Ullén Laboratory

Research focus

Our research focuses on the neuropsychology of expertise, in particular musical expertise. A major current effort is the research program "Humans making music" which is a collaboration with Guy Madison at Umeå University, and Nancy Pedersen and Töres Theorell at Karolinska Institutet. Within this program we address a number of questions relating to musical engagement and expertise using a combination of techniques from behavior genetics and twin modelling, experimental psychology, neuroimaging, and physiology.

In different subprojects we thus investigate e.g. musical expertise and its relation to training and other variables: environmental and psychological predictors of musical engagement; relations between musical training, musical aptitudes and cognitive ability; creative achievement in music and other domains; and effects of musical training on neuroanatomy and brain function that are independent of genetic factors. Other research lines concern the learning and performance of sequential motor skills and the neural basis of creativity, which we study both from an individual difference perspective and experimentally, using musical improvisation as a model behavior.

Finally, we investigate the biological basis of psychological flow, and its importance as a motivational factor for long-term musical training.