The Musical Brain

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Nigel Osborne writes:

Music plays an important part in the lives of all human beings. It may give us pleasure, excite us, or make us sad in a happy kind of way. It may make us want to move and dance, help us to relax, help us to concentrate or work physically, even help us to sleep. It brings people together in a special kind of way – a special kind of human, emotional, physical, mental and social contact.

It is hugely exciting that in the last few years a revolution has occurred of tremendous importance to everyone who cares about music – simply, science has begun to catch up with music. There have been discoveries, particularly in the biological sciences, which offer irrefutable proof that music does indeed change people’s minds and bodies. Brain scanning has revealed not only the many parts of the brain involved in listening to and responding to music, but also that music “builds” the brain – certain areas of the brain critical to general human life and development are enlarged by musical experience.

Advances in neurophysiology and endocrinology have shown that music does indeed have a significant influence on our autonomic nervous systems, and on the hormones and neurotransmitters that affect the way we feel and experience emotion, and our capacities to act and react. New research in psychobiology has shown that musical communication is a vital part of human social development, and helps us both relate to others and learn. There is even a humble but important new role for music in medicine.

Why is this important? Because it helps give music its proper place in our lives and education; it empowers those who practise it, helps them to value properly what they do, and offers them new insights into their art and its potential to grow.

This residence offers an overview of the new science from some of the world experts who have been its pioneers. There will be short presentations, suitable for all audiences, and discussions with musicians in rehearsal exploring the practical applications of this new knowledge.

We will be celebrating the magic of music, and with good fortune enhancing it. It is where mystification ends that the true mystery begins.

Click here to read 'A Carnival in Rio: Sound, rhythm and the body', a paper by Nigel Osborne

Musical Brain team's biographies

Nigel Osborne, who led the Musical Brain programme, is a composer, teacher and music therapist whose work has taken him all over Europe and across the world.

Nigel is co-director of the Institute for Music in Human and Social Development (IMHSD) in Edinburgh. He has pioneered the use of music in therapy and rehabilitation for children who are victims of conflict, was instrumental in building a centre for music therapy for traumatised children in Bosnia, and is consultant for programmes in the Balkans, Caucasus, Africa and the Middle East.

He is winner of the Opera Prize of Radio Suisse Romande and Ville de Geneve, the Netherlands Gaudeamus Prize, the Radcliffe Award and the Koussevitzky Award of the Library of Congress, Washington.

He studied composition with Kenneth Leighton, his predecessor as Reid Professor of Music at Edinburgh, with Egon Wellesz, the first pupil of Arnold Schoenberg, and with Witold Rudzinski. He also studied at the Polish Radio Experimental Studio, Warsaw.

His works have been featured in most major international festivals and performed by many leading orchestras and ensembles around the world, ranging from the Moscow to the Berlin Symphony Orchestras, and from the Philharmonia of London to the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He has had close relationships with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, City of London Sinfonia, London Sinfonietta, Hebrides Ensemble and Ensemble Intercontemporain, Paris

He has composed extensively for the theatre, with operas and music theatre works for Glyndebourne, English National Opera, Opera Factory , Stadtstheater Wuppertal, Hebbel Theater, Berlin, Shakespeare Globe, Ulysses Theatre, Istria, Radio 3 and BBC2. These include 'The 7 Last Words', 'Hell's Angels', 'The Tempest', 'King Lear', 'Terrible Mouth', 'Sarajevo', 'Europa' and 'The Electrification of the Soviet Union' and ‘Differences in Demolition’ premiered at the City of London Festival in 2007.

http://www.music.ed.ac.uk/staff/profile/ProfileNigelOsborne.html

Dr. Katie Overy, Lecturer in Music, Co-Director of the IMHSD, Director of the MSc in Music in the Community, University of Edinburgh, was the academic consultant for the scientific programme for the Project.

Katie has a long-standing interest in the role of music in human learning, with an emphasis on inter-disciplinary research and the integration of research and practice. Her qualifications include a BMus in Music, an MA in the Psychology of Music, a PG Diploma in Music Pedagogy and a PhD in Psychology.

Her postdoctoral research included fMRI studies of musical processing in young children and in aphasic stroke patients, conducted at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre and Harvard Medical School. Katie is a media consultant on the topic of music and language. She has extensive experience of organising international interdiscipliinary conferences, with an emphasis on bringing together music neuroscientists, music therapists and music educators.

http://www.music.ed.ac.uk/staff/profile/ProfileKatieOvery.html

Speakers:

Dr Robert Zatorre is a cognitive neuroscientist working at the Montreal Neurological Institute of McGill University. Dr. Zatorre was born and raised in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He obtained his undergraduate training at Boston University, where he completed dual degrees in music and in psychology, while working as an organist. He earned his Ph.D. in experimental psychology at Brown University under the late Peter Eimas, and in 1981 did a postdoctoral fellowship in neuropsychology with Brenda Milner’s at the Montreal Neurological Institute; shortly therafter he took on a faculty position at McGill where he has remained ever since. Dr. Zatorre’s research explores the functional and structural organization of the human brain using neuroimaging and behavioral methods. His principal research interests relate to the neural substrate for auditory cognition, with special emphasis on two complex and characteristically human abilities: speech and music. He and his collaborators have published over 150 scientific papers on a variety of topics including pitch perception, musical imagery, absolute pitch, music and emotion, perception of auditory space, and brain plasticity in the blind and the deaf. In 2002 the Canadian Institutes of Health Research granted him a Senior Investigator Award, and in 2005 he was named holder of a James McGill chair in Neuroscience. In 2006 he became the founding co-director of the international laboratory for Brain, Music, and Sound research (BRAMS), a unique multi-university consortium with state-of-the art facilities dedicated to the cognitive neuroscience of music.

http://www.zlab.mcgill.ca/home.html

Dr Stefan Koelsch, Senior Research Fellow & Lecturer in Psychology of Sussex University
Specialises in neurocognition of music and language; music and emotion; developmental aspects of language and music cognition; emotion and its effects on autonomic, hormonal, and immune function

http://www.stefan-koelsch.de/

Dr Jessica Grahn Research Associate of the Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge University,
Conducts neuroscientific research into rhythm and timing processes in the human brain, using neuroimaging (fMRI, MEG), neuropsychological, and behavioural techniques. She is particularly interested in the role of motor areas in rhythm and beat perception.

http://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/people/jessica.grahn/

The Institute for Music in Human and Social Development , Edinburgh University, (IMHSD ) brings together research and practice from a range of disciplines including music, psychology, informatics, sociology and medicine.

The aims of the Institute are to strengthen the theoretical and scientific basis of therapeutic, educational and social practise in music; to support the methodologies for intervention in these areas.

http://www.music.ed.ac.uk/Research/imhsd.html

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