The research was co-authored by Dr Steffen A. Herff, leader of the Sydney, Music, Mind and Body Lab and Ceren Ayyildiz’s PhD supervisor. Dr Herff is a Horizon Fellow at the University of Sydney and leads a team investigating how music interacts with memory, imagination and emotion.
The Lab’s work explores how musical experiences shape our inner worlds – from how we imagine stories and scenarios to how music supports social connection and mental wellbeing.
The study also included Andrew J. Milne, Associate Professor of Music Cognition and Computation in the School of Humanities and Communication Arts, Western Sydney University, as well as the lead of the Music Science Lab at the MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour and Development. His research focuses on the cognitive and mathematical foundations of music and how these impact creativity, learning, and wellbeing.
It also included Professor Muireann Irish, a leading cognitive neuroscientist in the Brain and Mind Centre at University of Sydney, whose research focuses on memory, imagination and the brain’s capacity to mentally simulate experiences.
DECLARATION
The authors declare no competing interests. This project was supported by the Australian Government through the Australian Research Council (ARC) under the Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA, DE2201100961), by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) under the SPARK grant scheme (CRSK-1_196567 / 1) and by the University of Sydney, through the Sydney Horizon Fellowship.