Patricia Maria Vanzella

Patricia M. Vanzella is a Brazilian pianist, professor of music, and researcher specializing in the Cognitive Neuroscience of Music. She currently serves as the president of the Brazilian Association of Cognition and Musical Arts (ABCM) for the 2023–2026 term and is a faculty member of the Center for Mathematics, Computing, and Cognition at the Federal University of ABC (UFABC) in São Bernardo do Campo, Brazil.

Education

Vanzella graduated with a degree in Music in 1985 from the School of Communications and Arts at the University of São Paulo, where she studied under the guidance of pianist Gilberto Tinetti. She furthered her studies at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest, Hungary, from 1986 to 1988, with Kornél Zempléni. In 2005, she completed her doctorate in Piano and Chamber Music at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., USA, guided by pianist Marilyn Neeley. In 2010, she was appointed a postdoctoral position at UFABC’s Graduate Program in Information Engineering, focusing her research on tone perception in individuals with absolute pitch.

Career

Performance

Vanzella has performed as soloist with Brazilian symphony orchestras, including the São Paulo State Symphony Orchestra, the USP Symphony Orchestra, and the Claudio Santoro National Theater Symphony Orchestra. She has also participated with chamber music ensembles in concert halls across the Americas, Europe, and Asia.

Academics

From 1993 to 2014, she served as a professor in the Music Department at the University of Brasília. Since 2015, she has been a faculty member at the Center for Mathematics, Computing, and Cognition at UFABC, where she founded and coordinates the interdisciplinary research group "NEUROMÚSICA UFABC," which explores the intricate ways in which humans perceive, produce, and emotionally respond to music.

Research and publications

Vanzella has an extensive publication record in scientific journals, collaborating with researchers both in Brazil and internationally. Her research primarily focused on cognitive neuroscience, particularly in music perception and cognition. She has collaborated with institutions such as the University of Toronto, University of London, and the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, as well as in universities in Brazil, such as UNIFESP and USP. Vanzella regularly delivers lectures at national and international conferences about the relationship between music and the brain.

In parallel, as part of the University's outreach activities, she develops educational and cultural events for academic and scientific knowledge dissemination, such as the Synaptic Concerts and the cycle of lectures "Neuromusical Talks.