Music, Mind and Brain MSc

This distinctive programme combines psychology and neuroscience to understand how music shapes the human mind and society. You’ll learn how biological, cognitive, and cultural mechanisms influence music perception, creation, and experience, while developing the skills required to apply this knowledge in research, industry, and creative practice.


• Music plays a central role in emotion, identity, communication, learning, health, technology, and society. You’ll develop the theoretical foundations and research skills needed to study these processes scientifically.



• This specialist MSc offers more focused career and research pathways than a general psychology degree. Graduates normally progress into PhD and research pathways, as well as careers in the creative and media industries, education, technology, and health and wellbeing.



• The programme is highly interdisciplinary, drawing on expertise in music cognition, cognitive neuroscience, empirical aesthetics, big data, computational modelling, music education, and music therapy.



• With a small, selective cohort, you'll benefit from close contact with academic staff, individualised dissertation supervision, strong mentoring for PhD applications and careers, and a collaborative, intellectually engaged learning environment.



• The programme is enriched by close collaborations with world-class institutions and research groups, including the University of Cambridge, Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics and the Royal College of Music.



• Beyond academia, we also collaborate with non-academic partners in education (for example, Curious Minds) and marketing and audio branding (for example, amp sound branding), supporting real-world applications of music and psychological science.



• You'll benefit from the expertise across Goldsmiths, including Psychology and Neuroscience, Computing, Music and Performance and Media, Communications and Cultural Studies.



• You'll have access to state-of-the-art facilities, including the Infant Lab, Virtual Reality Lab, neuroimaging equipment (EEG, TMS), high-performance computing for large-scale experiments and big data, and wearable biosensors for tracking physiological responses (eye-tracking, motion capture, heart rate, and skin conductance).