Why do our brains love music? | Dr. John Rehner Iversen | TEDxMcMasterU

Music is one of the defining features of what it means to be a human. Music can inspire us, teach us, heal us and brings us together in powerful ways. But how, and why, are we musical? I will explore the science and evolution behind human musicality by presenting engaging evidence from human brain imaging and animal studies to answer these fundamental questions.

Dr. John Rehner Iversen, PhD is a cognitive neuroscientist studying the interactions between music and the brain. He recently joined McMaster University as an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience and Behavior after a decade at the University of California San Diego. Iversen (co)directs several studies of the impact of music training on development in childhood and adolescence including the the EARLI project, part of a National Endowment for the Arts Research Laboratory. These projects place the impact of music into a broader neurodevelopmental framework, in which researchers are charting the 'growth curves' of the developing brain to understand how brain development shapes the emerging skills of each individual. After undergraduate studies in Physics at Harvard, he received an MPhil in History and Philosophy of Science at Cambridge and a PhD in Speech and Hearing Science from MIT.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx