Health Matters: Music and the Mind

Hear this wonderful interview of music therapist Barbara Reuer and neuroscientist Aniruddh Patel by David Granet.

What can music teach us about the mind and in turn what can brain science reveal about music? Though interest in music and the mind dates as far back as Plato, it's only the past decade that the field of music neuroscience has really begun in earnest. Not only does music gives us a window into how our brain functions, but it also has therapeutic benefits to our health. To help us understand these connections, our host David Granet, MD, is joined by experts Aniruddh Patel, PhD, with The Neurosciences Institute, and Barbara Reuer, PhD, with Resounding Joy⌐ for this fascinating look at music and the mind.

I met Barbara Reuer at the AMTA (American Music Therapy Association) conference in St. Louis in 2008 when she bought Octabands for her staff of music therapists. I think it's interesting that people generally think of rhythm and music as going hand in hand ~ and of course, they do. However, people don't seem to realize that rhythm is body centered, whether or not there is music or sound. In fact, there is no music if a person doesn't express their rhythm through movement, even if it's the movement of just  the mouth. 

I so look forward to the day that neuroscientists research how movement affects the mind, and the mind affects movement in dance. In fact, I am totally bummed out that I can't make the international conference, 'Kinesthetic Empathy: Concepts and Contexts' on 22 and 23 April 2010 in the UK which will bring together researchers and practitioners in neuroscience, dance, film, music, and contemporary embodied practices, to explore the nature and role of kinesthetic empathy.

The aim of the conference is to open up dialogues between different practices and theoretical approaches. It will celebrate the growing interest in kinesthesia, empathy and kinesthetic empathy as pivotal concepts across different disciplines and media, reflecting current concern with ‘affect’ as an object of enquiry, interrogation of notions of presence, embodiment and the senses, re-examination of phenomenology, and widespread interest in neuroscientific investigation (notably in the 'mirror neuron' system).