Unravelling the Effects of Music on Sleep through Musicology, Neuroscience, Psychology and Computer Science

Music exerts strong effects on the human brain, as evidenced by both subjective emotional reactions and overt changes in neurophysiology: lullabies are known in all cultures and times as an effective sleep aid for children and adults. Musicology focuses traditionally on musical structures and cultural practice, a mutual interaction with empirical neuroscience is yet missing. The Lullabyte project will for the first time bring leading researchers from musicology, sleep research, neuroscience and computer science together to fill this gap. Within the project, ten Doctoral Candidates will be trained in a radically interdisciplinary research field, and acquire profound skills relevant for industry and the cultural sector. Leveraging state-of-the-art neuroscience laboratories, big sleep datasets gathered with wearable technology, and data science strategies, the Doctoral Candidates will investigate the effects of music on the brain’s transition from wakefulness to sleep, from neurophysiological details of auditory processing in the thalamico-cortical system over changes in sleep structure induced by different kinds of music, to psychological and musicological analyses. Moreover, machine-learning strategies will help to algorithmically generate novel, neuroscience-deduced music with particularly strong somnogenic effects. Beyond hands-on training in these research projects with multiple secondments between the ten consortium partners, summer schools and satellite events with active participation of trainers from innovative industry partners and artists will teach Doctoral Candidates complementary skills in technology transfer, entrepreneurship, medical device regulation and public outreach. As a whole, Lullabyte will train a new generation of interdisciplinary researchers, and thus provide the fast growing market of personalized, algorithmically generated music with both a firm scientific basis and the personnel to strengthen Europe’s position in such technologies.