When neuroscientist and musician AZA Allsop discovered research by his Yale colleague Joy Hirsch about how group drumming and musical interaction can affect social behavior, he knew there was a collaboration in their future.

Five years later, their joint work has shown that music is a powerful social enhancer that directly impacts brain functioning.

“When I reached out to see if we could work together on a project focused on music, Joy was as excited as I was,” said Allsop, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine who is also a jazz artist. “As we drafted our new research, I really relied on my background in music production, theory, and performance to help shape things.”

Hirsch, also a neuroscientist, brought her own musical experience to the partnership. A veteran competitive ballroom dancer, she has won many accolades including national championship titles.

“AZA and I connected immediately, because of our shared love of music, our experience with music in one form or another, and our commitment to understanding how the brain operates under music conditions,” said Hirsch, the Elizabeth Mears and House Jameson Professor of Psychiatry and professor of comparative medicine and of neuroscience.

In a new study, published in The Journal of Neuroscience, they find that listening to harmonically consonant chord progressions during face-to-face interaction strengthened neural activity in brain areas that help people understand and respond to others.

New research from the University of Warwick and Fudan University identifies the hippocampus as a key brain system shaping emotional resilience to long-term pain.

A new study in Science Advances found that more than 155,000 US deaths between March 2020 and December 2021 were not officially recorded as COVID-19 deaths, which equates to 19 percent more deaths due to COVID-19 than federal records indicate. These unrecognized COVID-19 deaths disproportionately burdened certain populations more than others, including racial and ethnic minorities, as well as people who were low-income, had preexisting health conditions, lived in the South, or did not have a high school education. 

In a study published today in Clinical Cancer Research, scientists at UPMC Hillman Cancer Center and the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine found that a blood-based test may help guide treatment decisions for a carefully selected group of women age 70 and over who have estrogen receptor–positive breast cancer, who were considering endocrine (or hormone-blocking) therapy as the primary treatment and forgoing surgery and radiation.