Laurel Trainor (Ph.D., Psychology, University of Toronto) is a professor in the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience and Behaviour and the Director of the McMaster Institute for Music and the Mind.

She has published over 60 pioneering research articles and book chapters on the neuroscience of auditory development and the perception of music, appearing in prestigious journals such as Science, Psychological Science, and the Journal of Neuroscience.

Her research also has one of the highest media profiles of researchers at McMaster. Her studies show that young infants already have multi-sensory connections between auditory and movement areas of the brain, and that they are like adults in preferring consonant chords or dissonant chords.

At the same time, Trainor and her colleagues have found that brain responses to sound do not reach adult maturation until about 18 years of age, and that the brains of music student mature differently than the brains on students not taking music lessons.

These studies suggest that music can have a profound effect on how the brain gets wired up. Trainor also has a Bachelor of Music Degree in Performance from the University of Toronto, loves playing chamber music, and is currently principal flute of Symphony Hamilton.