Arun is a scientist and musician. He is interested in how music moves people. His research combines systems neuroscience, music cognition, and affective science to understand how a predictive brain makes meaning from organized sound (music). Specifically, he is interested in how interoception—a brain’s inference and control over bodily signals—impacts musical pleasure.

Currently, Arun is pursuing a PhD at Northeastern University in the Music Image and Neural Dynamics lab working with Dr. Psyche Loui. He completed a Bachelor’s of Music in violin performance at the New England Conservatory studying with Prof. Nicholas Kitchen. He has been playing violin for just about two decades. His previous mentors include Magdalena Richter and Anait Arutunian.

As an interdisciplinary researcher, Arun finds himself at the intersection of performance studies, systems neuroscience, computational neuroscience, predictive processing, and interoception. His past work investigated how live over recorded music uniquely engages the listening brain. He has worked on health-based applications leveraging rhythms in music to stimulate brain dynamics and promote healthy cognition. His current work takes the perspective that the brain is a predictive organ combining data from the external world (e.g., music) with data from the internal world (e.g., the heart, lungs, etc.). He is interested in how the brain and body together make meaning from complex configurations of sound that we call music.