Nasia Kontouli is a new PhD student at Center for Music in the brain.

Nasia's research will mainly be focused on investigating neural correlates and entrainment to rhythmic music from non-Western and Western societies (shamanic drumming and Electronic Dance Music). She is also interested in music-induced altered states of consciousness and interpersonal synchronization processes in collective settings like shamanic rituals and rave parties.

She will work together with MIB professor Peter Keller and Michael Hove, with whom she has also collaborated at the end of her master’s degree on writing a review about rhythm-induced trance processes, bringing together literature from Anthropology and Neuroscience.

Nasia studied Psychology at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. Then she moved to the Netherlands, where she completed a master's in Cognitive Neuroscience at Utrecht University. During this period, she conducted two research internships about the role of locomotion in route learning and the differences in olfactory fear chemosignaling between Asians and Caucasians, respectively.

Her aspiration is to keep an interdisciplinary perspective in her research projects while exploring challenging questions about human nature on a neural, affective, and cognitive level.

Outside academia, she enjoys cycling trips, yoga, and bouldering, as well as reading, going to concerts and festivals, and meeting with friends for dinners and board games.