CURRENT PROJECTS

Physics and mathematics approaches to understanding the cognitive-emotional underpinnings of music (funded by NSERC).

Truth Under Fire: A Research Proposal to Extinguish (Or Contain) The Flames (funded by SSHRC).

Laboratory for the Science of Music, Health, and Wellness (Minerva University)

MIIR Audio Tech miiraudiotech.com

Sound Health Initiative (NIH, Kennedy Center, National Endowment for the Arts, Renee Fleming Foundation)

Levitin Lab Visiting Scholars and Special Guests (past and present)

Select Publications

(* = student and trainee authors)

• *Burunat, I., Levitin, D. J., & Toiviainen, P. (2024). Breaking (musical) boundaries by investigating brain dynamics of event segmentation during real-life music-listening. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 121(36), e2319459121.

• Levitin, D. J., & Fleming, L. (2024). Music and Memory. In Kahana, M. J., Edmund, J., & Wagner, A. D. (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Human Memory, Two Volume Pack: Foundations and Applications, pp. 2214-2227.

• Fleming, L. A. & Levitin, D. J. (2024). Waking up to no sound: Music psychology and Climate Action. Impact: The Journal of the Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching & Learning, 13(1), Winter 2024.

• *Dandiwal, Y., Fleming, L., Levitin, D. J. (2023). Personal and contextual variables predict music consumption during the first COVID-19 lockdown in Canada. Frontiers in Psychology, 14, 1116857. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1116857

• *Tchalova, K., Beland, S., *Chanda, M.L., Levitin, D.J., Bartz, J.A. (2023). Shifting the Sociometer: Opioid Receptor Blockade Lowers Self-Esteem. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsad017

• *Jermyn, A. S., Stevenson, D. J., & Levitin, D. J. (2023). 1/f laws found in non-human music. Scientific Reports, 13(1), 1324.

• *Halabieh, H., *Hawkins, S., *Bernstein, A.E., *Lewkowict, S., *Unaldi Kamel, B., Fleming, L., Levitin, D.J. (2022). The Future of Higher Education: Identifying Current Educational Problems and Proposed Solutions. Education Sciences, 12(12):888. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci12120888

• Zadra, A., & Levitin, D.J. (2022). The disintegrated theory of consciousness: Sleep, waking, and meta-awareness. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 45, E64. doi:10.1017/S0140525X21001850

• Levitin, D. J. (2021). Knowledge Songs As An Evolutionary Adaptation to Facilitate Information Transmission Through Music. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 44, e105. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X20001090

• Sanders, R. H. & Levitin, D. J. (2020). Towards an Understanding of Control of Complex Rhythmical ‘Wavelike’ Coordination in Humans. Brain Sciences, 10(4), 215.

• Levitin, D. J. (2019). Medicine's Melodies: Music, Health and Well-Being. Music and Medicine, 11(4), 236-244.

• Bernstein, D. M., Kumar, R, Masson, M., & Levitin, D. J. (2018). Fluency misattribution and auditory hindsight bias. Memory & Cognition, 46(8), 1331-1343.

• Levitin, D. J, Grahn, J. A., London, J. (2018). The Psychology of Music: Rhythm and Movement. Annual Reviews in Psychology, 69, 51-75.

• *Mallik, A., *Chanda, M-L., & Levitin, D. J. (2017). Anhedonia to music and mu-opioids: Evidence from the administration of naltrexone. Scientific Reports, 7, 1-8.

• *Klemp, N., McDermott, R., *Duque, J., *Thibeault, M., *Powell, K., & Levitin, D. J. (2016). Plans, takes, and mis-takes. Éducation & Didactique, 10(3), 105-120. [This is a revised version of Klemp, et al, 2008, which appeared in Critical Social Studies.]

• Levitin, D. J. & Grafton, S. T. (2016). Measuring the representational space of music with fMRI: a case study with Sting. Neurocase, 22(6), 548-567.

• *Greenberg, D. M., Kosinski, M., Stillwell, D. J., Monteiro, B. L., Levitin, D. J., Rentfrow, P. J. (2016). The song is you: Preferences for musical attribute dimensions reflect personality. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 7(6), 597-605.

• *Saliba, J., Bortfeld, H., Levitin, D. J., & Oghalai, J. S. (2016). Functional near-infrared spectroscopy for neuroimaging in cochlear implant recipients. Hearing Research, 338, 64-75.

• *Wu, D., Levitin, D. J., *Kendrick K. M, *Fu, Y., Yao, D. (2015). Bach as the father of harmony: Confirmation of a 1/f power law across musical genres. PLoS One 10(11), e0142431.

