Jinyu Wang is a Ph.D. student in Interdisciplinary Design and Media at Northeastern University’s College of Arts, Media & Design (CAMD), where she conducts research in the Music, Imaging, and Neural Dynamics (MIND) Laboratory under the supervision of Dr. Psyche Loui.
Her research focuses on the neuroscience of music, reward, and brain health, combining neuroimaging, computational modeling, and machine learning to understand why music is pleasurable and how music-based interventions can support cognitive and emotional well-being. Her work spans musical reward sensitivity, cross-cultural music perception, aging, mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and digital twin brain modeling.
Jinyu has led several interdisciplinary projects using structural and functional MRI, diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), psychometric network analysis, and predictive modeling. Her recent work investigates cross-cultural differences in musical reward experiences between Chinese and American populations, identifies white matter pathways associated with musical reward sensitivity, and develops computational digital twin brain models to simulate individualized brain dynamics in MCI.
She has publications in music cognition and neuroscience, including recent work in Music Perception. Her research has been presented at international conferences including the Society for Music Perception and Cognition (SMPC) and the Cognitive Neuroscience Society (CNS). She received the SMPC Student Research Award for her work on cross-cultural differences in musical reward.
Her long-term goal is to develop personalized, brain-informed interventions that leverage music and computational neuroscience to promote healthy aging and improve quality of life.
Research/Publications Highlights
Wang, J., Kathios, N., Ou, Y., Curtiss, J., Wu, D., & Loui, P. (2026). A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Individual Differences in Musical Reward. Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1525/mp.2026.2459501
Han, K. Y., Wang, J., Kubit, B. M., Parrish, C., & Loui, P. (2025). Functional Connectivity of Auditory, Motor, and Reward Networks at Rest and During Music Listening. Brain Sciences, 16(1), 15. https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci16010015
Loui, P., & Wang, J. (2025). Music, Emotion, and Reward. In J. Armony & P. Vuilleumier (Eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Human Affective Neuroscience (2 ed., pp. 288-305). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009342919.018
Wang, J., Xu, M., Jin, Z., Xia, L., Lian, Q., Huyang, S., & Wu, D. (2021). The Chinese version of the Barcelona Music Reward Questionnaire (BMRQ): Associations with personality traits and gender. Musicae Scientiae, 27(1), 218-232. https://doi.org/10.1177/10298649211034547
Departments
Interdisciplinary, Music
Education
- PhD, Interdisciplinary Design & Media, Northeastern University
- MEd, Psychology, Central South University
- BS, Psychology, Hunan Normal University
Awards
- SMPC Student Research Award
Research Focus
- Music Neuroscience
- Neuroimaging
- Machine Learning
- Computational Modelling