Sneha Aenugu is a current PhD student at Caltech studying Social and Decision Neuroscience. Her first encounter with music was at PCM, two years ago, when she began violin lessons with Erika Walczak as a hobby.

In the interview, Sneha shares how studying the violin has sparked her curiosity about the intersection between music and neuroscience such as how and why humans have particular reactions to certain types of music.

This interview was conducted on 7/12/24 and has been edited for length and clarity.

Can you talk a little bit about your professional background?
I started as an electrical engineer. Then the AI revolution and my work at a startup inspired me to think deeply about how humans do what they do, learn complex skills, and are able to adapt. So I decided to pursue graduate studies in neuroscience. I didn’t know if research would be a good fit because it’s more long-term and I’ve always been geared towards creating tangible impact. It takes a different mindset but I decided I wanted to do a PhD in neuroscience and be in the faculty market and become a professor.

You’re currently pursuing your doctorate at Caltech, studying social indecision neuroscience. Can you tell us how that experience has been and can you also tell us about your recent talk about what games teach us about human and artificial intelligence?
Our program, Social and Decision Neuroscience is special because usually when you study neuroscience, it’s purely from a computational approach. However, this program aims to bring psychology to the forefront and integrate humanities into computational work. So our program is a combination of computer science, neuroscience, psychology, and humanities. I’m having fun delving into these subjects.

My recent talk was about how we can use games to probe neural mechanisms of learning and decision-making and study how humans react under pressure. In games, things are crazy and you’re suddenly attacked and have to make decisions on the spot but you can’t recreate that in daily life. Studying games also provides a platform to study how humans learn different skills because each time you play a video game, you get better at it. Practice makes perfect, right? That means you’re learning something and that doesn’t go away. Musical training is one example, but you can’t track that as easily. It would be cool if there was equipment that records every hand movement you make on a violin. But in games, you can always record key presses to see what physical actions people are making in response to what they see on the screen.

Can you tell us a little bit about your musical background and then what motivated you to sign up for classes at the Pasadena Conservatory?
I didn’t have any musical training until two years ago. I used to sing all the time, off-key, but I love singing. I knew that Caltech would be a set, five-year program which was the first semblance of stability I had in a while so I thought this would be a nice time to take up something not work-related and always interesting. And everybody loves music, right? It’s human to be enticed by it. And since I used to sing for fun, I wanted to learn violin because it has that singing voice. Then I found PCM and Erika Walczak who’s a great instructor. She gives tons of positive reinforcement and that was very nice for me. My motor skills are not great, because I’ve never been an athlete, but with a positive teacher, it has been a lovely experience. And it helped me mentally with grad school because however much you enjoy the work, it’s going to give you anxiety. And music is a nice outlet for that. And you can get in your body and just connect with it.

How do the skills that you’ve gained from music lessons show up in your work or any non-music areas of your life and vice versa? Are there connections between social and decision neuroscience and music?
Our lab does work on aesthetic experience in humans but focuses more on visual arts. But people are starting to examine it with music, especially with current AI encroaching on creative professions. But it’s unknown territory, we haven’t studied it that much. It brings up questions like why certain music resonates with us, why it makes us feel calm or experience transcendental emotions, or why it’s so linked to memory.

Learning music myself and getting into technicalities helps me understand how to go about studying it. In any aesthetic experience, there’s the first level of acknowledging the emotion of a song then the second level of figuring out why particular progressions or harmonics create that emotion. So when teachers give technical notes in order to evoke certain emotions, it’s like only they have access to the rules of this second level.

Is there anything else you would like to add?
Although art plays a big role in our society, artists are still undervalued. It’s not a very lucrative profession and that’s an unfortunate state of affairs. It’ll be nice if artists get some recognition and value.