Psyche Loui

Psyche Loui, assistant professor of psychology, assistant professor of neuroscience and behavior, assistant professor of integrative sciences, co-authored a new article published in the December 2017 issue of Brain and Cognition. The paper is titled, "Jazz Musicians Reveal Role of Expectancy in Human Creativity." Loui and her colleagues found that within one second of hearing an unexpected chord, there is a world of differences in brain responses between classical and jazz musicians. (more…)

Psyche Loui, assistant professor of psychology, assistant professor of neuroscience and behavior, assistant professor of integrative sciences, is the author of a new publication on musical anhedonia—the lack of pleasure from music. Together with others in her lab, Loui studied an individual with musical anhedonia and compared his brain against a group of controls. They found that his auditory cortex was differently connected to his reward system, a finding which gives further support for the role of brain connectivity in the musical experience. The article, titled, "White Matter Correlates of Musical Anhedonia: Implications for Evolution of Music," was published Sept.…

Assistant Professor of Psychology Psyche Loui and Rachel Guetta ’17 are the authors of a new paper exploring how people form associations between sound and taste. The article, titled, “When Music is Salty: The Crossmodal Associations Between Sound and Taste,” was published March 29 in the journal PLoS One. Scientists know that music can be evaluated as sweet, sour, salty or bitter, depending on features in its composition such as pitch, articulation, or brightness. For example, higher pitches are often thought of as sweet or sour, and lower pitches associated with bitterness. While previous research has studied this general area,…

Assistant Professor of Psychology Psyche Loui has long been interested in studying the intersection of music and emotions. In her latest study, published March 10 in Social, Cognitive, and Affective Neuroscience, she identified specific connections in the brain between the auditory processing regions and regions for social and emotional processing. The article is titled, "Brain connectivity reflects human aesthetic responses to music." Loui, who also is assistant professor of neuroscience and behavior, assistant professor of integrative sciences, has previously studied how music can cause chills, or similar strong physiological reactions in people when listening to music. Together with former thesis student…

Psyche Loui, assistant professor of psychology, assistant professor of neuroscience and behavior, assistant professor of integrated sciences, is the co-author of a new study, "Rhythmic Effects of Syntax Processing in Music and Language" published in Frontiers in Psychology in November. The article's lead author is Harim Jung '16, and it is also co-authored by Samuel Sontag '14 and YeBin "Shiny" Park '15. According to Loui, the paper grew out of her Advanced Research Methods in Auditory Cognitive Neuroscience course, and is the precursor to Jung's senior and master's theses. The study uses a behavioral test to look into how music…

When Psyche Loui first heard Rachmaninov's Piano Concert No. 2 on the radio as a college student, she still remembers the chill that went down her spine, the fluttering in her stomach and the racing heart. Now an assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience and behavior at Wesleyan, Loui studies this phenomenon--which she refers to as "frissons" or "skin orgasms"--in her lab. She recently co-authored a paper with Luke Harrison '14 in Frontiers in Psychology reviewing the evidence and theories in this area, and spoke to the BBC about their findings. Loui, also an accomplished pianist and violinist, points out that the sensations…

Psyche Loui, assistant professor of psychology, assistant professor of neuroscience and behavior, was awarded a $200,000 grant from the Imagination Institute's Advancing the Science of Imagination: Toward an "Imagination Quotient" initiative. She will use the grant for the first longitudinal neuroscience study on the development of aesthetic creativity through jazz improvisation. Loui's was one of 16 projects to receive funding, out of an initial pool of 251 who expressed interest. Learn more in this press release.

Psyche Loui, assistant professor of psychology, assistant professor of neuroscience and behavior, was awarded a grant of $20,000 in March from the GRAMMY Foundation Grant Program to study a musical biofeedback-based intervention for epilepsy. The grant will fund three different studies that combine EEG sonification, translational research and basic neuroscience for this type of intervention. Loui anticipates that the results will apply music technology as a possible solution to a neurological disorder affecting 65 million people worldwide. Loui noted that for the approximately one-third of patients with epilepsy who don’t respond well to seizure medication, (more…)

Psyche Loui, assistant professor of psychology, assistant professor of neuroscience and behavior, presented a talk at a symposium held March 6-8 at the University of Rochester Medical Center's Schmitt Program on Integrative Brain Research (SPIBR). Her talk, titled, "Action and Perception in the Musical Brain," described current research from her lab and others that related to the structure and function of the brain to music perception and production, with examples from tone-deafness, absolute pitch, music learning and strong emotional responses to music.

In this edition of The Wesleyan Connection, we speak to Psyche Loui, a new assistant professor of psychology, assistant professor of neuroscience and behavior. Q: Professor Loui, welcome to Wesleyan! Please tell us about your life up to now. Where did you grow up and go to school? A: I’m from Hong Kong, originally. When I was 13, I moved to Vancouver, Canada, so I’m Canadian. But I just got a Green Card, which is exciting. I went to Duke as an undergrad, where I was a psychology and music double major and earned a neuroscience certificate. Then I went…

Psyche Loui, assistant professor of psychology, assistant professor of neuroscience and behavior, recently had a paper, "Effects of Voice on Emotional Arousal," published in Frontiers in Psychology. Loui is lead author, and co-wrote the paper with Justin Bachorik, Hui C. Li and Gottfried Schlaug of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center/ Harvard Medical School, where Loui worked as an instructor before coming to Wesleyan this year. The study explores the effects of lyrics and the voice on the emotional processing of music and on listeners' preferences. The researchers found robust effects of vocal content on participants' perceived arousal, independent of the familiarity of the…

Loui Co-Authors Article on Human Creativity and the Brain

Loui Co-Authors Article on Lack of Pleasure from Music

Loui, Guetta ’17 Author Paper on Brain Connections Between Sound, Taste

Loui Studies How Brain Connectivity Reflects Aesthetic Responses to Music

Loui, Jung ’16, Alumni Authors of Article in Frontiers in Psychology

Loui’s Study of Chill-Inducing Music Featured in BBC

Loui Receives $200K Grant from Imagination Institute

GRAMMY Foundation Grant Supports Loui’s Research on Epilepsy Intervention

Loui Speaks on “the Musical Brain” at Symposium

Assistant Professor Loui Studies Music Perception, Cognition

Loui’s Paper on Voice on Emotional Arousal