Honing's research includes computational and empirical musicology, experimental psychology and neuroscience. His recent work explores what musicality is or can be, and to what extent we humans share this capacity with other animals, in order to find out what the cognitive and biological building blocks of musicality are.

Laudatio

Justin London, Professor of Music, Cognitive Science, and the Humanities at Carleton College and former president of the SMPC, highlighted in his laudatio Honings interdisciplinary contributions.

'Henkjan Honing’s journey through our field is readily evident in his various publications. [..] Note the continuity of his work—the thread of musicology is woven together with the long thread of psychology, and that of cognitive neuroscience. But the real thread that runs through all of Honing’s work is the simple but profound question 'What makes us musical creatures?' It is a simple question that requires a complicated answer—or rather, many answers, many of which Honing has explored.'

SMPC

The Society for Music Perception and Cognition (SMPC) is North America's premier professional organization for research in music psychology, music neuroscience, and empirical music studies. Partnering with its sister organizations in Europe (ESCOM) and Asia (APSCOM), the SMPC hosts annual national meetings and biennial international conferences (ICMPC), committed to advancing the field within the biological and social sciences.