Brain and Music Team

People

	Mari Tervaniemi PhD, Professor Head of the Brain and Music Team Mari is focused at investigating the mechanisms of human auditory cognition, emotion, and expertise by using the brain imaging methods as well as methods from more applied branches of psychology. Mari Tervaniemi
	Minna Huotilainen PhD, Docent Head of the Early Auditory Skills group Minna's research interests include the development of the auditory system, auditory skills, memory and attention in infants, children and young people, and the effect of musical training on this development.
	Elvira Brattico PhD, Docent
	Eva Istók MA, Doctoral student Eva's main interest is in the neural and affective correlates of music appreciation and their development in infancy and childhood. Moreover, she is working on the relation between musical preference, personality traits and their possibly underlying brain mechanisms.
	Miika Leminen MSc, Laboratory engineer
	Kaisu Krohn MA, Doctoral student Kaisu's research is focused on investigating top-down processing of auditory information by means of EEG and MEG. More specifically, the goal is to clarify how implicitly acquired knowledge about the regularities in Western music quides listeners' neural processing of sounds 'top-down' while listening to music.
	Hannu Loimo MSc, Research assistant Hannu's research interest is data analysis.
	Clemens Maidhof MA, Researcher Clemens' main research interests are the brain processes during music performance: what's going on in our brains when we perform some piece of music? More specifically, Clemens is currently focusing on processes underlying error detection and the monitoring of actions during music performance. In order to gain more information about different types of feedback available to the performer (e.g., tactile and auditory), he is combining motion capture techniques with EEG.
	Tommi Makkonen MSc, Laboratory engineer Tommi's main interests are in bioelectronics and analysis methods. He also studies physiological changes evoked by music listening.
	Eino Partanen MSc, Doctoral student Eino is a doctoral student focusing on a variety of infant studies: development of preterm infants and related clinical groups, fetal learning and its long-term effects. He also works on linguistic multifeature EEG paradigms and their use in infants and children.
	Vesa Putkinen MA, Doctoral student Vesa studies how children remember, discriminate and attend to musical sounds by using auditory event-related potentials. His research aims at exploring the development of these skills and their relationship to musical training by comparing children who are actively engaged in music and children engaged in non-musical activities.
	Veerle Simoens MSc, Doctoral student
	Vera Leo MA, Doctoral student Vera's research focuses on studying the impact of music listening on stroke recovery, especially in aphasic patients. Her main scientific interests are in the interplay of music, speech, cognition, and emotions and in the idiosyncrasies of music and its therapeutic effects.
	Miia Seppänen MA, Doctoral student Miia's research interests are the neural basis of musical expertise and auditory perceptual learning.
	Teppo Särkämö PhD, Postdoctoral Researcher Teppo's main research interest is on the neural mechanisms of music and speech perception, brain plasticity of auditory and cognitive functions, and the clinical use of music and other therapeutic interventions in patients suffering from a neurological disease (e.g. stroke, dementia). By using a combination of research methods from cognitive neuroscience, clinical neuropsychology, and psychology, his research focuses specifically on the impact of music and speech on the recovery of cognitive, emotional and auditory functions in the brain.
	Ritva Torppa MA, Doctoral student Ritva is a speech therapist focusing on development of speech-related auditory skills in children with Cochlear Implants, especially perception of prosody, and the connection of spoken language development to musical activities.
	Paula Virtala MA, Doctoral student Paula is interested in the development of auditory skills during childhood and the effects of music training on this development. Paula studies the processing of Western music categories in the brain using EEG.
	Tanja Linnavalli MA Tanja is a student of cognitive sciences, teacher in pop & jazz singing and MA in musicology. In Brain and Music Team she is studying newborn babies' beat detection.
	Tiziana Quarto MSc, Graduate student Tiziana's research interests include neural and genetic aspects of cognition, music and emotion. In particular, her research is aimed to understand how genes impact the brain and how personal experiences can modulate or change the biological mechanisms between genes and behavior.
	Brigitte Bogert PhD Brigitte's research interests are the neural bases of emotion, reward, and music. In particular, she is interested in the role of genes in music and emotion, and the effects of music therapy on the brain.
	Katri Saarikivi MA, Doctoral student Katri is interested in exploring the neural mechanisms behind executive function, attention and working memory with an emphasis on how different types of activities can influence development in childhood. Her research looks at how musically active children and children active in other hobbies differ in their neurocognitive processing at different ages, from early childhood to adolescence.