Try imagining your life without music for a moment. Do you feel you’ve lost a part of yourself, your memories, or ability to experience emotions?

Professor Catherine Loveday has long focused her research interest on the human brain, our memory, and music. Her talk will explore the link between memory and music. She will explain why our musical memory is so instant and robust, and why it is capable of transcending notions of time, place, and age.

Catherine is the author of ‘The Secret World of the Brain’, Professor of Social Sciences at the University of Westminster, and has given a TED Talk on The Power of Music for the London Business School. She frequently appears as an expert psychologist on BBC Radio 4’s All In The Mind, as well as many other radio and television programmes.

Professor Catherine Loveday holds a PhD in the neuropsychology of memory and ageing Her research continuously focuses on the nature of normal and impaired memory. She has a a long-term fascination with music and the brain and has carried out a number of studies looking at the cognitive and neuronal aspects of music processing. Currently, she is investigating how memories of music are central to our sense of self, imagination, emotional state and social functioning.

Further research interests focus on the neuropsychology of autobiographical memory. Catherine works closely with people with various forms of memory loss and is also very keen on interdisciplinary collaboration, for example examining the lived experience of amnesia with cognitive psychologist Martin Conway, and artist Shona Illingworth.