Brain researcher and jazz musician Peter Vuust receives DKK 46 million from the Danish National Research Foundation for an extension of the Center for Music in the Brain at Aarhus University and the Royal Academy of Music. The grant will be used to investigate what happens in our brains when we listen to, sing and play music together.

2020.09.16 | Sabina Bjerre Hansen

With the new grant, not only does Peter Vuust ensure that the Center for Music in the Brain can continue for the next five years, but also that the researchers can now expand the research area and e.g. investigate how musicians ‘talk to each other’ via their instruments. Photo: Stephen Freiheit.

Five years ago, Professor Peter Vuust established the Danish National Research Foundation’s Center for Music in the Brain (MIB), an interdisciplinary research centre which examines how music affects our brains. He now receives another basic research grant, so that he and his colleagues, including musicians, psychologists, medical doctors and natural science researchers, can bring the ongoing research a step further.

Music creates a sense of community and togetherness

Since the centre was established in 2015, it has evolved into the largest research centre in neuro-music in Europe, and perhaps even in the world. This has attracted a range of international experts who are now employed at the centre, and the centre’s research has enjoyed widespread international attention, for example in the scientific journal Nature, which has published a feature article on Peter Vuust.

”We began by investigating what takes place in the brain when we listen to music. That is, how music affects us individually. How we feel, listen and move when we hear music. And whether it affects us in the same way. Now we move on to the next step, which is naturally enough to investigate how music affects us collectively, for example when we play music together, listen to it together, or when we sing together, as many of us in Denmark have done every Friday over the last few months,” says Peter Vuust.

"Historically, we’ve used music to create a sense of community. This was the case during World War II, and that’s the case again with the corona pandemic. That's what music can do, and it’s possibly the biological reason for why we have music. Music gives us a sense of togetherness, of not being alone in the world," he says.

From individual brains to synchronised brains

The new grant gives the researchers at MIB the opportunity to expand the area of research from an individual to a collective level. Do brains become synchronized when musicians play together? If so, how does this take place in practice? To find out, the researchers plan to scan the musicians’ brains while they are playing together to discover whether their brains become 'socially harmonised', and whether musicians think and feel the same while playing.

The grant also enables Peter Vuust and his colleagues to examine the creative element in music.

"When I play in my quartet with Lars Jansson, Alex Riel and Veronica Mortensen, it's all about improvisation. We talk to each other via the instruments, and we challenge each other and communicate via music. If we can find out how improvising together affects the brain, we may be able to generate new knowledge about the how and what of the creative brain," he says.

Peter Vuust has spent almost two decades carrying out research into how music is processed in the brain and attempting to convert this into new knowledge about brain function that medical doctors can use to develop and optimise the treatment of a number of diseases in the future. The research will e.g. be relevant in the case of rehabilitation after strokes, for patients with Parkinson’s disease, for pain management, for improving sleep quality and in connection with autism or ADHD.

Contact

Centre Director, Professor and PhD Peter Vuust
Aarhus University, Department of Clinical Medicine – Center for Music in the Brain and
The Royal Academy of Music
Mobile: (+45) 27 11 94 71
Email: pv@musikkons.dk