Experimental Neuropsychology Unit
At the Experimental Neuropsychology Unit, we investigate the neural, psychological, and environmental mechanisms that drive creativity, skill acquisition, and peak performance.
We focus on understanding how brain processes, personal characteristics, and environmental influences interact to shape creative achievement and the development of expertise. Using an interdisciplinary approach, we explore the dynamics of creative performance, the psychobiological mechanisms underpinning flow states, and how the brain adapts during skill learning and refinement. Our primary model domain is music, which allows us to study essentially every aspect of cognition during naturally occurring behaviors, drawing from a large population with a wide range of expertise.
Research Areas
Neural and Psychological Processes in Creative Performance
A main goal of this research is to investigate the potential gain of using more ecologically valid divergent thinking to study creative cognition, with musical creative performance as a model behavior. Our research group has previously made extensive use of music as domain to study both psychological traits related to creative achievement, as well as neural processes related to creative performance.
Psychobiological Mechanisms Underpinning the Flow Experience
Optimal performance is commonly accompanied by a subjective state of experience called flow. Previous research has shown positive correlations between flow and quality of performance and suggests that flow may function as a reward signal that promotes practice.
Brain Representations of Actions
Understanding how perception and action are coupled in the brain has important implications for training, rehabilitation, and brain–machine interfaces. In this research theme, we study representations of actions and action sequences, both real and imagined, in the brain using fMRI.
Personal Characteristics and Environmental Factors that Predict Creative Achievement
This line of research is primarily based on web survey data (including self-report questionnaires, psychological assessments, and behavioral tests) from a large cohort of twins, collected in collaboration with the Swedish Twin Registry.
Neural Correlates of Skill Acquisition and Expertise
The vast complexity of our civilization has developed in tandem with an ever increasing degree of specialization within essentially every profession. The acquisition of skills and expertise is absolutely pivotal both for individuals and for our society, which makes scientific research in this field equally important.
Creative Dialogues between Human and Machine
Artificial intelligence (AI) is currently transforming our society and has opened up completely new avenues in many research fields, including music. In this research theme, we aim to create a new multidisciplinary and multi-method research programme that enables the study of the creative dialogues that are at the heart of music making.
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