Lauren Fink

Assistant Professor, Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour

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Dr. Lauren Fink is an Asst. Professor in the Dept. of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour, on the Executive Committee of the McMaster Institute for Music & the Mind, and Chair of the Operations Committee of the LIVELab. She is also affiliated with the School of Computational Science and Engineering, the Neuroscience Graduate Program, and the Centre for Advanced Research in Experimental and Applied Linguistics (ARiEAL). 

Having progressed from a music conservatory degree (BM) in Percussion Performance to a PhD in Neuroscience, most of Dr. Fink's research centres around timing. From using computational models to predict listeners' attention to music over time, to building assistive devices to help people synchronize their movement with each other, Dr. Fink is interested in understanding the physiological, psychological, and interpersonal changes induced through engaging with others in social, aesthetic contexts (e.g., music concert, art exhibition). Dr. Fink's research lab at McMaster (the BEAT Lab) focusses on multi-person interactions and computational modelling of audiovisual saliency over time. The lab is particularly interested in how attention and behaviour become coordinated among people in real-world social settings—from concerts and exhibitions to classrooms and public debates—and how these dynamics shape subjective states and behaviours, including immersion, preference, and prosocial action.