EJN: How did you decide to become a neuroscientist? I’m particularly interested in your response to this because I know your education started with a bachelor’s in music performance, and then you shifted to experimental psych. I’d love to learn what sparked that shift for you.
TRAINOR: I had a bit of a convoluted route to becoming a neuroscientist. In high school, I was very much into music. And I was also into math and science. I was having some trouble deciding between those subjects, but I actually initially went to university in math and physics. I completed two years of that, and then I decided I really wanted to be a musician. So, I switched, and I did my degree in music, but with a minor in math. I then worked for a few years as a musician. This was the late 70s and at that time, computers were really evolving and there was a lot of interest in human-computer interfaces. I got interested in that and was taking some computer science courses on the side. My interests were philosophical in a way because I became interested in the difference between a computer and a human brain. I had never taken any psychology or neuroscience, but I decided I really wanted to explore these questions. And so I ended up doing a PhD in psychology. It was wonderful because I was able to combine my interest in music - I studied auditory perception and musical development - and my interest in the brain, and also my interest in the physics of sound and neural signal processing. I was very lucky because at that time, the neuroscience of music was hardly even a field. At the time, I would always preface any talk I gave with why I thought we should be studying music. Everyone knew that language is important for many aspects of behavior and memory and attention. Whereas music was generally considered just a frill, of no real importance. But that view has really changed over the last decades as we’ve come to understand the fundamental role of music and rhythmic behaviour in development, perception, and social interaction!