Origin story – Acclaimed researcher combined a leading-edge lab with a world-class concert hall to answer big questions about music and the mind

Laurel Trainor joined McMaster in 1992 and started asking big questions in a small lab. To ask even bigger questions, Trainor started dreaming about a lab that didn’t yet exist anywhere in the world.

Trainor had launched her research group, recruited a team of students and began publishing groundbreaking papers on the perception, cognition and neuroscience of music. It was an emerging field and Trainor – a clinical psychologist and prolific researcher – was drawing international attention and acclaim. Her work was showing the fundamental role of music and rhythmic behaviour in development, perception, and social interaction.

That pioneering research drew on lifelong passions for science and music. Trainor started taking flute lessons when she was in high school, performed in the Toronto Symphony Youth Orchestra, and would later join the Burlington Symphony Orchestra – she’s played principal flute there for more than a decade.

Along with an early love for music, Trainor was very much into math and science in high school. That made for tough choices heading into university. “I had trouble deciding between subjects.” So she decided to study it all, starting with math and physics, followed by an undergraduate degree in music performance and a PhD in psychology from the University of Toronto.

Trainor combined her two passions and different fields of study to build a career dedicated to understanding how music is processed in our brains and how it’s learned. She also started asking big questions like why music is prominent in every culture and why we instinctively sing to newborns.

“I definitely took a convoluted route to becoming a neuroscientist,” says Trainor, who’s now a professor in the Faculty of Science’s Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behavior.

It’s a route that would lead to a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society for Music Perception and Cognition and appointments as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research and the Association for Psychological Science and as a Distinguished University Professor – McMaster’s highest honour for faculty members.

Trainor began her career at McMaster by asking big questions in a small lab. There was just enough space in her lab to run experiments one subject at a time. Conditions were less than ideal and didn’t exactly mirror how music is made and enjoyed in the real world.

“Music is a social experience. We create music with other people and being part of an audience at concerts is among our most memorable experiences.” Yet Trainor couldn’t even shoehorn a trio into her lab, much less an audience.

To fully understand musical behavior, researchers need to study the interactions between, and among, musicians and audiences. Trainor started dreaming about how to accomplish that at McMaster in a custom-built space that would combine the best of a state-of-the-art research lab and a world-class concert hall. What she envisioned didn’t exist anywhere in the world. Her large interactive virtual lab – LIVELab – would become another first for McMaster. It would let Trainor, her students, department colleagues and partners at McMaster and beyond ask and answer even bigger questions.

In 2005, Trainor realized another dream with the launch of the McMaster Institute for Music and the Mind (MIMM). The research institute brought together scientists, researchers and musicians to explore the neurological impact and benefits of music, dance and the arts. Trainor was appointed founding director.

She pitched her LIVELab concept to members of MIMM and then widened her consultations to include fellow neuroscientists, engineers, psychologists and physicians.

“Fortunately, enough people said ‘yes, we can do this’. Looking back, I had no idea what LIVELab would become and all of the research questions we’d be able to ask and answer in this amazing space.”

In 2010, Trainor brought together a team that secured $8 million from the Canadian Foundation for Innovation and the Ontario Research Fund. That initial investment led to additional funding and gifts.

The team began working with architect Drew Hauser with mcCallumSather to design LIVELab. Controlling variables in an experiment ensures results are accurate and valid so the concert  hall needed to be sound isolated from the outside, with very low reverberation on the inside. To achieve that, LIVELab’s floor would rest on rubber discs on a concrete base. The inner walls would be isolated from the outer walls – like a box within a box – and the ceiling would float.

The main lab – with a stage big enough for a small orchestra and seating for up to 106 audience members – would be wired with 76 speakers and 28 microphones so any acoustic could be achieved for research studies. By calculating in real time the echoes needed to play through the speakers, LIVELab could replicate any soundscape from a concert hall to a subway station. Infrared cameras would measure movements of performers and the entire audience while everyone’s brain responses could be monitored using electroencephalography (EEG) equipment.

Like any concert venue, there needed to be a foyer for audiences and a green room for performers. LIVELab also needed a large control room to house and run all the technology, along with a space to prep participants for research studies.

“We had to figure out how to get 106 audience members equipped with sensors and then ushered into their seats as quickly as possible.” Spending two hours getting an audience prepped for a two-hour concert wasn’t an option.

A dance studio would also be added – Trainor had initially focused on music but realized that music and movement are intimately connected.

Construction was set to begin but then LIVELab lost its home. It was supposed to be one of the anchor tenants in a new science building. Plans for that building were cancelled because of the fiscal storm bearing down on Ontario universities. The Psychology Building became Plan B, with LIVELab built on top of the flat roof at the front of the building. Location is everything and LIVELab now occupied prime real estate, with the foyer’s floor to ceiling window facing out onto campus.

After two years of construction, LIVELab officially opened on Sept. 27, 2014 with a free community concert and research showcase. Trainor was once again made a founding director, this time of LIVELab.

Researchers have used LIVELab to better understand the neural and behavioral processing of music and movement, the dynamics of musical performances and audience interactions, why music makes us move, and the development of new therapeutic technologies, including a computer game to improve movement for people with Parkinson’s disease, how group music therapy can reduce stress and anxiety, and advances in understanding communication in infant-parent interactions. The latest addition to LIVELab is state-of-the-art eye tracking technology to help researchers better understand what makes people cooperate and what motivates groups to take collective action.

Along with year-round studies and hands-on experiential learning for hundreds of students, LIVELab hosts concerts and conferences, including the 21^st annual NeuroMusic Conference set for Nov. 21-23 with a focus on the importance of music in early development from brain to behavior.

LIVELab remains one-of-a-kind. “International researchers and industry partners come to McMaster to tour LIVELab and meet with our team. Parts of what we’re doing have been adopted by other universities and research institutes but the lab as a whole has yet to be replicated.” Researchers often end their visits by becoming collaborators.

Trainor looks forward to seeing what the next generation of researchers will discover in LIVELab. “Our department has recruited some truly remarkable faculty who are exploring the neuroscience of music in new and exciting ways. There are still so many questions waiting to be asked and LIVELab remains one of the best places in the world for trailblazers and pioneers to find answers.”