EJN: Did you have a particular mentor or role model, on your music side or your science side, that helped you get to where you are today?
TRAINOR: That’s a good question. I’ve been influenced by many people, but I’d have to say the main one was my PhD supervisor, Sandra Trehub. She was really a pioneer. She was first and foremost a developmental psychologist, and she wasn’t afraid to look at how development took place in the real world outside the laboratory. What are parents doing and what are infants responding to? Rather than only figuring out how does an infant process sound, for example, she wanted to know how interactions between mothers and infants take place in real social settings. She was not trained in music, but it became obvious that music was a really important part of pretty much every infant’s early environment. Since that time, very broad demographic studies have shown that across all cultures people sing to infants. It is a part of every culture that we can find. Sandra was a pioneer for not only noticing that, but then thinking: If this is so prevalent, it must be important. So, why are parents engaging in this behavior? Why are infants responding to music? This creative way of thinking was really inspirational for me. It might be hard for younger scientists today to imagine, but 50 years ago, such questions regarding musical behaviour were not even on the radar for most neuroscientists.