E-Mail IMAGE: Inspired by creative efforts of people around the world to reproduce music-making together while social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers from Bar-Ilan University in Israel and the University of... view more Credit: Background artwork: Bryan Christie Design Overlay design: Dr. David M. Greenberg Music is a tool that has accompanied our evolutionary journey and provided a sense of comfort and social connection for millennia. New research published today in the American Psychologist provides a neuroscientific understanding of the social connection with a new map of the brain when playing music. A team of social neuroscientists from Bar-Ilan University and the University of Chicago introduced a model of the brain that sheds light on the social functions and brain mechanisms that underlie the musical adaptations used for human connection. The model is unique because it focuses on what happens in the brain when people make music together, rather than when they listen to music individually.