Ellen Herschel
Associate Director for Education and Learning
USC Center for Music, Brain and Society
Email: herschel@usc.edu
Ellen Herschel is a Lecturer in the Psychology Department and Postdoctoral Fellow in the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California. Her research investigates the impact of shared musical and artistic experiences on belonging, health, and wellbeing across the lifespan. She investigates this from a social and neural perspective utilizing surveys, behavioral measures, neuroimaging (e.g. fMRI, EEG), and neurophysiology in longitudinal RCTs. Her first line of research aims to understand the impact of joint musical synchrony on ingroup-outgroup bias, pro-sociality, and belonging. Her second line of research investigates the impact of musical training and music listening on health, wellbeing, and speech in noise perception of older adults with and without cognitive decline utilizing behavioral measures, neurophysiology, and EEG. Additional projects and investigate longitudinal arts programming on cognitive and emotional development of low SES youth. She teaches courses on The Neuroscience of Creativity and Arts, Health, and Cognition. She runs the Center for Music Brain and Society’s Summer High School Research Program and is the Center’s Associate Director of Learning and Education Initiatives.
