImage, 141, 517-529.

Eloul, S., Zissu, G., Amo, Y. H., & Jacoby, N. (2016). Motion tracking of a fish as a novel way to control electronic music performance. Leonardo, 49(3), 203-210.

Honisch, J. J., Elliott, M. T., Jacoby, N., & Wing, A. M. (2016). Cue properties change timing strategies in group movement synchronisation. Scientific Reports, 6(1).

Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, 2018

Presidential Scholars Research Symposium: 3rd-Year Presentations
April 29, 2019

Presidential Scholars Research Symposium: 2nd-Year Presentations
February 12, 2018

Sound Studies and Auditory Neuroscience: New Perspectives on Listening
May 1, 2017