Isabelle Peretz

Current position

Full professor
Département de psychologie, Université de Montréal

Canada research chair in neurocognition of music

Casavant chair in neurocognition of music

Co-director of the International Laboratory for Brain, Music and Sound Research (BRAMS)

Associate professor
École d'orthophonie et d'audiologie, Université de Montréal

Adjunct professor McGill University Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery

Current research support

• The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)
• Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR)
• Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI)

Alumni

• Isabelle Lussier, Ph.D. 1993
• Francine Fontaine, Ph.D. 1995, Neuropsychologue à l’Institut Universitaire de Gériatrie de Montréal
• Claude Paquette, Dps 1995, Neuropsychologue (clinicienne) à l’Institut de Réadaptation de Montréal et chargée de cours de formation pratique à l’Université de Montréal
• Sylvie Hébert, PhD 1996, Chercheure agrégée, Audiologie et orthophonie, Université de Montréal
• Lise Gagnon, Ph.D. R/I 1999, Professeure de psychologie, Université de Sherbrooke et chercheure-clinicienne au Centre de recherche en gérontologie et gériatrie de Sherbrooke
• Danielle Gaudreau, Ph.D. R/I 1999, Neuropsychologue (clinicienne)
• Simone Dalla Bella, Ph.D. 2001. Professeur, Departement de Psychologie Cognitive, University of Finance and Management in Warsaw, Poland. Visit the MPB Lab Website.
• Julie Ayotte, Ph. D. 2003. Neuropsychologue clinicienne, Hopital Pierre Lagardeur
• Krista Hyde, Ph.D. 2005
• Amélie Racette,Ph.D. 2005
• Nathalie Gosselin, Ph.D. 2006
• Pascale Lidji, Ph.D. 2008
• Mathieu Roy, Ph.D. 2008

Research Interests

• Biological foundations of music
• Brain organization principles for music
• Music-specific impairments (acquired and congenital)
• Neural correlates of musical emotions
• Speech prosody
• Music and speech in singing
• Neural correlates of pitch-related deficits

Courses

• PSY-6022
• PSY-6441

Brief biography

Dr. Peretz is a cognitive neuropsychologist and a professor of Psychology at the University of Montreal. Dr. Peretz was born and educated in Brussels, Belgium. She earned her Ph.D. in experimental psychology at the Université Libre de Bruxelles under José Morais in 1984. Shortly therafter she took on a faculty position at Université de Montréal where she has remained ever since. Dr. Peretz’s focuses on the musical potential of ordinary people, its neural correlates, its heritability and its specificity relative to language. She has published over 150 scientific papers on a variety of topics, from perception, memory, and emotions to performance (for her publications see www.brams.umontreal.ca/plab). She is renowned for her work on congenital and acquired musical disorders (amusia) and on the biological foundations of music processing in general. Dr. Peretz’s research has received continued support from the Canadian Natural Science and Engineering Council and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research since 1986. In 2004, The Université de Montréal earned her an endowed Casavant chair in neurocognition of music and in 2007, a Canada Research Chair in neurocognition of music. In 2005, Dr. Peretz became the founding co-director of the international laboratory for Brain, Music, and Sound research (BRAMS), a unique multi-university consortium that is jointly affiliated to McGill University and Université de Montréal (http://www.brams.org/), with state-of-the art facilities dedicated to the cognitive neuroscience of music. In 2009, she was awarded Prix Justine & Yves Sergent, as well as Prix ACFAS Jacques Rousseau. Dr. Peretz is the founding Editor-in-chief of the new open-access Frontiers of Auditory Cognitive Neuroscience and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and of the American Psychological Association.

Picture of Dr. Isabelle Peretz(right-click to save)