Instru(mental)

✓

Claim

Where can you catch up on the latest music cognition research, watch a musical about the scientific process, and karaoke to your heart's desire? SMPC 2026! This episode is series of recordings from the 2026 Society for Music Perception and Cognition (SMPC) conference from a music therapist&apo…

Have you ever noticed that music just hits differently when your high? In this episode of Instru(mental), we're diving into the surprisingly sparse, but curious body of research that explains how cannabis changes our musical experiences. Along the way, we'll touch on what mix of THC and C…

What can we deduce from hearing less than 1 second of music? Learn how accurately listeners can identify music genres from excerpts that are less than a quarter of a second long, and see how your brain does in a mini version of the experimental task. Our takeaways include how these sophisticated, s…

Can music change our moral judgments of others? In this episode, we explore how knowing about someone's, or something's, musicality shifts our moral decision-making. This episode's research study includes four related experiments involving musical monkeys, anti-musical humans, dogs, …

What if you didn’t have to be a scientist, or a musician, to use music in your everyday life? Hi there, I’m Brea, a board-certified music therapist and this is Instru(mental) – a podcast that explores the science of music and how it shapes your brain, your body, and your life. This podcast isn’t ju…

What's the best music for a wedding? In this episode, I explain how I lightly manipulated my guests with music to make my wedding as fun, engaging, and memorable as possible. We'll cover research about the music and social bonding hypothesis, the brain's reward circuitry, and statist…

How can music serve as a social surrogate when we can't directly interact with others? This episode explores how listening to music can serve as a social proxy and provides ideas for how to strengthen your social relationships in the age of social distancing.For more information about the rese…

How can the fields of music therapy and music cognition strengthen each other? This episode features a conversation with music therapist Daniel Goldschmidt (@danielnnz) on a wide range of topics about bridging these two disciplines including: What it's like to going to music therapy vs. music…

This episode features an interview with Jessica McLean, a soon-to-be music therapist who started her career in music neuroscience. We talk about how Jessica first got involved in music science research and how she’s applied her research skills to help children with cochlear implants better hear pro…