Music and Neuroscience

PBS’s Interview with Dan Levitin (“The Music Instinct”)

June 24, 2009

My assistant texted me about this. I recorded the last half of it. I read about it on Twitter (where Dan Levitin gave a live Q& A).
If you are a music therapist, you NEED to read this.
Enjoy!

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Crossing the Midline: What’s the Big Deal?

May 21, 2009

Crossing the midline.
That’s a goal (or objective) frequently used in music therapy sessions. I have used it for children with autism, children with developmental disabilities, and for trauma-influenced children. It also seems to be a common therapeutic goal for occupational therapists.
A Sample Intervention
There’s an intervention I use in my weekly sessions with trauma-influenced kids. I [...]

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Musings on a Dancing Bird

May 14, 2009

It went viral. Millions of people have watched it. I posted links to three separate articles about it. It’s Snowball the dancing bird.
I listened to the following podcast this morning. Irena Schultz from NPR’s On Science did a more in-depth story on the science (and research) of dancing animals. To summarize:

It seems that Snowball adapts [...]

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The Daily Blog 05/12/2009

May 12, 2009

Three interesting articles emerged this week:
1) The Power of Music: It’s a real heart opener. To my knowledge, this is the first time we have concrete evidence that music has a positive effect on cardiovascular health. It’s all been self-report until now.
2) Thought Illusions: Listening Cheerful and Upbeat Music Makes You Feel the Same about [...]

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Let’s Start at the Neuro-Beginning: The Spinal Cord (Part I)

April 30, 2009

While back, I published my first post on neuroscience (read it here). It offered a brief introduction to some basic terms: neurons, plasticity, synapse, and the four components of the Central Nervous System (CNS): the spinal cord, brainstem, the limbic system and the neocortex.
I’ve been trying to figure out the best way to proceed from [...]

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Music Helping Vision? Hmmm…

March 31, 2009

An article was posted last week in U.S. News and World Report. It summarized a study performed in London where a group of researchers studied how music can help visual neglect. (Visual neglect occurs when a person has had damage to one side of their brain, as with a stroke, and cannot attend to or [...]

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Let’s Start at the Neuro-Beginning…

March 30, 2009

While working towards my Master of Music degree at Colorado State University, I had the opportunity to take several neuroscience classes. Neuroanatomy (my favorite!), neurodevelopment, neuropsychology – it gave me a wonderful, broad understanding of how the brain and body functions. These classes have profoundly guided the way I approach my therapeutic work.
I intend to [...]

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