In Tune With Your Brain: The Power of Music

We are so excited to bring back our biggest event of the year, the In Tune With Your Brain Symposium! The In Tune With Your Brain Symposium is a student-led event in collaboration with the UBC MUSIC Research Cluster that bridges the gaps between musicians, scientists, and the general public to understand the incredible power of music on your brain. This year's theme is "The Power of Music", and we hope to showcase and explore the potential power that music has on healing, connection and inspiration. The conference is FREE for all to attend! Whether you’re a student, researcher, musician, or someone who’s just looking to get inspired — join us on Saturday, October 18th for an incredible day of conversation and connection.

We have an amazing line up of speakers this year, featuring topics focusing on how we listen to music and how that changes with age, to how musical rhythm enhances our social coordination and cohesion, to the influence of music on wellness. Featuring performances from UBC A Capella's "The Unaccompanied Minors", and the band "Brown Sugar" from the UBC Music Initiative, this symposium will provide an atmosphere of learning alongside musical energy. We look forward to sharing the power of music with people within and beyond the UBC and Vancouver community, and we cannot wait to see you there!

Additionally, a big thank you to our sponsors for making this event possible: UBC MUSIC Research Cluster, UBC Faculty of Medicine, Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health, UBC Faculty of Science and Long & McQuade.

Please come early to check in! Check-in will open up at 9:30AM.

Info: Sign in at the check-in desk.

Info: Talk Title: The Speed Limits of Music: Or, How Your Body and Brain Can (and Can’t) Move with the Beat. This talk will include basic research findings on the speed limits for musical rhythm, from the fastest notes with which we can synchronize to the the slowest tempos we can dance to. These speed limits, along with some other interesting rhythms, show how our brains and our bodies keep track of time. Illustrated with many amusing musical (and not-so-musical) examples.

Info: Talk Title: The Bora-bora Syndrome Revisited: Some (Musical) Outliers. Michael will be leading us through a look at outlying examples of music structures that would seem to contradict truisms such as preference for consonance over dissonance, and musics that test our understanding of what rhythmic coordination can be.

Info: Talk Title: Focusing our Lens on how we Connect through Song and Sound. This talk will focus our lens on how we connect through song and sound. She will share some research findings, some narrative vignettes with audio support, as well as an experiential moment.

Info: Talk Title: Music Therapy for Proactive Wellness. Rachael will be sharing her research about university students engaging in group music therapy (online and in-person) to proactively reduce stress and anxiety. Her research includes 3 different randomized controlled trials, with evidence from psychometric measures, cortisol as a biomarker of stress and interviews with the university students who participated in the groups.

Info: Talk Title: Music and the Aging Brain. Learn about how we listen to music (from a neuroscience perspective), how this changes with age and neurodegeneration, and how we can line up what we see in music therapy interventions with what happens inside the brain.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

UBC School of Music, 6361 Memorial Road, Vancouver, Canada