My research interests include psychophysiological correlates of music appreciation & reward, models for musical preference, mechanisms for musically induced emotion, and individualized experimental design. I am interested in both creative and clinical applications of my work.
(Dec 2021) Master’s Thesis: Using Music to Modulate Emotional Memory [read on the Georgia Tech repository]
Ongoing research projects
(Sept 2023 - present) Behavioural, Social, and Neural Mechanisms of Music Appreciation in Adolescents & Young Adults
Journal articles
Ren, Y., Mehdizadeh, S. K., Leslie, G., & Brown, T. I. (2024). Affective Music During Episodic Memory Recollection Modulates Subsequent False Emotional Memory Traces: An fMRI Study. Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral Neuroscience, 24(5),912-930. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13415-024-01200-0
Mehdizadeh, S. K., & Leslie, G. (2023). The physiology of musical preference: A secondary analysis of the Study Forrest dataset. Music Perception, 40(5), 395-409. https://doi.org/10.1525/mp.2023.40.5.395 [PDF]
Conferences
Mehdizadeh, S. K., & Leslie, G. (2026). Forms of Music Appreciation, Social Context, and Recommendation Source Uniquely Impact Felt Experience. 2026 Biennial Meeting of the Society of Music Perception and Cognition (SMPC ‘26). [read accepted abstract]
Mehdizadeh, S. K., Ren, Y., Leslie, G., Brown, T. I. (2024). Emotional Music Modulates Episodic Memory During Recollection and Induces False Traces. 2024 Biennial Meeting of the Society of Music Perception and Cognition (SMPC ‘24). [read accepted abstract] [watch the lightning talk] 🏆 student research award
Mehdizadeh, S. K., Cutrell, E., Winters, R. M., Djuric, N., Cheng, Y., Tashev, I. J., & Wang, Y. T. (2023). EEG and Eye-Tracking Error-Related Responses During Predictive Text Interactions: A BCI Case Study. 2023 45th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine & Biology Society (EMBC ‘23). https://doi.org/10.1109/EMBC40787.2023.10340598
Mehdizadeh, S. K., Ren, Y., Brown, T. I., & Leslie, G. (2022). Using Music to Modulate Human Emotional Memory. 2022 Biennial Meeting of the Society of Music Perception and Cognition (SMPC ‘22). [poster]
Roque, T. R, Rajagopalan, N., Jain, S., Mehdizadeh, S. K., & Leslie, G. (2022). Multimodal, Musical Hyperscanning to Promote Empathy in HCI. Empathy-Centric Design at Scale workshop at CHI ‘22.
Mehdizadeh, S. K., & Leslie, G. (2021). Novel Methodologies for Secondary Analyses of Physiological and Musical Preference Data. International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition (ICMPC ‘21).
[read accepted abstract] [watch the conference presentation]