In 2014, the documentary “Alive Inside” popularized the notion that music can be used in some patients with Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) or dementia to elicit responsiveness and memories. In a review of the film, psychologist Rick Scheidt remarks that power of the film lies in showing how music causes the patients to “move instantly from […]

Fear courses through your blood as the sounds of sniper shots surround you; the buildings you once recognized as your neighborhood are reduced to rubble on the ground. The destruction traumatizes you and your family; your children struggle to find the words to describe their feelings and regularly wake up from nightmares.  One day, an […]

As anyone who has heard “their song” can attest, the right music has the power to make you move. Now healthcare providers are trying to harness this power to help patients with a neurological motor disorder, Parkinson’s disease (PD). Over the past three decades, researchers have begun to uncover the neural basis of music’s effect […]

The International Arts + Mind Lab (IAM Lab) hosted its inaugural Dialog Series this spring, featuring singer/songwriter turned public health researcher Tasha Golden PhD. Dr. Golden’s workshop, Advancing Health Equity: Embracing the Creative Process to Evolve Health Research, demonstrated the value of using the arts as an innovative tool for communication, research and healing in […]

To witness the healing power of music, you don’t have to look any further than the spontaneous outbursts of singing by thousands of people as they watched in horror and disbelief at the flames shooting out of the Notre-Dame Cathedral on Monday. In these gentle voices, there is the sound of sorrow and grief in […]

Jazz pianist Keith Jarrett performed some musical magic in 1975 at the Cologne Opera House in Germany. For more than an hour, he played enthralling solo—and his entire performance was an improvisation, from first note to last. A recording of his feat called The Köln Concert became one of the best-selling jazz albums of all […]

Music has long been associated with mental, physical, and spiritual health. And someday soon, doctors may start prescribing their patients a dose of music to accompany more conventional medicine. The Johns Hopkins Center for Music and Medicine, an interdepartmental collaboration between the School of Medicine and Peabody Conservatory, is actively exploring the science and therapeutic […]

Dialogues Between Neuroscience and Society Panel on Music and the Brain.  Pictured from left to right:  Charles Limb, Pat Metheny and Richard Huganir. The 2018 Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting in San Diego, CA started on a spectacular note this November, featuring the legendary jazz guitarist Pat Metheny in the public lecture Dialogues Between Neuroscience […]

Jamal Davis, a young singer-songwriter, always dreamed of pursuing a career in music. Jamal was working to get an audition for The Voice when he found himself in need of a heart transplant for his congenitally enlarged heart. Jamal went to the University of Florida (UF) Health Shands Hospital, where his nurses enlisted him in […]

How does the brain process sensory information? What gives humans the unique ability to create and respond to art? Can architecture effect healing, creativity and learning? These are questions at the heart of the Science of the Arts, a program hosted by the Brain Science Institute that brought together researchers and artists in a series […]