Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Monday, November 9, 2009
Music Lessons Boost Brain Power
WASHINGTON — For those who seriously practiced a musical instrument when they were young, the experience was more than just entertainment. Recent research shows a strong correlation between musical training for children and certain mental abilities.
The research was discussed at a session at a recent gathering of acoustics experts in Austin, Texas.
Laurel Trainor, director of the Institute for Music and the Mind at McMaster University in West Hamilton, Ontario, and colleagues compared preschool children who had taken music lessons with those who did not. Those with some training showed larger brain responses on a number of sound recognition tests given to the children. Her research indicated that musical training appears to modify the brain's auditory cortex.
Can larger claims be made for the influence on the brain of musical training? Does training change thinking or cognition in general? NEXT...............
Posted by iRDMuni at 2:04 PM 0 comments
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Friday, September 25, 2009
folio: Highlighting scholarship and research at The Graduate Center
The Musical Angle on Disability
Sometimes the spark that ignites a new area of scholarship happens in the classroom, sometimes it happens in the field where research is conducted, and sometimes it happens at an academic conference or symposium. In the case of "music and disability"—an emerging subfield of musicology and music theory—it happened on a train.
About ten years ago, music scholar Joseph Straus was traveling by Amtrak, on his way home from Penn State University, where he had just given a colloquium. After chatting with the person seated next to him—a Penn State faculty member - he pulled out a book he'd been reading about autism, the neurobiological syndrome characterized by impaired social interaction and communication and restricted and repetitive behavior. Seeing the book, his fellow passenger asked if he was interested in "disability studies." Straus had never heard next...
Posted by iRDMuni at 4:00 PM 0 comments
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Music therapy treats diseases and conditions from Parkinson's to autism
Listen up: belting out tunes in the shower may not only be music to your ears, but may also treat a variety of disorders such as Parkinson’s disease, aphasia and dementia.
In fact, singing has both physical and neurological benefits, according to a CNN article in which Dr. Wendy Magee, International Fellow in Music Therapy at the Institute of Neuropalliative Rehabilitation in London, described music as a “mega-vitamin for the brain” that can improve a host of condition Next..
Posted by iRDMuni at 2:56 PM 1 comments