Professor Joydeep Bhattacharya

Joy studies complex human behaviour including music, language, aesthetics, decision making, flow and creativity.

Staff details

Position

Professor

I am a Professor of Psychology. Before joining Goldsmiths, I was associated with Max Planck Institute (Germany), Austrian Academy of Sciences (Austria), and California Institute of Technology (USA). I am a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and the Association for Psychological Science.

I have a wide-ranging research interest, but specifically, over the last twenty years, I have been investigating the neural mechanisms of creative cognition, including several forms of artistic activities (music cognition, visual artistry), and the elusive Aha! moment. I am equally fascinated by the challenges of understanding ever-changing brainwaves and the spectrum of complex behaviour that makes us human.

Academic qualifications

PhD (Thesis: In search of regularity in irregular, complex time series) 2000

Teaching and supervision

I supervise projects on various topics related to creativity, aesthetics, music cognition, decision-making, problem-solving, personality and individual differences, and flow.

Research interests

My main themes of research relate to the study of complex cognition including creativity, music perception, emotion, and flow. I am a member of our Cognition and Neuroscience Research Group. I have published more than 150 articles on the following topics (in alphabetical order):

Chaos theory
Causality
Creativity
Decision making
Emotion
Flow experience
Individual differences
Music perception and neuroscience of music cognition
Neuroimaging (EEG, MEG, fMRI)
Brain network
Noninvasive brain stimulation
Nonlinear time series analysis

Featured publications

2018: Right temporal alpha oscillations as a neural mechanism for inhibiting obvious associations
PNAS 115(52): E12144-E12152.

2005: Nonlinear multivariate analysis of neurophysiological signals
Progress in Neurobiology 77(1-2): 1-37.

2007: Causality detection based on information-theoretic approaches in time series analysis
Physics Reports 441(1): 1-46.

2008: Deconstructing insight: EEG correlates of insightful problem solving
PLoS ONE 3(1): e1459.

2010: Unsupervised statistical learning underpins computational, behavioural, and neural manifestations of musical expectation
Neuroimage 50(1): 302-313.

Grants and awards

2013: EU Funded - CReativity Enhancement through Advanced brain Mapping and stimulation (CREAM)

2010: EPSRC Funded - Information and neural DYnamics in the perception Of Musical structure (IDYOM)

Publications and research outputs

Book

Nonlinear Analysis of Biomedical Data Pereda, Ernesto; Gonzalez, Julian; Bhattacharya, Joydeep and Rial, Ruben. 2010. Nonlinear Analysis of Biomedical Data. Tenerife, Spain: University of La Laguna Press. ISBN 978-84-7756-806-3

Book Section

Not Cure But Heal: Music and Medicine Andrade, Paulo E. and Bhattacharya, Joydeep. 2018. Not Cure But Heal: Music and Medicine. In: Albert Cheung-Hoi Yu and Lina Li, eds. Systems Neuroscience. 21 Cham, Switzerland: Springer, pp. 283-307. ISBN 9783319945910
Neurocognitive Aspects of Musical Improvisation and Performance Rahman, Shama and Bhattacharya, Joydeep. 2016. Neurocognitive Aspects of Musical Improvisation and Performance. In: Giovanni Emanuele Corazza and Sergio Agnoli, eds. Multidisciplinary Contributions to the Science of Creative Thinking. Singapore: Springer, pp. 261-279. ISBN 978-981-287-617-1
Music Induced Emotions: Some Current Issues and Cross-Modal Comparisons Marin, Manuela M. and Bhattacharya, Joydeep. 2010. Music Induced Emotions: Some Current Issues and Cross-Modal Comparisons. In: Joao Hermida and Mariana Ferreo, eds. Music Education. Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science Publishers, pp. 1-38. ISBN 978-1-60876-655-0

Article

Poetic Break: Incubation for Associative Creativity Chaudhuri, Soma and Bhattacharya, Joydeep. 2025. Poetic Break: Incubation for Associative Creativity. Creativity Research Journal, ISSN 1040-0419
Evaluating poetry: Navigating the divide between aesthetical and creativity judgments Chaudhuri, Soma; Pickering, Alan and Bhattacharya, Joydeep. 2025. Evaluating poetry: Navigating the divide between aesthetical and creativity judgments. Journal of Creative Behavior, 59(1), e683. ISSN 0022-0175
Self-Supervised Machine Learning Approach for Autism Detection in Young Children using MEG Signal Barik, Kasturi; Dey, Spandan; Watanabe, Katsumi; Hirosawa, Tetsu; Yoshimura, Yuki; Kikuchi, Mitsuru; Bhattacharya, Joydeep and Saha, Goutam. 2024. Self-Supervised Machine Learning Approach for Autism Detection in Young Children using MEG Signal. Biomedical Signal Processing and Control, 98, 106671. ISSN 1746-8094

Conference or Workshop Item

Entrainment of Premotor Cortex Activity by Ambiguity in Musical Metre Cameron, Daniel; Lindsen, Job P.; Pearce, Marcus; Wiggins, Geraint; Potter, Keith and Bhattacharya, Joydeep. 2012. 'Entrainment of Premotor Cortex Activity by Ambiguity in Musical Metre'. In: Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition and the 8th Triennial Conference of the European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music. Thessaloniki, Greece July 23-28.