Sydney Music, Mind, and Body Lab

All in all, it seems music can indeed be good company :-). #musicscience

Then, we showed these images to a new group of participants and asked them to guess which ones came from participants' imagination during music and silence. The new sample could the task, but only when also listening to the music, hinting at a 'theory of mind of music-evoked mental imagery'.

We then used Stable Diffusion to visualise the 4200 mental imagery reports we collected, and trained a topic model to generate normative representations of the imagined content. Even in these abstracted representation, the difference is quite noticeable:

The effect was quite strong, and was there regardless of whether listeners spoke the language of the lyrics, and it even showed when the music was purely instrumental.

We used Latent Dirichlet Allocation to investigate the themes imagined. We observed much increased loads of social and adventure themes during music listening. Whereas participants during the silence condition stuck much closer to the task instructions and other contextual introductions.

We asked 600 participants to listen to music and imagine journeys towards landmarks. Music compared to silence increases imagined vividness, emotional sentiment, as well as imagined distance and time travelled.

Solitary silence and social sounds: music can influence mental imagery, inducing thoughts of social interactions - Scientific Reports Scientific Reports - Solitary silence and social sounds: music can influence mental imagery, inducing thoughts of social interactions

Delighted to share our new work 'Solitary silence and social sounds: music can influence mental imagery, inducing thoughts of social interactions'. We show that music is indeed good company! #musicscience #mentalimagery www.nature.com/articles/s41...

We had a great time in São Paulo! A massive thanks to all attendees, both in person and online, as well as the organisers of the #icmpc18 who made this such a rich experience. #musicscience

Massimo Grassi, Do musicians have better short-term memory than nonmusicians?

Multilab study shows musos are different from non-musos.
+ shows small effects can be reliably detected.

+ multilab benefits> diverse, globally rep. samples w/ research work distributed

#ICMPC2025 #MusicScience #ICMPC18

Fernando Castellar from the SMMBL shows how the use of music and mental imagery differs between athletes and coaches and as a function of competitive level. #icmpc18 #musicscience

In addition to her talk on the effect of rhythmic layering on mental imagery, @cerenayyildiz.bsky.social from the SMMBL also contributed a poster showing compelling interactions between musical micro variations and individual absorption tendencies on mental imagery #icmpc18 #musicscience

Fernando Castellar from the SMMBL presents new data on how music & mental imagery affect performance in a sporting task. He shows that even after a single, short mental imagery session, skill acquisition is already dramatically increased! #icmpc18 #musicscience

At #icmpc18 @adefathiawati.bsky.social from the SMMBL shares new data about the prevalence of Music Performance Anxiety, as well as deployed mitigation strategies amongst tertiary music student in Australia.

@ugurmkaya.bsky.social from the SMMBL shares at the #icmpc18 how expert vocalists can intentionally shape the mental imagery of listeners. In a mixed method design he collected 6 hours(!) of singing and interview recordings for each participating vocalists. #musicscience

Ade (@adefathiawati.bsky.social) from our lab highlighted updated trends in Music Performance Anxiety among tertiary music students across Australia, as well as the mitigation strategies students use 📊
#ICMPC18
@smmb-lab.bsky.social

Ugur @ugurmkaya.bsky.social from our lab just gave a great talk at #ICMPC18 on how vocalists draw on their own intuitions to influence the vividness and emotional quality of listeners’ mental imagery. 🎤
@smmb-lab.bsky.social

#icmpc18 more excellent research coming from @smmb-lab.bsky.social. Ade Fathiawati shares her findings on psychological and pharmacological strategies to mitigate performance anxiety among students.

My lab colleague Fernando Castellar presented his poster on ‘The prevalence of music, mental imagery, and their combined use as a mental training technique by athletes and coaches’ at #ICMPC18 today! 🏋️🏌️‍♂️⛹️‍♀️🎶🎧💭 it’s inspiring to see how far his research has come!
@smmb-lab.bsky.social

My wonderful PhD supervisor, @steffenherff.bsky.social, gave a fantastic talk at #ICMPC18 on “Expertise predicts more efficient muscle spike shapes in drummers” today! 🥁 Incredible to see how nuanced motor control evolves with skill 💪
#ICMPC18 @smmb-lab.bsky.social

Dr. Steffen Herff from @smmb-lab.bsky.social shares very rich findings at #icmpc18 about expertise-related muscle activation in drummers. This work has important implications for biofeedback interventions to help musicians develop their skills and avoid playing-related injury. #musicscience

Miriam Olsen, @smmb-lab.bsky.social,The efficacy of using biofeedback... : A systematic review and meta-analysis

>biofeedback has potential to regulate muscle activity, improve musical performance & reduce musicians' health symptoms
>could supplement normal practice

#ICMPC2025 #MusicScience

Harin Lee presenting in São Paulo

Congratulations to @harinlee.info for winning the #ICMPC18 best student paper award! 🥇

Suvi Saarikallio, Psychological functions of personally meaningful vs mundane music listening

emotions/memories more prevalent in personally meaningful compared to music in general (where fun/background = more prevalent), so we need to consider personal context of music

#ICMPC2025 #MusicScience

Please feel free to drop by at the poster session tomorrow where I will share our findings on individual differences interacting with micro-variations in timing and loudness to affect music-induced mental imagery!
⏱️📣🎶💭 #musicscience #ICMPC18

been in the Dance, Music, and Social Synchrony symposium at #ICMPC2025. really neat findings from multiple studies shared

+ a nice model from the neurolive team. #MusicScience

@miriamolsen.bsky.social from our @smmb-lab.bsky.social presented a talk on ‘The efficacy of using biofeedback to reduce playing-related musculoskeletal pain and improve performance in musicians: A systematic review and meta-analysis’ at #ICMPC18! 🎶👩‍🎤💪

Music as social surrogate? A qualitative analysis of older adults’ choices of music to alleviate loneliness - Ceren Ayyildiz, Olivia Geibel, Steffen A. Herff, Sarah Hashim, Tuomas Eerola, Mats B. Küss... People are living longer than ever. Loneliness is prevalent across various age groups, posing a serious threat to both wellbeing and health. The social surrogac...

🎉 New Publication Alert! 🎉

Incredibly excited to share our new paper, "Music as Social Surrogate? A Qualitative Analysis of Older Adults’ Choices of Music to Alleviate Loneliness", now published in Musicae Scientiae! 📰

Read here: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Sydney Music, Mind and Body Lab @smmb-lab.bsky.social is at #icmpc18 in São Paulo! 🇧🇷
The conference started with a great keynote by Vinoo Alluri!

At #ICMPC18, Gerard Breaden Madden shares some pretty convincing evidence why it is important to regularly clean your musical instruments...I'm probably going to have nightmares about the slide showing bacteria colonies grown from woodwind reeds... #musicscience

@miriamolsen.bsky.social of the SMMBL critically evaluates the efficacy of Biofeedback systems to support musicians' health: They are pretty effective!! #icmpc18 #musicscience