• *Martin, L. J., *Hathaway, G., *Isbester, K., *Mirali, S., *Acland, E. L., *Niederstrasser, N., *Slepian, P. M., Trost, Z., Bartz, J. A., Sapolsky, R. M., Sternberg, W. F., Levitin, D. J. & Mogil, J. S. (2015). Reducing social stress elicits emotional contagion of pain in mouse and human strangers. Current Biology, 25(3), 326-332. DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2014.11.028

• Levitin, D. J. (2014). Expert violinists can't tell old from new. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(20), 7168-7169. doi:10.1073/pnas.1405851111

• Bhatara, A. K., Laukka, P., & Levitin, D. J. (2014). Expression of emotion in music and vocal communication: Introduction to the research topic. Frontiers in Psychology: Emotion Science. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00399

Levitin Lab Alumni

Post Doctoral Fellows

Dale Boyle (2011 – 2012). Cognitive neuroscience of music.

Mona Lisa Chanda (2010 – 2013). Music as a moderator for pain in humans.

Catherine Guastavino (2003 – 2005). Subjective evaluation of multi-modal interaction quality. Dr. Guastavino is currently Assistant Professor of Library and Information Sciences at McGill University.

Theodore Koulis (2005 – 2006, co-supervised with Dr. Jim Ramsay). Functional data analysis models of psychoacoustic data. Dr. Koulis is currently a nonclinical statistician for Genetech.

Regina Nuzzo (2002 – 2003, co-supervised with Dr. Jim Ramsay). Functional data analysis and circular statistical methods for psychology. Dr. Nuzzo is currently Associate Professor of Mathematics and Statistics at Gallaudet University, Washington, D.C.

Bahar Partov (2019 – 2020). Mathematical modeling of 1/f distributions in music.

Graduate Students

Anjali Bhatara, Ph.D. (2004 – 2008). Music as a means of investigating perception of emotion and social attribution in typical development and in adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorders. Dr. Bhatara is currently a postdoctoral fellow at University of Paris V.

Jason Corey, Ph.D. (Faculty of Music, 2001 – 2002, co-supervised with Dr. Wieslaw Woszczyk). An integrated system for dynamic control of auditory perspective in a multichannel soundfield. Dr. Corey is currently Associate Professor of Music and Chair of the Department of Performing Arts Technology at the University of Michigan.

Ladan Mahabadi, Ph.D. (School of Computer Science, 2011 – 2014, cosupervised with Dr. Doina Precup). Music as an information-bearing medium: Extracting latent structure for theoretical and practical purposes. Dr. Mahabadi is currently a Machine Learning Scientist at Amazon.

Adiel Mallik, Ph.D. (Integrated Program in Neuroscience, 2014 – 2019). How music affects theory of mind processes in the brain. Dr. Mallik is now a research scientist at Lucid.

Maria Teresa Moreno Sala, Ph.D. (Faculty of Music, 2003 – 2005, co-supervised with Dr. E. Costa-Giomi). Ph.D. The effects of instruction, cognitive abilities and environmental factors on young children's development of absolute and relative pitch perception. Dr. Moreno Sala is currently Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Laval, Quebec.

René Quesnel, Ph.D. (Faculty of Music, 2000 – 2002, co-supervised with Dr. Wieslaw Woszczyk). A computer-assisted method for training and researching timbre evaluation skills. Dr. Quesnel is currently Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Music at McGill University.

Eve-Marie Quintin, Ph.D. (2005 – 2011, co-supervised with Dr. Helene Poissant). Emotional communication and music in Autism. Dr. Quintin is currently an Assistant Professor in Educational and Counseling Psychology at McGill University.

Susan Rogers, Ph.D. (2004 – 2010, co-supervised with Dr. Stephen McAdams). The Influence of Sensory and Cognitive Consonance/Dissonance on Musical Signal Processing. Dr. Rogers is currently Associate Professor at Berklee College of Music, Boston.

Vivek Sharma, Ph.D. (Faculty of Music, 2009 – 2011, co-supervised with Dr. Joel Wapnick). Dr. Sharma is now a research fellow at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto.

Anna Tirovolas, Ph.D. (Faculty of Education, 2007 – 2013, co-supervised with Dr. Ron Stringer). Applied music perception and cognition: Predicting sightreading performance. Dr. Tirovolas is currently a psychologist at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario.

Bradley Vines, Ph.D. (2001 – 2005). Seeing music: Integrating vision and hearing in the perception of musical performances. Dr. Vines is currently the Neuroscience Director at Nielson NeuroFocus.

Undergraduate Students