Computational neuroscientist and singer/songwriter Kimaya (Kimy) Lecamwasam, who additionally performs electrical bass and guitar, says music has been a core a part of her life for so long as she will be able to keep in mind. She grew up in a musical household and performed in bands all by means of highschool.
“For many of my life, writing and taking part in music was the clearest approach I needed to categorical myself,” says Lecamwasam. “I used to be a extremely shy and anxious child, and I struggled with talking up for myself. Over time, composing and performing music turned central to each how I communicated and to how I managed my very own psychological well being.”
Together with equipping her with invaluable expertise and experiences, she credit her ardour for music because the catalyst for her curiosity in neuroscience.
“I acquired to see firsthand not solely the ways in which audiences reacted to music, but additionally how a lot worth music had for musicians,” she says. “That shut connection between making music and feeling properly is what first pushed me to ask why music has such a strong maintain on us, and finally led me to check the science behind it.”
Lecamwasam earned a bachelor’s diploma in 2021 from Wellesley Faculty, the place she studied neuroscience — particularly within the Methods and Computational Neuroscience monitor — and likewise music. Throughout her first semester, she took a category in songwriting that she says made her extra conscious of the connections between music and feelings. Whereas learning at Wellesley, she participated within the MIT Undergraduate Analysis Alternatives Program for 3 years. Working within the Division of Mind and Cognitive Sciences lab of Emery Brown, the Edward Hood Taplin Professor of Medical Engineering and Computational Neuroscience, she targeted totally on classifying consciousness in anesthetized sufferers and coaching brain-computer interface-enabled prosthetics utilizing reinforcement studying.
“I nonetheless had a extremely deep love for music, which I used to be pursuing in parallel to all of my neuroscience work, however I actually wished to attempt to discover a technique to mix each of these issues in grad college,” says Lecamwasam. Brown really useful that she look into the graduate applications on the MIT Media Lab inside the Program in Media Arts and Sciences (MAS), which turned out to be a perfect match.
“One factor I actually love about the place I’m is that I get to be each an artist and a scientist,” says Lecamwasam. “That was one thing that was essential to me once I was selecting a graduate program. I wished to make it possible for I used to be going to have the ability to do work that was actually rigorous, validated, and essential, but additionally get to do cool, artistic explorations and truly put the analysis that I used to be doing into apply in numerous methods.”
Exploring the bodily, psychological, and emotional impacts of music
Knowledgeable by her years of neuroscience analysis as an undergraduate and her ardour for music, Lecamwasam targeted her graduate analysis on harnessing the emotional efficiency of music into scalable, non-pharmacological psychological well being instruments. Her grasp’s thesis targeted on “pharmamusicology,” taking a look at how music may positively have an effect on the physiology and psychology of these with anxiousness.
The overarching theme of Lecamwasam’s analysis is exploring the assorted impacts of music and affective computing — bodily, mentally, and emotionally. Now within the third yr of her doctoral program within the Opera of the Future group, she is at the moment investigating the affect of large-scale reside music and live performance experiences on the psychological well being and well-being of each viewers members and performers. She can also be working to clinically validate music listening, composition, and efficiency as well being interventions, together with psychotherapy and pharmaceutical interventions.
Her current work, in collaboration with Professor Anna Huang’s Human-AI Resonance Lab, assesses the emotional resonance of AI-generated music in comparison with human-composed music; the goal is to determine extra moral functions of emotion-sensitive music era and suggestion that protect human creativity and company, and may also be used as well being interventions. She has co-led a wellness and music workshop on the Wellbeing Summit in Bilbao, Spain, and has introduced her work on the 2023 CHI convention on Human Elements in Computing Methods in Hamburg, Germany and the 2024 Audio Largely convention in Milan, Italy.
Lecamwasam has collaborated with organizations close to and much to implement real-world functions of her analysis. She labored with Carnegie Corridor’s Weill Music Institute on its Nicely-Being Concert events and is at the moment partnering on a examine assessing the affect of lullaby writing on perinatal well being with the North Shore Lullaby Undertaking in Massachusetts, an offshoot of Carnegie Corridor’s Lullaby Undertaking. Her predominant worldwide collaboration is with an organization known as Myndstream, engaged on initiatives evaluating the emotional resonance of AI-generated music to human-composed music and pondering of scientific and real-world functions. She can also be engaged on a undertaking with the businesses PixMob and Empatica (an MIT Media Lab spinoff), centered on assessing the affect of interactive lighting and large-scale reside music experiences on emotional resonance in stadium and enviornment settings.
Constructing group
“Kimy combines a deep love for — and complex data of — music with scientific curiosity and rigor in ways in which characterize the Media Lab/MAS spirit at its greatest,” says Professor Tod Machover, Lecamwasam’s analysis advisor, Media Lab college director, and director of the Opera of the Future group. “She has lengthy believed that music is likely one of the strongest and efficient methods to create customized interventions to assist stabilize emotional misery and promote empathy and connection. It’s this identical need to determine sane, secure, and sustaining environments for work and play that has led Kimy to turn out to be one of the vital efficient and devoted community-builders on the lab.”
Lecamwasam has participated within the SOS (College students Providing Assist) program in MAS for a couple of years, which assists college students from a wide range of life experiences and backgrounds in the course of the technique of making use of to the Program in Media Arts and Sciences. She is going to quickly be the primary MAS peer mentor as a part of a brand new initiative by means of which she’s going to set up and coordinate applications together with a “buddy system,” pairing incoming grasp’s college students with PhD college students as a approach to assist them transition into graduate pupil life at MIT. She can also be a part of the Media Lab’s Studcom, a student-run group that promotes, facilitates, and creates experiences meant to deliver the group collectively.
“I feel every thing that I’ve gotten to do has been so supported by the chums I’ve made in my lab and division, in addition to throughout departments,” says Lecamwasam. “I feel everyone seems to be simply actually excited concerning the work that they do and so supportive of each other. It makes it in order that even when issues are difficult or troublesome, I’m motivated to do that work and be part of this group.”
