June 2022

Our team member Yichen Song has won a Best Poster Award at EAPM conference. Congratulations!

June 2022

Our team member Rosa Maidhof and Hanna Muees have won a travel grant offered by EAPM. Congratulations!

May 2022

Our team member Stefanie Hirsch has won the Impact Award 2022 from the University of Vienna! This Award is funded by Stadt Wien. The award brings visibility to her PhD project on the health-related impact of ethnic discrimination. Congratulations!

March 2022

We congratulate our team member Anja Feneberg on her thesis defense and well-earned PhD! In her dissertation project, she examined the effects of music listening on psychobiological stress and somatic complaints in the daily life of healthy and clinical populations.

We are very happy that she will remain part of our Music & Health Lab as a research fellow. We are looking forward to continuing our collaboration.

March 2022

Rosa Maidhof received a Scholar Award at the 2022 Annual Meeting of the American Psychosomatic Society. Congratulations!

October 2021

Our collaborator Jasmine Kerr just received one of the three “best poster prizes” at the WASAD congress 2021 in Vienna. Jasmine Kerr is currently a PhD student from the ETH Zurich. The poster’s title is “Heart rate variability biofeedback for stress management supported by virtual reality and wearable technology”. Congratulations!

June 2021

Congratulations to our PhD student Rosa M. Maidhof who won the “Best Poster Award” at the “Best Poster Science Slam” at the virtual conference of the European Association of Psychosomatic Medicine (EAPM, taking part June 3-4), with the poster “The role of music listening style in acute responses to cold pressor pain” (Maidhof RM, Wuttke-Linnemann A, Kappert B, Schwerdtfeger A, Kreutz G, Nater UM).

June 2021

The Board of Trustees of the "Medizinisch-Wissenschaftliches Fonds des Bürgermeisters der Bundeshauptstadt Wien" grants Prim. Priv.-Doz. Dr. Georg-Christian Funk from the Karl Landsteiner Institute for Lung Research and Pneumological Oncology and his cooperation partners Univ.-Prof. Dr. Urs Nater and MSc Hannah Tschenett for their SPIROMIND study "A pilot randomized controlled trial to examine the feasibility and effects of a digital mindfulness-based intervention for COPD patients following exacerbations” € 36,000.

May 2021

Our team member Stefanie Hirsch was awarded with an ÖAW DOC-fellowship. Congratulations!

The title of her dissertation project is "Targeting the negative health-related impact of ethnic discrimination". 

The aim of the proposed dissertation project is to assess the negative impact of (chronic) discrimination on psychological, endocrine, and autonomic processes in women with migration background in detail. Furthermore, she will examine the effectiveness of a music-based ecological momentary intervention to reduce psychological and physiological stress due to perceived discrimination in everyday life. 

February 2021

Our team member Jasminka Majdandžić has received funding of 4.938 € within the scope of the Postdoc Awards 2021-1 of the Faculty of Psychology, for her project „How music gets under our skin: Effects of music on stress and skin barrier recovery“.
This funding will allow her to conduct two exciting experiments to find out whether music listening can enhance bodily health. Congratulations!

February 2021

Congratulations to Anja Feneberg, Urs Nater, Ricarda Nater-Mewes, and Stefanie Hirsch who won the 50th Anniversary Research and Development Award of the Society of Education, Music and Psychology Research (SEMPRE)! This funding will allow to conduct an ecological momentary music intervention study to reduce acute stress in the daily life of Turkish immigrant women. 

Rosa Maidhof presenting at University of Music  and Performing Arts

December 2020

Our team member Rosa M. Maidhof gave an online talk at the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna (mdw), on the 1st of December 2020. She presented findings on the role of the music listening style (music empathizing vs. music systemizing) for acute stress and pain reaction. The talk was part of a science seminar, organized by Univ.-Prof. Dr. Christoph Reuter, University of Vienna, by Ao. Univ.-Prof. Dr. Matthias Bertsch, mdw, and by the working group “Science” of the Austrian Society for Musicians’ Medicine (ÖGfMM).

Anja Feneberg received the "Best Poster Award" from DGM virtual poster conference

3.9. - 6.9.2020 online

Anja Feneberg, MSc, received the "Best Poster Award" at this year's virtual poster conference of the German Society for Music Psychology (DGM) (Sept. 3-6, 2020) for her contribution "Quarantunes - Eine Ecological Momentary Assessment-Studie zu den Effekten von Musikhören auf Stresserleben und Stimmung während der COVID-19-Krise" (Feneberg AC, Forbes P, Lamm C, Pronizius E, Silani G, Stijovic A, Nater UM).

June 2020

Our team member, Anja C. Feneberg, was one of 10 young investigators presenting their research in front of an online audience in the context of this years’ Digital Poster Flash organized by the Early Career Researchers of the German Psychological Society (DGPs), Section Biopsychology and Neuropsychology, and the German Society for Psychophysiology and its Applications (DGPA) on 12th of June 2020.

In her talk “Music as Medicine? An Ambulatory Assessment Study on the Effects of Music Listening on Somatic Symptoms and Markers of Stress” (Feneberg, A.C., Mewes, R., Doerr, J.M., & Nater, U.M.), Anja presented findings on the beneficial effects of music listening in two clinical populations suffering from persistent somatic complaints.

February 2020

The public seminar of “music Interventions for dementia and depression in elderly care” (MIDDEL) was held by the Department of Clinical and Health Psychology on February 24th. MIDDEL is a project funded by the EU Joint Program for Neurodegenerative Disease Research and gathered an interdisciplinary group of researchers from five European countries.

As the project host, Prof. Christian Gold gave a brief introduction about the project and led a discussion for project members to share their views. From our team, Dr. Nida Ali did a presentation on the importance of salivary cortisol and alpha amylase as indicators of stress and potential biomarkers for the effects of music-making in older adults. Anja Feneberg, MSc. gave a talk on cortisol measures in an ongoing study on health-related effects of choir singing among adolescents.

