Amir Mano

Music is a complex, continuously evolving experience that engages many brain systems simultaneously. My research uses naturalistic fMRI to investigate how the brain responds to realistic musical experiences, moving beyond simplified experimental stimuli. As part of this work, I developed an original musical composition specifically for neuroscience research — a two-part piece titled Brain Movement (Part I and Part II, 8 minutes each), recorded with 25 musicians, allowing us to study brain responses to the same rich musical experience across people with different musical backgrounds.

I am particularly interested in how brain activity unfolds over time and how similar or different neural responses are between musicians. Using dynamic inter-subject correlation, I investigate how the brain's response to music changes throughout the listening experience and how these dynamics may relate to musical expertise. This work aims to provide a more naturalistic understanding of how musical experience is represented in the brain.

My research into music learning began during my MSc, where I ran a longitudinal study following 33 trumpet learners over the course of their training. Using diffusion MRI, I examined microstructural changes associated with musical learning, providing evidence that even a relatively short period of acquiring a new musical skill can be reflected in the brain. This work formed the foundation for my broader interest in understanding how musical training drives neuroplasticity.

Building on this work, my PhD will expand this design considerably: a longitudinal study with more participants, across multiple musical instruments rather than trumpet alone, using a broader multimodal MRI approach. By following people as they learn different instruments from the beginning of their training, I aim to track how brain structure, microstructure, connectivity, and function change throughout the learning process — comparing which aspects of neuroplasticity are shared across instruments and which are shaped by an instrument's specific demands.

A particular focus of this work is structural connectomics: studying the brain not only as a collection of individual regions, but as an interconnected network. This approach allows me to investigate how musical learning may alter the organization of connections between brain regions, providing a broader picture of neuroplasticity and how the brain adapts to complex, long-term skills.

This research is conducted under the supervision of Prof. Yaniv Assaf, in the Yaniv Assaf Lab.