USC Center for Music, Brain and Society

Ready to explore the intersection of music, neuroscience, and psychology this summer? 🎶🧠

Our Summer Research Program offers high school students the chance to dive into hands-on research, connect with experts, and discover how science and the arts come together to better understand the human mind.

If you’re a high school student interested in learning more about music & the brain, be sure to apply by March 15th, 2026! ✨

🌐 Additional information: https://dornsife.usc.edu/cmbs/education-and-training/summer-research-program/

📩 Application: https://tinyurl.com/2026SRP

(Links also in bio)

📢 Coming up in two weeks!

Join us for an inspiring day on June 9, 2025, for the Art Education, Research, and Policy Symposium at USC’s Brain and Creativity Institute. Bringing together top voices in arts, science, and education, this event features a special appearance by iconic soprano and arts-health champion Renée Fleming. Explore how the arts can transform student well-being and educational equity.

📅 Date: Monday, Jun. 9, 2025

🕒 Time: 10:00 AM - 4:30 PM

🔗 RSVP Link: tinyurl.com/Symposium2025USC

This event will be held in-person only. All are welcome to attend. For accurate head counts and to receive email reminders about this event, advanced registration is required (RSVP).

See you there!

Before we officially close the chapter on this past semester, we want to take a moment to spotlight our collaboration with NPR’s From the Top! This past March, we were thrilled to host a youth symposium and live concert featuring talented musicians and researchers alike! 🧠🎵

➡️ Scroll to see what we were up to!

Why is music so powerful to the human experience? Check out the first 2/4 podcasts now available to see what we all had to say 🎙️
1️⃣ https://fromthetop.org/show/music-and-the-brain-part-i-show-463/
2️⃣ https://fromthetop.org/show/music-and-the-brain-part-ii-show-464/

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Music-evoked nostalgia can help us feel emotions and memories previously felt. How is this processed in the brain? 🧠🎼 How will understanding this process help us better understand memory/emotion processing in general? A recent paper published by our USC alum Dr. Sarah Hennessy and Dr. Assal Habibi explores methods to investigate this relationship.



Sources:

Hennessy, S., Janata, P., Ginsberg, T., Kaplan, J. and Habibi, A. (2025), Music-Evoked Nostalgia Activates Default Mode and Reward Networks Across the Lifespan. Hum Brain Mapp, 46: e70181. https://doi-org.oxy.idm.oclc.org/10.1002/hbm.70181

Nudelman, Jacob & Waltz, James. (2022). Acute and Lifetime Stress and Psychotic Illness: The Roles of Reward and Salience Networks. Journal of psychiatry and brain science. 7. 10.20900/jpbs.20220012.

Van Ettinger-Veenstra, Helene & Lundberg, Peter & Alföldi, Péter & Södermark, Martin & Graven-Nielsen, Thomas & Sjörs Dahlman, Anna & Engström, Maria & Gerdle, Björn. (2019). Chronic widespread pain patients show disrupted cortical connectivity in default mode and salience networks, modulated by pain sensitivity. Journal of Pain Research. 12. 1743-1755. 10.2147/JPR.S189443.

https://www.psypost.org/in-fascinating-study-neuroscientists-reveal-the-unique-impact-of-nostalgic-music-on-the-brain/

For this week’s content, we wanted to explore how music can impact human activity. To start this series, we created a study playlist that Research indicates that music that has even features, no lyrics, and no sudden tempo or tonality changes are ideal for studying ((Scarratt, Hegel, Vuust, & Sadakata 2023), (de Groot 2006), (Dalton & Behm, 2007). Given this, we compiled a list of classical pieces that fit this criteria, including some songs that were used in actual studies and songs that we at CMBS listen to ourselves! We hope that this helps you think a little deeper about what you listen the next time you study. Enjoy! 📚 🎶

What is your own go to study music? 🎧

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Sources:
Music that is used while studying and music that is used for sleep share similar musical features, genres and subgroups (Scarratt, Hegli, Vuust, & Sadakata, 2023)

Effects of Stimulus Characteristics and Background Music on Foreign Language Vocabulary Learning and Forgetting (de Groot 2006)

Effects of noise and music on human and task performance: A systematic review (Dalton, Behm 2007)

Impact of different auditory environments on task performance and EEG activity (Xue, Zhong, Cao, Liu, An 2024)

Join us next Tuesday, March 11th! Dr. Laura Getz will be discussing how context influences music perception, attention, and memory through experiments on syncopation perception, music’s impact on product perception, and the role of melody familiarity in memory aids. Everyone is welcome! Complimentary coffee and pastries will be available.

📅 Date: Tuesday, Mar. 11, 2025
🕒 Time: 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
🔗 RSVP Link: https://tinyurl.com/GetzRSVP

This event will be held in-person and on Zoom. All are welcome to attend. For accurate headcounts and to receive email reminders about this event, advanced registration is required (RSVP). Please find the flyer attached.

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Musical Pathways: Context Influences Music Perception, Attention, and Memory

In my work, I aim to demonstrate the importance of interactions between sensory information received in the auditory and visual modalities, as well as how sensory information interacts with higher levels of processing, with cognitive processes such as prior knowledge influencing perceptual processing. For this talk I will focus the influence of context on music perception, attention, and memory, using 3 experimental examples.

