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 keep in mind. She grew up in a musical household and performed in bands all via highschool.
“For many of my life, writing and enjoying music was the clearest means 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 beneficial expertise and experiences, she credit her ardour for music because the catalyst for her curiosity in neuroscience.
“I received 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 effectively is what first pushed me to ask why music has such a robust 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 Programs 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 finding out 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 needed to attempt to discover a technique to mix each of these issues in grad faculty,” says Lecamwasam. Brown really helpful that she look into the graduate packages on the MIT Media Lab inside the Program in Media Arts and Sciences (MAS), which turned out to be an excellent 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 vital to me once I was selecting a graduate program. I needed to ensure that I used to be going to have the ability to do work that was actually rigorous, validated, and vital, but additionally get to do cool, artistic explorations and really put the analysis that I used to be doing into apply in several 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,” 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 varied 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 presently investigating the influence of large-scale stay music and live performance experiences on the psychological well being and well-being of each viewers members and performers. She can 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 establish extra moral functions of emotion-sensitive music technology and suggestion that protect human creativity and company, and can 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 Components in Computing Programs in Hamburg, Germany and the 2024 Audio Principally 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 Live shows and is presently partnering on a examine assessing the influence of lullaby writing on perinatal well being with the North Shore Lullaby Mission in Massachusetts, an offshoot of Carnegie Corridor’s Lullaby Mission. Her major worldwide collaboration is with an organization known as Myndstream, engaged on tasks evaluating the emotional resonance of AI-generated music to human-composed music and considering of medical and real-world functions. She can be engaged on a mission with the businesses PixMob and Empatica (an MIT Media Lab spinoff), centered on assessing the influence of interactive lighting and large-scale stay music experiences on emotional resonance in stadium and area settings.
Constructing group
“Kimy combines a deep love for — and complicated information of — music with scientific curiosity and rigor in ways in which symbolize 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, protected, and sustaining environments for work and play that has led Kimy to change into one of the efficient and devoted community-builders on the lab.”
Lecamwasam has participated within the SOS (College students Providing Help) program in MAS for just a few years, which assists college students from quite a lot of life experiences and backgrounds through the technique of making use of to the Program in Media Arts and Sciences. She’s going to quickly be the primary MAS peer mentor as a part of a brand new initiative via which she’s going to set up and coordinate packages together with a “buddy system,” pairing incoming grasp’s college students with PhD college students as a means to assist them transition into graduate scholar life at MIT. She can 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 little 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 in regards to 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.”
