Goldsmiths music, mind and brain psychologist to help lead £5.4m Danish research centre

Goldsmiths, University of London’s Professor Lauren Stewart is sharing her pioneering research with Denmark, thanks to a £5.4m grant from the Danish National Research Foundation to establish an international centre of excellence for the study of music and neuroscience.

Professor in Psychology Lauren Stewart will continue to co-direct the MSc Music, Mind and Brain in our Department of Psychology, while also taking the role of co-director at the newly established Center for Music in The Brain (MIB), Danish Neuroscience Center, Aarhus University.

The MIB Center, led by Aarhus University neuroscientist and jazz musician Peter Vuust, has received funding for six years, extendable to ten, to investigate how music moves us physically and emotionally, and how it can shape the brain’s structure and function.

Bringing together a world-leading team of experts in neuroimaging, neurophysiology, psychology, computational modelling, musicology and musical performance, the facility will also be home to 13 PhD students and six postdoctoral researchers. A graduate from the Goldsmiths’ MSc Music, Mind and Brain has already joined the team.

The MIB Center is one of 12 new ‘centres of excellence’ in varying fields funded through a share of DKK 700 million (£70.3m) from the Danish National Research Foundation.

Professor Stewart – an expert in the condition congenital amusia, or tone deafness - will lead on one of four key research areas, focusing on music perception and cognition.

Professor Peter Vuust will explore the interaction between rhythm and motor behaviour, while Professor Morten Kringelback (University of Oxford) leads on the relationship between music and emotions and Professor Elvira Brattico (University of Helsinki) on the effect of music training and expertise on individual traits.

“Our research covers a broad area but is unified by music. The way we perceive music is guided by predictive brain mechanisms, shaped by context, and varies widely between people,” explains Professor Stewart.

“We consider music to be a lens through which to examine brain function – our studies aim to make a significant contribution toward our understanding of the fundamental role of predictive processes in the brain.”

Professor Stewart studied for a BSc in Physiological Sciences and an MSc in Neuroscience at Balliol College Oxford. She completed her PhD at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, followed by postdoctoral positions at Newcastle University and a travelling fellowship to Harvard Medical School.

In 2015 Professor Stewart held a Visiting Research Fellowship at Aarhus, and contributed toward the team’s successful funding bid.

She remains co-director of the Music, Mind and Brain group started with Daniel Müllensiefen in 2009.

Since its foundation the Goldsmiths Music Mind and Brain group has been awarded funding from the Economic and Social Research Council, the Leverhulme Trust and from industry – including the BBC and Spotify - to work on projects addressing the cognitive, computational and neuroscientific bases of musical understanding and behaviour.

Their work on ‘earworms’ – the small loops of music that get stuck in your head – has made global headlines, with Lauren and her research appearing on The One Show, BBC News, Daily Mail, BBC Radio 4’s Material World, New Scientist, the New Yorker, The Sunday Times, Al Jazeera and many more.