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John Iversen is a cognitive neuroscientist dedicated to studying the effects of music on the brain and its potential for healing and development. He is currently serving as an Associate Research Scientist at the University of California, San Diego, in the Institute for Neural Computation, and is the Associate Director of the Swartz Center for Computational Neuroscience. His educational background includes undergraduate studies in Physics at Harvard University and graduate degrees in Philosophy and Science of Speech from Cambridge, followed by a PhD in Speech and Hearing Science from MIT. For over a decade, he has been engaged with the Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla, CA. His work focuses on rhythm perception and its connections to both music and language, utilizing behavioral neuroscience methods. Iversen aims to understand how our perceptions of the world are shaped, particularly through the cultural implications of rhythm and its perceptual ties to auditory processing. He directs the SIMPHONY project at UCSD, a longitudinal study investigating the impacts of music training on children's cognitive development, as well as engaging in music intervention studies within educational settings. Furthermore, Iversen applies his physics background to the field of neuroscience by developing innovative methods such as Mobile Brain/Body Imaging to further explore complex skills connected to music and rhythm within real-world scenarios.
Administered by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Curricular groups include Climate-Ocean-Atmosphere (COAP), Geosciences (GEO), and Ocean Biosciences (OBP).