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If you are reading this, you are probably doing so on a device that plays music. You are probably able to hear and understand that music. You probably can also produce music of your own, even if you've never had music lessons. You probably engage with music on a regular basis, regardless of your cultural background, location in the world, or socioeconomic status. You have probably been this way your whole life.
In the Music Lab, we're figuring out why the human mind is designed in such a way that all of the above is true. We do basic cognitive science experiments with many different populations and with people who live all over the world, including in small-scale societies. We also work on large corpus studies of ethnographies and field recordings from the Natural History of Song project, which we host.
The Music Lab is based jointly at the University of Auckland (in New Zealand, as a part of the School of Psychology) and Yale University (in New Haven, as a part of the Yale Child Study Center).
On this site, you can learn more about us and about our work, read our papers, and participate in experiments online!
news
- Our PI, Samuel Mehr, was awarded the NZ Prime Minister's MacDiarmid Emerging Scientist Prize!
- If you'd like to hear about our current research, this interview on Radio New Zealand includes some discussion of our newest studies.
- Collaborator Elika Bergelson discussed our research into language experience and music processing with Marco Werman on Public Radio International's The World.
- Our cross-cultural research on infant-directed speech and song was covered on the front page of the New York Times, on the TODAY show, and in many other spots worldwide.
- We've moved — after 5 years at Harvard, we have transitioned our citizen-science platform to Yale University and our brick-and-mortar lab to the University of Auckland (New Zealand).
people
Samuel Mehr
Principal Investigator (website)Courtney Hilton
Postdoc/Research FellowEun Cho
PostdocLogan James
Affiliated PostdocRebecca Evans
Affiliated PostdocRoza Kamiloğlu
Affiliated PostdocMila Bertolo
Graduate StudentJan Simson
Graduate StudentLidya Yurdum
Graduate StudentMarty Snarskis
Graduate studentJuliet Barry
Graduate studentZoé Schelp
Graduate StudentSorour Zekrati
Graduate StudentSam (I-Chieh) Wei
Graduate StudentGage Quigley-Tump
Graduate StudentEstelle Lai
Research AssistantLaurence Silk
Undergraduate internLucas Oland
Undergraduate internMaxx Shearod
Honours StudentJackson Downey
Honours Studentcollaborators, past and present
- Quentin Atkinson
University of Auckland - Aaron Benjamin
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign - Charlie Chubb
UC Irvine - Joshua Fiechter
Kairos Research - Carolyn Fredericks
Yale University - Luke Glowacki
Boston University - Reyna Gordon
Vanderbilt University Medical Center - Gregory Hickok
UC Irvine - Joshua Hartshorne
Massachusetts General Hospital - Daniel Ketter
Missouri State University - Dean Knox
University of Pennsylvania - Max Krasnow
Harvard University - Tony Lambert
University of Auckland - Linda Mayes
Yale Child Study Center - Daniel Müllensiefen
Goldsmiths, University of London - Timothy O'Donnell
McGill University - Isabelle Peretz
Université de Montréal - Jon Sakata
McGill University - Disa Sauter
University of Amsterdam - Adena Schachner
University of California, San Diego - Manvir Singh
University of California, Davis - Diana Tamir
Princeton University - Sandra Trehub (d. 2023)
University of Toronto, Mississauga - Xiaoqin Wang
Johns Hopkins University - Ellen Winner
Boston College - Sarah Woolley
McGill University
We also work with many others on the Natural History of Song project: learn more at themusiclab.org/nhs.
alumni
Pip Brown
Visiting PhD (2023), based at the University of Warwick.
Ekanem Ebinne
Research Assistant (2022-2023).
Rachel Yan
Affiliated grad student (2020-2022), currently a PhD student in Psychology at the University of Michigan.
Jingxuan Liu
Affiliated grad student (2020-2023), currently a PhD student at Columbia University.
Judy Lee
Research Assistant (2020-2021).
Cody Moser
Affiliated grad student (2018-2022), currently a PhD student in Cognitive and Information Sciences the University of California, Merced, working in the Smaldino Lab.
Alex Mackiel
Research Assistant (2021), currently a PhD student in Developmental Psychology at the University of Chicago.
Liam Crowley
Honours student (2019-2021), currently a PhD student in Psychology at Victoria University of Wellington.
Mila Bertolo
Lab manager (2019-2021) and summer intern (2018), currently a PhD student in Neuroscience at McGill University, working in the Sakata Lab
Anna Bergson
Summer intern (2019), currently practicing social work in Washington DC.
Brooke Milosh
Summer intern (2019), currently completing medical school at Hofstra University.
S. Atwood
Lab manager (2018-2019), currently a PhD student in Psychology at the Human Diversity Lab at Princeton University.
Constance Bainbridge
Research Assistant (2018-2020), currently a PhD student in Communication at the University of California, Los Angeles, working with Greg Bryant.
Julie Youngers
Summer intern (2018), currently working in the North Kansas City public schools.
Dylan Feng Xing
Summer intern (2018), as of August 2024 Dylan is completing a postdoc fellowship as a clinical psychologist at the Yale Health Center.
Kelsie Lopez
Summer intern (2018), currently a PhD student in the Plasticity in Neurodevelopment Lab with Dr. Laurel Gabard-Durnam in the Center for Cognitive and Brain Health.
Alma Bitran
Summer intern (2018), currently a PhD student at Rutgers University working in the DBT-RU practicum training site.
recent papers
join
We are currently recruiting a postdoc (more information here) and a PhD student (more information here).
If you are interested in PhD study in our lab (separately from the above-advertised position), please contact Dr Mehr at sam@auckland.ac.nz with an expression of interest and a CV. We can support PhD applicants at the University of Auckland (in New Zealand) or at Yale, either in Psychology (if working jointly with a Psychology faculty member) or via the Child Study Center. Please note that funding for PhD study is competitive and may not be guaranteed, depending on the particulars of your application.
We do not currently have any open positions for full-time, salaried research assistants, but are able to host part-time RAs working in New Zealand or New Haven. If you are interested in such a position, for hourly pay; or if you would like to apply to work with us for academic credit (at the University of Auckland or at Yale) or work-study (at Yale), please contact us at musiclab@yale.edu. In general, we do not recruit volunteers, with the exception of students who are sponsored by their home institution to do an internship with us.
If you are a member of an underrepresented group in research, and interested in joining us, we can help you get funded with an NIH Diversity Supplement. Please get in touch with Dr Mehr at sam@auckland.ac.nz if you are interested in applying.