As a first example, I will show how prior knowledge of genre conventions is required for syncopation perception, using Latin salsa music as a test case. As a second example, pairing music of different pitches, tempos, and timbres with radio advertisements for various products only impacts product perception when active attention is drawn to the music. As a final example, more melody familiarity and repetition can lead music to be used as an effective memory aid compared to a spoken control condition.

Together, these results show strong top-down influences on our musical experiences and highlight the need for careful attention to stimulus creation and task design.

Biography:
Organizing complex perceptual input in real time is crucial for our ability to interact with the world around us, and information received in the auditory modality in particular is central to many fundamental aspects of human behavior (e.g., spoken language, music, sound localization). Dr. Getz’s research takes an interdisciplinary approach to understanding auditory perception, with research encompassing speech, cross-modal, and music perception using a combination of behavioral, cognitive neuroscience, and computational modeling approaches. In her work, she seeks to determine to what extent cognitive processes are encapsulated from one another and how perception is influenced by individual and cross-cultural differences, previous knowledge, expertise, and task demands. You can read more about her research on the LAMP lab website: https://www.lamplab.org/.

📢 Coming up this week!

Join us this Friday, February 28th! Dr. Andrew Goldman will be giving a virtual talk on the application of neuroscience in music research. Everyone is welcome! �

📅 Date: Friday, Feb. 28, 2025�
🕒 Time: 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM�
🔗 RSVP Link: tinyurl.com/GoldmanRSVP�
🔗 Zoom Link: tinyurl.com/AGoldmanZoom�

This event will be held virtually only. All are welcome to attend. For accurate headcounts and to receive email reminders about this event, advanced registration is required (RSVP).

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Neuroscience in Music Research: Critical Challenges and Contributions

Neuroscientific accounts of music-theoretical topics are increasingly prominent. It is important to critically examine the challenges and contributions of incorporating neuroscience into music studies. Such examination allows for more meaningful integration and leads to better designed experiments that are appropriately sensitive to the historical and cultural situated- ness of the topics they investigate. Here I discuss three contributions and three challenges. The contributions are mechanistic explanations (which identify entities and activities that carry out musical behaviors), com- parison (which can unite or distinguish between apparently different or similar behavioral capacities), and the ability to transfer knowledge across domains of inquiry. The challenges are the problem of defining behavior (musical behaviors are underdefined, complicating the attribution of neural data), reverse inference (a logical fallacy complicating the association between neurophysiology and a musical task), and problems from issues of cognitive ontology (i.e., a set of fundamental cognitive capacities). Following this theoretical discussion, I apply the six ideas to recent work on improvisation and syntax (including my own), analyzing the work’s value and pitfalls. A final emergent theme from this critical analysis is that music neuroscience makes its best contributions when synthesizing work from other areas of music studies.

Biography:
Andrew Goldman is a music theorist and cognitive scientist, and is currently Assistant Professor in Music Theory and Cognitive Science at Indiana University, where he also directs IU's Music and Mind Lab. He received his PhD in 2015 at the Centre for Music and Science at the University of Cambridge. He was in the inaugural cohort of Presidential Scholars in Society and Neuroscience at Columbia University, and also held a postdoctoral position with the Music, Cognition, and the Brain initiative at Western University before joining the faculty at Indiana University. His research considers how we can (and cannot) use scientific methods to learn about musical perception and cognition in theory, and he also designs and conducts behavioral and neuroscientific experiments on music perception and cognition. Goldman's research has focused on improvisation in music and dance, and more recent work has addressed the perception of musical form, melodic contour, metrical perception, and embodiment in music. His work has been published in both music and psychology journals, and has been presented at national and international conferences including the Society for Music Theory, the International Conference for Music Perception and Cognition, and the American Psychological Association. Goldman is also a pianist and composer. His original musical, "Science! The Musical" provides an alternate platform to explore the worlds of music and science. Musical numbers include "The Interdisciplinary Rag," "The Real World," "Publish or Perish," and more!

Wishing you all the warmth and joy of the holiday season! Happy holidays and a happy new year everyone! 🎉💫

Some moments are too good not to share again! Here’s a recap of the 2024 HCN Segil Symposium—a day filled with music science, connection, and inspiration. If you would like to revisit the talks of the day, you can watch the recording here: tinyurl.com/HCNSS2024

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🗓️ Mark your calendars! Join us next Friday for a special lecture featuring Dr. Adina Mornell, Professor of Instrumental and Vocal Music Education at the University of Music and Theatre Munich. Enjoy an early afternoon discussion on music research and design with musicians in mind.

⏰ Date + Time: Thursday, November 14th from 11:30am -12:30pm
📍Location: Cammilleri Hall on the University Park campus.
🔗 RSVP: tinyurl.com/cmbsmornell

This event will be held both virtually and in-person. All are welcome to attend. For accurate headcounts, advanced registration is required. Please RSVP.

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🗓️ Mark your calendars! Join us for the 2024 HCN Segil Symposium happening on November 8th at the USC Brain & Creativity Institute. Enjoy talks by leading experts and a musical interlude by musicians from Delirium Musicum. Please RSVP. 🧠🎶

⛓️ Link in bio! tinyurl.com/2024HCN

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