Jamshed Bharucha is the primary investigator in the MCL. He is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Vassar College, received an M.A. in philosophy from Yale university, and attained his Ph.D in cognitive psychology from Harvard University.

As a professor at Dartmouth College and now at Tufts University, Prof. Bharucha has explored the cognitive and neural basis of the perception of music. He has used perceptual experiments, neural net modeling, electroencephalography (ERP), and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Prof. Bharucha's work on harmonic priming and his work of implicit musical knowledge has had a lasting impact on the field.

Prof. Bharucha is also the Provost and Senior Vice President at Tufts University.

Meagan Curtis is a Postdoctoral Associate in the Music Cognition Lab. She earned her Ph.D. in psychological and brain sciences from Dartmouth College.

Her research explores the cognitive and possible evolutionary relationship between music and language. Currently, she is examining the pitch patterns that are used to convey emotion in speech and music, and has discovered close correspondences in the pitch patterns that are used to convey sadness across domains. Her research also examines the cognitive interactions that occur when music and language are processed simultaneously.