News

• Closer to Truth: How Do Brains Make Music?
  Closer to Truth is a PBS interview series on music and the brain. Click here to watch interviews with INC's John Iversen, along with Mark Tramo, Diana Deutsch, and Elizabeth Margulis. For four other interviews and episodes (including "Can Music Probe Human Mentality?" "How Do Human Brains Experience Music?" and "Can the Mind Heal the Body?""), click here.
  
  
• Sound Health Network Launch Event - January 26, 2021 @ 2pm PST
  This 60-minute event explores how music can provide insights into brain functioning, reduce social isolation, promote community solidarity, and influence health. Dr. Iversen takes part in a conversation about the power of music in community with musician Quetzal Flores. Click here for more information!
  
  
• Canada Broadcast Company show "IDEAS" - April 30, 2020
  John Iversen speaks about the Neuroscience of Rhythm, and how rhythm helps us walk, talk — and even love. Click here to read.
  
  
• UC San Diego named a 2019 National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Research Lab on "The Arts, Creativity, Cognition, and Learning" (3/5/19)
  UC San Diego PIs Drs. John Iversen, Tim Brown, and Terry Jernigan, in partnership with San Diego Children’s Choir and Vista Unified School District, will study the potential effects of musical interventions on early childhood development. They will conduct the Early Academic Readiness and Learning Intervention - longitudinal intervention trials of vocal music in pre-school aged children, testing if music has impact on school readiness, cognition, and emotion. Read the press release!
  
  
• Sound Health: Music and the Mind (September 7-8, 2018)
  TDLC investigator Dr. John Iversen spoke at Music and the Mind, held at The Kennedy Center on September 7-8, 2018. The program "brought together some of today's most innovative artists and leading neuroscientists to explore connections between music, rhythm, and brain development." Click here to read more (and to watch Dr. Iversen perform with legendary Grateful Dead percussionist Mickey Hart!) Read about the event on The Kennedy Center website, or download the flyer here!
  
  
• TDLC's Dr. Iversen involved in NIH/Kennedy Center Music and Health Initiative Workshop (January 26-27, 2017)
  Dr. Iversen was one of three speakers at a National Institutes of Health (NIH) workshop held on January 26-27, 2017. He spoke about music and child development. The purpose of the workshop was to help guide the direction of a new partnership between the NIH and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts to expand on an initiative that NIH has had with the National Symphony Orchestra (NSO) called Sound Health. Click here to view a video of the event!
  
  
• What Learning Looks Like: Creating A Well-Tuned Orchestra In Your Head
  TDLC's Dr. John Iversen is featured on KPBS, where he discusses his five-year study on the brains of children who play music in the San Diego Youth Symphony's Community Opus after-school program. Dr. Iversen is just beginning to analyze his data, but early findings suggest playing music is linked to stronger language development! Read more (KPBS 12/12/17)
  
  
• John Iversen Explores our Perception of Musical Rhythm (3/1/17)
  The Scientist article features TDLC's Dr. John Iversen. It profiles his work on the neural mechanisms of rhythm perception, where he has demonstrated the active role of the brain in shaping how a listener perceives a rhythm. Iversen’s other TDLC work examines the impact of music on child brain development, with TDLC researcher Terry Jernigan, and was awarded an NSF science of learning grant to explore the next generation of EEG data collection in the classroom (with TDLC researchers Tzyy-Ping Jung and Alex Khalil). Click here to read more about his research! Click here for his interview on Voice of La Jolla!
  
  
• The Beasts That Keep the Beat (Quanta Magazine, 3/22/16)
  New insights from neuroscience — aided by a small zoo’s worth of dancing animals — are revealing the biological origins of rhythm
  TDLC's Dr. John Iversen is featured, with Aniruddh Patel, in their research of an Eleonora cockatoo called Snowball. This was an early study in a new focus on musicality in the animalkingdom. Click here to read the article and to watch Snowball dance!
  
  
• Dr. John Iversen's TEDx Talk now available! (10/17/15)
  TDLC's Dr. Iversen presented a TEDx talk on October 17, 2015, at Symphony Hall in San Diego. In his presentation, "Does Music Change a Child's Brain?" he discussed the SIMPHONY project, an "ambitious collaborative longitudinal study of the impact of music training on brain and behavioral development." Click here to view the talk 
  
  
• Mozart & The Mind (September 25-27, 2015)
  Dr. Tim Mullen is creative director, while TDLC's Dr. John Iversen and Dr. Alex Khalil will be presenting, along with other exciting speakers including Antonio Damasio, Concetta Tomaino, Nina Kraus, and more. The event is In Collaboration with The Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination. Click here to hear Dr. Iversen's talk!. Read more about how Mozart & The Mind began!
  
  
• The SIMPHONY Project: How Does Music Change a Child's Brain? (ARTSBLOG - For Arts Professionals in the Know, 3/20/15)
  Click here to read the blog!
  
  
• The Magic of Music (10/25/14)
  TDLC researcher Dr. John Iversen gave a talk on the SIMPHONY project at the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry on Oct. 25, 2014, in a session entitled "The Magic of Music: Bringing Science and the San Diego Youth Symphony Together at AACAP." The session focused on the role of music in leading to healthy child development and featured additional talks by Dalouge Smith, CEO of SD Youth Symphony, Dr. William Wood, and Dr. Jim Hudziak. The session ended with performances by Community Opus and SDYS performers who spoke movingly about the deeply positive impact music has had on their lives.
  
  
• SIMPHONY Project in the News!
  "Neuroscientists at UC San Diego are studying the impact of intense music ensemble training on the brain development of underserved children in the Chula Vista school district. Specifically, they want to better understand how music influences neural connections in the brain. The five-year project, called SIMPHONY (Studying the Influence Music Practice has On Neurodevelopment in Youth), is directed by TDLC's John Iversen of the Institute for Neural Computation in close collaboration with Terry Jernigan, director of the Center for Human Development." (taken from UCSD News). More 
  
  
• UC San Diego's "Simphony" Research Earns Grammy Foundation Support
  John Iversen of the Institute of Neural Computation (INC) at UC San Diego is heading the SIMPHONY Project, one of the first longitudinal studies of its kind on the effects of musical training on brain development. SIMPHONY is being done in collaboration with TDLC researcher Dr. Terry Jernigan of the Center for Human Development. More 
  
  
• Free Interactive Music & the Brain Exposition – Mozart & the Mind
  Join us Saturdays May 11, May 18, and June 1, 6:30-7:30 pm for a series of free Music & the Brain Expositions, part of Mainly Mozart's new Mozart & the Mind series. TDLC investigators Scott Makeig, Tim Mullen, Alex Khalil, Victor Mincez, and John Iversen will present, along with other scientists and musicians. "This is a unique opportunity to engage with scientists, musicians, and fellow music aficionados around a series of interactive installations exploring connections between music and the brain!" Click here to learn more about Mozart & the Mind and how it began!
  
  
• This is your mind on music (U-T San Diego, April 27, 2013) - Mainly Mozart's "Mozart & the Mind" series will get you thinking
  Features Tim Mullen and TDLC's Alex Khalil.  Click here to read the article!
  
  
• John Iversen: Keeping the Beat - Exploring How We Perceive Rhythm and Music (Fall/Winter 2010)
  Dr. Iversen is featured in BrainMatters, the Publication of the Neursciences Institute! Click here to read the article.