Past Events

July 8-10, 2026: we launched a new 3-day summer research program for high school students focused on how music engages the mind and body through interactive lessons, hands-on experiments, and exposure to research at USC’s Brain and Creativity Institute. 50 students met researchers, musicians, and educators, explored career paths, and learned how to collect and interpret research data through lectures, lab tours, and guided activities. With a mentor, students grouped up to design their own research proposal.

Read more about the event here.

On June 11th, 2026, The USC Center for Music, Brain, and Society hosted a symposium in collaboration with Renée Fleming and LA Opera Connects. From the lab to the legislature, the day’s agenda led attendees along the path that research can take and highlighted the importance of connecting across disciplines to further our shared goals.

View the event’s agenda here.

The Art Education, Research, and Policy Symposium at USC’s Brain and Creativity Institute brought together top voices in arts, science, and education. This event features a special appearance by iconic soprano and arts-health champion Renée Fleming. Explore how the arts can transform student well-being and educational equity.

Check out the agenda for the day.

View the program here.

The USC Center for Music, Brain, and Society hosted the 2024 HCN Segil Symposium. The theme, Exploring the Intersection of Brain, Sound, and Music, features esteemed speakers in the field. Enjoy musical interludes by musicians from Delirium Musicum.

Download the program here.

The USC Center for Music, Brain, and Society hosted a Research Workshop on Music, Health, & Policy, as part of the Los Angeles County Arts and Health Week. Co-curators Dr. Assal Habibi, Dr. Daniel Levitin, Dr. Indre Viskontas, and Renée Fleming, among others, lead discussions on music research to deepen and enhance collaboration among academics, educators, community groups, and clinicians from across the region. With Gail Eichenthal from KUSC as master of ceremonies. This event was organized in partnership with the WHO/Jameel Arts & Health Lab, KUSC, the Sound Health Network, and the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture.

Download the program here.

View speaker bios here.

Outcomes for participants depend on what musicians and practitioners do in sessions, the skills, beliefs and motivations they bring to their work, and the conditions and constraints under which they operate. This presentation discusses a recently completed 3-year international comparative research project studying over 300 individual musicians. The findings suggest a commonality of professional practice rooted in values which to a greater or lesser extent challenge or disrupt music practices and pedagogies understood to be elitist and exclusionary.

The USC Center for Music, Brain, and Society warmly invites you to an engaging lecture with Dr. Elizabeth Margulis from Princeton University. This talk explores how listening to music naturally evokes vivid autobiographical memories and imagined scenes that feel deeply personal, yet are surprisingly shared across listeners within a culture. By studying these spontaneous thoughts, the research reveals how music can shape collective patterns of imagination and mental experience over time.

The USC Center for Music, Brain and Society warmly invites you to a special lecture featuring Dr. Laura Cirelli. Humans invest a surprising amount of time and resources into music. This musical engagement starts early – the auditory system of the newborn makes predictions about unfolding musical sequences, song captures infant attention (often over speech), and most children dance before they walk or talk. Importantly, sharing music with others provides opportunities for communication and connection. In this talk, I will discuss research from my lab exploring how infants share musical moments with parents, siblings, grandparents, and their broader community. This research highlights how infants actively shape their musical environments, highlighting the reciprocal nature of musical engagement in early life.

The USC Center for Music, Brain, and Society and USC Thornton’s Department of Music Teaching and Learning hosted a special talk with Dr. Patricia Shehan Campbell, Professor Emeritus at the University of Washington School of Music. A leading voice in music education, Dr. Campbell has authored over a dozen books, including Redefining Music Studies in an Age of Change, Music Education and Diversity, and Songs in Their Heads. She also curates several major series, including Routledge’s World Music Pedagogy and Oxford University Press’s Global Music Series.

The USC Center for Music, Brain, and Society hosted their second faculty talk of the semester featuring Dr. Laura Getz. In her talk she demonstrates the importance of interactions between sensory information received in the auditory and visual modalities, as well as how sensory information interacts with higher levels of processing, with cognitive process such a prior knowledge influencing perceptual processing. For this talk, she focuses on the influence of context on music perception, attention, and memory using 3 experimental examples.

The USC Center for Music, Brain, and Society hosted their first faculty talk of the semester featuring Dr. Andrew Goldman. He discussed the application of neuroscience in music research by first examining challenges and contributions of its application. From this conversations, a final emergent theme from this critical analysis is that music neuroscience makes its best contributions when synthesizing work from other areas of music studies.

The USC Center for Music, Brain, and Society was excited to host Dr. Adina Mornell, who gave a special lecture at Joyce J. Cammilleri Hall. The subjectivity of performance ratings poses a real challenge for those studying instrumentalists’ behavior. We discussed how music research can be designed to be useful to musicians, looking to create meaningful experiments.

The USC Center for Music, Brain, and Society and USC Thornton’s Department of Music Teaching and Learning hosted the official launch of William J. Coppola’s latest book, Egotism, Elitism, and the Ethics of Musical Humility, published by Oxford University Press. Combining philosophical inquiry, empirical research, and pop culture examples, the book examines how cultures of superiority pervade our musical and social lives. It explores how our perpetual striving for individual achievement can lead us to grow increasingly disconnected from one another and how humility can help us to restore our common humanity.

The USC Center for Music, Brain, and Society hosted its very first book talk featuring New York Times Best Seller, Dr. Dan Levitin and his new book, I Heard There Was a Secret Chord at the Brain and Creativity Insitute. This event featured a book talk with Dr. Dan Levitin and a book signing after the event. Dr. Levitin explores the profound connections between music and health.