Researcher
For centuries, music has been regarded as a luxury — a source of beauty and enrichment, yet often relegated to the margins of scientific inquiry. I hold the opposite view: music is not a “nice to have,” it is a necessity. It is a fundamental force that shapes cognition, emotion, physiology, and human interaction. What makes our time unique is that, for the first time, we possess the scientific and technological tools to trace, measure, and understand its impact in profound ways.
As a concert pianist, composer, and improviser, I bring the lived experience of music-making into dialogue with the sciences. My added value lies in framing the questions that matter most from within the practice of art: How does music alter brain activity? How does it influence behaviour and decision-making? What can it teach us about adaptability, perception, and creativity? And how might these insights translate into medicine, biology, engineering, or therapeutic practice?
I do not claim the scientific expertise alone. Instead, I see the most significant potential in collaboration with colleagues at the Technion and beyond - in neuroscience, computer science, medicine, and engineering—who bring complementary knowledge and methodologies. Together, we can transform music from being merely experienced into being understood, mapped, and applied.
This integrative vision works in both directions: music offers new tools to science for exploring cognition, behaviour, and the body, while science provides music new platforms for amplification, analysis, and impact. In this mutual exchange lies the foundation of my research: to give music its rightful place not at the periphery, but at the centre of interdisciplinary discovery.
Identifying the Brain Patterns Responsible for the Enhanced Motor Skills of Professional Piano Playing, and Using Them for Therapeutic Purposes
Studying the neural mechanisms behind pianistic expertise to inform rehabilitation and preventive strategies in brain health — and opening pathways to broader interdisciplinary collaborations.
This project, conducted in collaboration with Dr. Firas Mawase (Technion, Biomedical Engineering), investigates the extraordinary motoric skills of professional pianists through cutting-edge neuroimaging. Using real-time fMRI, we examine how the brain organises and controls fine finger movements during specialised tasks of individuation, coordination, and articulation. While it is well known that pianists achieve an exceptional level of motor control, the precise neural patterns underlying this ability have not yet been systematically mapped against those of non-musicians.
My role as a professional concert pianist brings a critical artistic dimension to the scientific framework: I design and refine the motor tasks, ensuring they reflect the true complexity of professional piano playing—layers of touch, articulation, strength, fingering pressure, and coordination. These parameters go far beyond the capacities of amateur players and are absent in non-musicians, making them ideal probes for identifying how intensive musical training sculpts the brain.
The core hypothesis is that piano training builds unique neural networks that could be harnessed for therapeutic purposes. If confirmed, this research may demonstrate that piano learning not only enhances performance but also acts as a preventive and rehabilitative tool for neurological conditions such as stroke. Beyond mapping fMRI activity, future extensions include combining fMRI with EEG for more accessible monitoring, studying the role of early piano training in recovery outcomes, and testing the influence of listening to music during motor tasks.
At the same time, this work represents only one example of the potential of cross-disciplinary research linking music and science. Similar methodologies could be applied in medicine, cognitive neuroscience, rehabilitation, and even AI-driven healthcare studies. For doctoral researchers, the project therefore offers both a concrete case study—piano motor skills and brain mapping—and an invitation to explore the broader possibilities of integrating musical expertise with scientific discovery on a shared platform.
Research Fields
1. Music Communication
Studying the ways music conveys meaning and impact across audiences, and how performers can consciously shape engagement through artistic and analytical approaches.
The field of Music Communication explores how music is conveyed, mediated, and experienced across different audiences and contexts. At its core lies the concert lecture, a format that transcends traditional performance by integrating narrative, demonstration, and interpretation. This hybrid model opens new realms of experience, creating a unique bridge between emotional resonance and cognitive insight. It transforms music from an abstract art form into a shared dialogue, where listeners not only hear but also understand, reflect, and connect on multiple levels.
My research investigates the methods by which music communicates—through performance choices, narrative framing, interdisciplinary dialogue, and technological mediation. How do different strategies engage audiences? In what ways are listeners emotionally, cognitively, and socially affected? And how can we evaluate these impacts using advanced tools of analysis? By tracing audience responses, from subtle emotional cues to large-scale survey data, we aim to transform intuitive artistic choices into conscious, evidence-based strategies that amplify music’s relevance and reach.
