SAT Cross-Disciplinary Research Seminar: Dr Eduardo Coutinho

*** Everyone Welcome! No need to book in advance***

Date: Wednesday 27th April
Time: 15:00-16:00
Room: HG09

Dr Eduardo Coutinho
Department of Music, University of Liverpoool
Department of Computing, Imperial College London

"Automatic recognition of emotion in music and speech: Predicting second-by-second subjective feelings of emotion from psychoacoustic features and physiological responses" 

Abstract After a century of manifold developments in psychological research on the emotional power of music, during the last decade, research on how music pieces are associated with the communication and induction of affective states (emotions and moods) has increasingly become a central topic in the Computer Sciences and Affective Computing. The computational analysis of music has allowed to develop models that estimate the emotional impact of music, not only with the goal of finding new ways for indexing and recommending music from personal or shared libraries, but also for understanding how music creates emotion, and especially the links between music structure and emotional responses. In this talk, I will present a series of empirical and computational studies and attempt to demonstrate that spatiotemporal dynamics in (psycho)acoustic features can be used to predict the variations in the emotions perceived in music, as well as patterns of activity in the peripheral nervous system (e.g., changes in heart rate, skin temperature, respiration). Furthermore, together with the theoretical basis that permits to establish such link, I will demonstrate the existence of shared acoustic codes that allow listeners to perceive emotional meaning in both music and speech prosody. Finally, I will discuss the potential of automatic emotion recognition in music for applications in Healthcare and other everyday life circumstances that may benefit from the emotional power of music as a mediator for achieving specific therapeutic and cognitive goals. This talk will cover topics from the Affective Sciences, Music Psychology, and Computer Sciences, and will be generally accessible to both students (at all levels) and faculty. 

Bio Dr Eduardo Coutinho received his diploma in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences from the University of Porto (Portugal, 2003), and his doctoral degree in Computer and Affective Sciences from the University of Plymouth (UK, 2008). He is currently a Lecturer in Music Psychology at the University of Liverpool, and Research Associate in Affective Computing at Imperial College London. Previously, he was a Research Fellow in Music Psychology at the University of Sheffield and the Swiss Center for Affective Sciences, and a Research Associate in Affective Computing at the Technical University of Munich. Coutinho works in the interdisciplinary fields of Music Psychology and Affective Computing, where his expertise is in the study of emotional expression, perception and induction through music, and the automatic recognition of emotion in music and speech. He has contributed to a broader understanding of the emotional impact of music on listeners, namely on the link between music structure and emotion, the types of emotions induced by music, and individual and contextual factors that mediate the relationships between music and listeners. Coutinho pioneered research on the computational analysis of emotional dynamics in music, and made significant contributions to the field of music emotion recognition, setting the new standard approach for recognition of emotional dynamics in music. Currently his work focuses on the application of music in Healthcare. For more information about Eduardo Coutinho and his work, please visit: http://www.eadward.org.