Academic interests
Music cognition, Psychoacoustics, Neuroscience, Body movement, Rhythm perception, Bodily rhythms, Menstrual cycle, Animal cognition
Current project
My PhD project was part of Human Bodily Micromotion in Music Perception and Interaction research project, which aimed at studying subtle body motion during music listening, mainly with the use of motion capture technology. I explored several topics related to psychoacoustics and interpersonal differences in music perception. My goal was to provide new data and perspectives that could help us better understand who, why and when have an urge to move their bodies to music, and also to what extent such movement can be controlled. I was particularly interested in the mechanism of entrainment to musical rhythm and its evolutionary origins.
Background
I hold a master's degree in psychology from the University of Warsaw, with specialization in Social Experimental Psychology. The topic of my master thesis was "The effects of musical training in early childhood on brain structure and cognitive performance". From 2013 to 2016 I was working in a research team based at the Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology at the Polish Academy of Sciences (Laboratory of Psychophysiology and Laboratory of Brain Imaging), where we were examining neural correlates of developmental dyslexia and general linguistic development in 6-11 year old children. I also hold a professional piano diploma from a state music school in my hometown in Poland, which I attended for 11 years. Additionally, I have spent some time studying sound engineering, in order to couple my knowledge of music performance and psychology with a more technical understanding of sound as a physical phenomenon.
Outside of the academia I am interested in art, nature and folk music, particularly in the archaic polyphony and other traditional singing forms from the Slavic regions of Europe.
PhD Dissertation
On the 10th of December 2020 I defended my doctoral dissertation titled Irresistible Movement: The Role of Musical Sound, Individual Differences and Listening Context in Movement Responses to Music. The dissertation can be downloaded here. It is also possible to watch my trial lecture and the presentation of my dissertation that I gave during the public defence.