This line of inquiry builds on the pioneering legacy of Leonard Bernstein, yet is profoundly shaped by my own perspective as a concert pianist with more than two decades of experience creating and nurturing concert lectures worldwide. For me, the challenge is no longer only to excite and engage audiences in the moment, but also to analyse and understand the processes by which music communicates its meaning. Through this research, I seek to identify the means, tools, and conditions that shape impact—transforming live performance from an intuitive art into a domain that can be studied, measured, and better understood.
Here, AI and analytical research are not envisioned as replacements for humanity or live communication, but as instruments to deepen our understanding. They allow us to trace characteristics, detect patterns, map preferences, and study behaviours across diverse audiences. In doing so, we preserve the irreplaceable essence of human connection in performance while gaining new knowledge that can shed light on how music affects perception, the body, cognition, and emotion. By combining lived artistic practice with scientific inquiry, this research field opens a path toward more effective, meaningful, and enduring forms of musical engagement.
2. Music, AI, and Physiological ID
Investigating the measurable physiological signatures of music and using AI to reveal personalised patterns of response and impact.
This research field focuses on uncovering the physiological footprint of music—how sound directly shapes the body’s signals and responses. We ask whether each individual carries a unique physiological ID that reflects their reaction to music, and whether such signatures can be identified, compared, and applied in practice.
Together with Prof. Alex Bronstein (Computer Science, Technion), we design studies that capture data such as heartbeat, skin conductivity, movement, and neural activity while listeners engage with different musical styles. Using advanced machine-learning techniques, these responses are analysed to determine both shared patterns across groups and personalised markers that distinguish one listener’s reactions from another’s.
The potential applications are wide-ranging: from developing personalised recommendation systems that respond to a listener’s real-time state, to exploring music’s capacity to enhance athletic performance, aid relaxation, or amplify focus. At the frontier lies the possibility of music that is not only selected but also composed in dialogue with human physiology—merging human creativity with computational analysis to create works tailored to specific emotional or physical outcomes.
Here, AI functions as an investigative partner, not a substitute for human artistry. Its role is to reveal trends, patterns, and correlations that would otherwise remain invisible, allowing us to understand better how music shapes behaviour and experience. In this way, the project extends beyond performance into the realms of neuroscience, data science, and human–machine interaction, offering researchers an opportunity to pioneer a new, interdisciplinary approach to music’s measurable impact.
3. Musical Improvisation as a Tool to Enhance Cognitive Disruptions
Exploring how the art of improvisation cultivates creativity, adaptability, and problem-solving under pressure.
Musical improvisation is a unique artistic act where performance and composition happen simultaneously. It requires flexibility, speed of thought, creative risk-taking, and the capacity to turn so-called “errors” into opportunities. These qualities make improvisation more than a musical skill; it is also a cognitive model of problem-solving in real-time, where the performer operates with limited resources under constant change.
This project examines how improvisation skills in music may predict or enhance broader cognitive abilities. Do improvisers approach disruptions differently than musicians who follow fixed scores? Does practising improvisation train the mind to adapt faster, respond with creativity, and recover from unexpected challenges more effectively? To address these questions, we will employ methodologies from the social sciences: comparative studies across three groups (classical instrumentalists without improvisation, classical musicians who improvise, and jazz musicians), structured questionnaires, and behavioural experiments involving disruption tasks. This design enables us to test whether improvisation training systematically correlates with improved cognitive flexibility.
The outcomes extend far beyond music. Improvisation can serve as a methodology to train individuals in any field to think outside rigid patterns and generate solutions under pressure. By understanding how improvisers think and act under time constraints, we can identify transferable strategies to cultivate improvisational mindsets in non-musicians. In an era of rapid global change, where disruption is the norm rather than the exception, this research positions improvisation as a vital tool for innovation, resilience, and adaptive leadership.
