research

[PsychToday] Punk Music Isn’t “Bad”

July 30, 2015

Early in my professional career as a music therapist, a colleague asked me what I thought about her teenage son’s music choices. He had started listening loud, punk-type music and my colleague was wondering whether or not she should be worried. I assured her that, although this was not a particular area of expertise for […]

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[PsychToday] How to Enhance Your Music Listening Experience

February 18, 2015

Have you ever listened to the lyrics of a favorite song? I mean, reeeeeeally listened? Better yet, have you ever read the lyrics of a familiar song while it has played? If so, what was that like for you? In my experience, most people don’t pay much attention to lyrics. They may know the lyrics […]

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How My Elementary School Teacher Helped Me Explain Data Collection Development

October 9, 2014

Data collection seems to be a pervasive challenge for the music therapy student, intern, and even clinician. Whether it’s for a music therapy assessment, a regular music therapy session, or a periodic evaluation process, it can be difficult to collect client information in a meaningful and functional way that allows for accuracy, some level of […]

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Which Came First, the Music or the Musical? A Visual History of MT Language

July 31, 2014

This morning, my husband—an avid reader of the New York Times—shared with me a tool on the NYT site that got the nerd in me really excited. This tool, called Chronicle, allows you to visually track language usage in the NYT since its launch in 1860. You insert keywords and/or phrases and the program graphs […]

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Musings on Music and Science

April 16, 2014

I love quick-and-dirty resources that provide valuable information in an accessible format. In that spirit, I want to share this great resource recently published by the music therapy team at Neurorhythm Music Therapy. Their interactive map of the brain provides brief overviews of music’s effect on different parts of the brain with a click of […]

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Musings on the State of Music Therapy Research: Strengths, Challenges, and Future Directions

March 18, 2014

Earlier this month I invited Dr. Michael Anestis, a clinical psychologist and researcher, to share his perspectives on music therapy research. By his own admission, his area of focus is mental health research—which omits the medical, rehabilitation, developmental, wellness, and preventive areas of focus in music therapy research—but I felt he had fair and valid […]

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[Guest Post] The Importance of Testing Treatments for Mental Illness Before we Sell Them

March 13, 2014

I read an interesting exchange on a Facebook feed recently between this author, clinical psychologist and researcher Dr. Michael Anestis, and some of my music therapy friends and colleagues about the perceived state of music therapy research. The exchange, though unresolved, was enticing enough that I reached out to Michael and invited him to share […]

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[PsychToday] Music Therapy for our Soldiers

February 27, 2014

My first non-familial encounter with veterans was as a soon-to-be sophomore in college, two days shy of moving to Iowa City as a transfer student and new music therapy major. I had just learned about music therapy and had spent the past month turning my life upside-down to transfer to the University of Iowa to […]

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[Guest Post] Emerging Research: Music Therapy and Disorders of Consciousness

February 17, 2014

I first met Julian O’Kelly at the Society for Music Perception and Cognition conference in Toronto last August. Julian is a man of many talents—music therapist, clinician, researcher, PhD student, speaker, and professional pianist. It was through circustance that we ended up co-presenting with our respective PhD mentors at the SMPC conference, but it turned […]

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