Measuring the unmeasurable.
My PhD investigates what the body reveals about cognition when words cannot. Heart, breath, brain, all listening.
Active research areas
Cardiovascular Measures of Cognition
The primary focus of the PhD. How heart rate variability (HRV) and cardiac output reflect cognitive and emotional states during music listening. The cardiovascular system is not a passive bystander to thought, it actively encodes attentional, anticipatory, and affective processes. HRV in particular provides a window into autonomic balance that, paired with EEG, lets us triangulate cognition from multiple physiological angles.
Music and the Autonomic System
Mapping how musical structure (tempo, timbre, harmonic tension, rhythmic complexity) couples to the body's involuntary physiological responses. The aim: a quantitative bridge between the structure of a musical signal and the autonomic signature it produces. Skin conductance, respiration, HRV, and cardiac output are all candidate markers.
EEG and the Orienting Reflex
Extending Sokolov's classic orienting reflex model with EEG/ERP methods. The orienting reflex is the brain's involuntary "what is that?" response to novel stimuli. Modern EEG techniques let us decompose that response into its components and ask how it is shaped by attention, expectation, and context, including in musical settings.
Methodology
Multi-modal recording is the core of the approach. Simultaneous EEG (high-density montage), ECG, electrodermal activity (EDA), and respiration are captured during controlled music listening tasks. Stimuli range from synthetic isochronous pulses through to fully composed musical excerpts manipulated for tempo, complexity, and unexpectedness.
Analysis combines time-domain and frequency-domain methods. HRV is computed across short (5 second) and longer windows; EEG is decomposed via wavelet and ERP averaging; cardiac output is estimated via impedance cardiography where available. The aim is to find robust, replicable physiological signatures of musical cognition that survive the noise of individual differences.
- EEGHigh-density montage, time and frequency analysis
- ECG / HRVShort and long-window heart rate variability
- EDASkin conductance response to musical events
- Cardiac OutputImpedance cardiography where available
- StimuliSynthetic pulses, composed music, controlled deviance
- SoftwareMATLAB, EEGLAB, R, Python
Supervisors
Brain & Behaviour Research Institute, School of Psychology, University of Wollongong.
Publications and presentations
An investigation of how the body responds when a stable rhythmic pattern is suddenly broken. We presented controlled musical excerpts with unexpected metric shifts and recorded cardiac and electrodermal responses to characterise the autonomic signature of metrical violation. Presented at IOP 22, Krakow, July 2025.
View abstractA theoretical and empirical extension of Sokolov's classical orienting reflex model. We propose and test an "amplifier" stage in the OR mechanism using EEG/ERP data, showing how preparatory neural states modulate the magnitude of the orienting response to novel stimuli.
Read on DOIA study of how endogenous and exogenous hormonal states modulate resting EEG. Important methodologically for psychophysiology research that aggregates across participants without accounting for cycle-phase variance.
View abstractA controlled study testing the common assumption that caffeine meaningfully shifts resting cardiac measures in healthy adults. The data suggest that the effect, at typical dietary doses, is smaller than often assumed.
Awards
Profiles
- ORCID
- Institution
- SchoolPsychology, Brain & Behaviour Research Institute
- RolePhD Candidate, Academic Tutor, HDR Representative