Rebecca Lepping
Dr. Rebecca Lepping (she/her/hers) is an assistant professor in the KU School of Medicine Department of Neurology. She is a cognitive neuroscientist (Ph.D.), musician (M.A.) and music psychologist (M.A.) who is passionate about the power of music to affect us, improve our well-being and make our lives better.
My primary research interest is in affective neuroscience, specifically the intersection of music, emotion-processing, and decision-making. To understand how those processes interact, I study emotion and reward processing in various forms across a range of health issues, including how emotion in music is represented in the brains of individuals with mood disorders, fibromyalgia, and other chronic conditions. As Director of the PROMUS (PoweR Of MUSic) lab, my program of research aims to study why individuals choose to engage with music, and how they use music as to regulate their mood states, experience of pain, and other psychological and physiological symptoms. By combining scientific methodology, including imaging techniques, with music theory, my research investigates how information is transmitted through the musical medium, how listeners parse that information in a meaningful way, and how music impacts the central nervous system in humans.
Our research examines the links between:
music and lung health,
music and pain,
music and emotion,
music and Alzheimer’s disease and
the interaction of kidney and brain health with a body/mind/brain approach.
Current Research and Grants
Music-Based Interventions for Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias (AD/ADRD), Frontiers KL2
Engaging Music for Pulmonary Obstruction With Expiratory Restoration (EMPOWER), KUMC Pilot
Exploring Life Course and Everyday Stressors in the Lives of Pregnant and Postpartum Women: The Role of Music Therapy as an Intervention Tool, Frontiers Pilot
Analgesic Effect of Music Listening During Pain Elicitation in Fibromyalgia, Frontiers Pilot
ADRC Consortium for Clarity in ADRD Research Through Imaging (CLARITi), NIH
Improving Functional MRI Analysis via Integrated One-Step Tensor-Variate Methodology, NIH
Investigating neuronal communication with transcranial magnetic stimulation, KSU CNAP Pilot
Alzheimer Biomarker Consortium - Down Syndrome (ABC-DS), NIH
The Neighborhoods Study: Contextual Disadvantage and Alzheimer's Disease and Related Dementias (ADRD), NIH
Kansas Polycystic Kidney Disease Research and Translation Core Center, NIH