We expect MIDDEL to exert a high impact on the intervention measures for dementia and depression in elderly people.

July 2019

Our Music & Health Lab participated in this year's Kid's University (Kinderuni Wien) 2019.

The children learned about psychological and biological aspects of stress, e.g. the physiological stress response, how we assess these variables in our studies; as well as how music listening impacts their own bodies and feelings. 

In addition, our team members were delighted to get to know the childrens' favourite songs and current music habits.

An interview by the national radio station Ö1 on our workshop will be streamed next year.  Thanks a lot to all participating children and supporters! 

June 2019

Megha Sharda, PhD, from The Auditory Brain and Cognitive Development Laboratory (Head: Krista L. Hyde, PhD) at the University of Montreal, Canada, visited our lab and gave an invited talk on music processing and brain connectivity in Autism Spectrum Disorder and the effects of a music-based intervention on communication in children with autism.

We gained fascinating insights in this important research field and wish Megha all the best for her future projects!

January 2019

We are happy to welcome our newest team member, Yichen Song, who has joined our lab as a PhD candidate. Yichen previously worked at North China Electric Power University in Baoding, China, and graduated with a major in psychology from State University of New York at Buffalo, USA. In her master's thesis, she investigated the effects of background music on working memory. Starting with her PhD in the Music & Health lab, she will conduct research on the effects of music on the human stress response. 

From left to right:  Katharina Eder, Rosa Maidhof, MSc, Markus Ehrengruber, BSc, and Anja Feneberg, MSc.

July 2018

On the occasion of this year's Kids' University (KinderuniWien) we organized workshops for children aged 7 to 12 years, providing a hands-on insight into our current research.

Our workshops were dedicated to the question whether listening to music promotes health and well-being. Demonstrations of how we investigate the effects of music listening on stress were followed by the opportunitiy for the children to experience directly how different kinds of music contributed to their own feelings of relaxation and happiness. Moreover, our team learned a lot about the musical preferences of these young scientists! 

The Outpatient Unit for Research, Testing and Practice is part of the Faculty of Psychology of the University of Vienna. On 23rd May 2018, members of the faculty came together to celebrate the official key delivery and opening ceremony of the Outpatient Unit which is being administrated by Dr. Dr. Ricarda Nater-Mewes. 

Univ.-Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Dr. Dr. h.c. Heinz Engl, rector of the University of Vienna, Univ.-Prof. Dipl.-Psych. Dr. Barbara Schober, dean of the faculty of psychology,  and Dr. Dr. Dipl.-Psych. Ricarda Nater-Mewes, head of the outpatient unit, (from left to right) symbolically opening the outpatient clinic with a large key.

Combining applied research and community support, the Outpatient Unit is concerned with evidence-based psychological diagnostics, counselling, interventions, as well as gradual and post-gradual training.

Also the music and health lab is involved in the Outpatient Unit's activities by offering music-based interventions and conducting research on music-related treatment options for diverse patient-populations.

We were honoured to present some of our projects at the opening ceremony and to converse on health-beneficial effects of music with the visiting guests.

Anja Feneberg, MSc and Rosa Maidhof, MSc (from left to right) presenting a poster on Music and Health.

April 2018

We are happy to welcome our newest team member, Rosa Maidhof, MSc.!  

Rosa has already supported the Music and Health Lab during her master's degree. She has written her master's thesis on the impact of music listening on heart rate variability. From now on, she will support us as a PhD candidate and extend her knowledge on the associations between heart, health, and music.

February 2018

We were pleased to welcome Prof. Dr. Gunter Kreutz in our lab in Vienna.

Prof. Kreutz is teaching systematic musicology at the University of Oldenburg. His main research topics include psychological, social and physiological aspects of music making, singing and dancing. He has published numerous articles in the field of music and health.

After a brief tour of our newly opened lab rooms at the University of Vienna, Prof. Kreutz enjoyed an acoustical foretaste of the music pieces we use in our current studies. 

Time went by very fast - so we hope to meet him again soon in the future!

January 2018

As our newest addition to the team, we welcome Jasminka Majdandžić, who has joined the lab as a PostDoc.

Jasminka's resesarch background is in social neuroscience: over the past years, her research has generally focused on understanding what drives people to socially connect with others - to affiliate with them, to "tune into" their mental and affective states, and to engage in behaviour which benefits, harms, or pleases them - and importantly, how these processes are mediated on a neurobiological level.

Jasminka is excited to now extend her research focus to the field of music, and how it affects emotiones, stress and pain.

November 2017

For our team in Vienna we are actively looking to fill the position of a post-doc (duration of employment: 6 years).

More details can be found here.

September 2017

Exciting changes ahead of us! With Professor Nater starting his new position at the University of Vienna, the Music & Health Lab will move with him to the World Capital of Music, starting October 1st, 2017.

We are looking forward to continue our research at our new home.

Stay tuned for additional news! 

The article Music Listening as a means of stress reduction in daily life (Linnemann et al., 2015) has recently been recorded one of the most downloaded articles in the last 90 days in the Journal Psychoneuroendocrinology.

In this article, Alexandra Linnemann and colleagues provide support for the beneficial effects of music listening on subjective and physiological stress in the everyday life of university students. 

The Music and Health Lab goes international...

June 2017

We are delighted to welcome Pablo Enriquez Cerda from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico City, as a guest PhD student in our lab.

He will stay during the summer months in order to prepare one of his research projects back in Mexico. His PhD project is concerned with the potential beneficial effects of music interventions on stress and emotions in the working context. He has for example organized life concerts of classical music in one of the largest companies in Mexico.