Musical group interaction, consisting of two or more individuals playing music together, can affect social and emotional capacities in children, including their sense of peer cooperation, empathy, and helping behaviour. We study such social and emotional effects of music both in the lab and in the field, considering the positive impact of music as well as potentially negative effects and how they can be circumvented.

In order to jointly engage in music, individuals must synchronise. Such synchrony has been shown to induce a range of positive behavioural modulations. In the lab, we study the minimal conditions required for this effect, and the impact of synchrony on a broad range of positive and negative behavioural variables.

We also investigate the role of interpersonal synchrony in eliciting a sense of self-other merge, due to an intense experience of coordination and bonding. This phenomenon may extend to musical interactions, whereby individuals come to feel as one.

We are interested in using the knowledge we gain from our experiments and testing it in the field. We have several research projects that implement musical interventions in therapy including special populations.

For example, we are exploring whether pain levels of cancer patients who are currently undergoing medical treatment could be lowered by frequency-based musical therapy intervention.

We are investigating the effects of specially designed musical instruments for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder on social communication. These instruments are meant to help overcome the challenge of playing in synchrony with another player and to create a positive joint musical experience.

We are examining also children who were born pre-term and testing the efficacy of a motor-synchronous intervention in advancing their social skills.

Apart from musical interventions in therapy, we are also exploring other modalities, such as dance-movement and art therapy.

The combination of music theory and analysis together with empirical approaches to the study of musical interaction is underexplored but holds extraordinary promise. The analysis and dissection of the melodic, harmonic, and rhythmical structures of a musical piece are key to understanding how these elements influence the experience of musical interaction.

For example, we investigate the role of silence in music: how it is being composed, performed and perceived, and what are the underlying musical structures that enable silence to be so salient within musical interaction.