[VIDEO] Music as a Core Function in Our Brain

by Kimberly on September 29, 2010 · 8 comments

So is it a bad thing to brag on your own blog?

The bragging isn’t just for me, it’s mostly for my husband. My husband, Steve, is a lifelong band director, conductor, and music educator. The other week, he gave a talk exploring the theory that music is a core function in our brain. He summarizes some of the writings of Dr. Michael Thaut, who uses evidence from neuroscience and archaeology to support this theory.

Armed with my handy-dandy iPhone4, I recorded the talk, then edited it in iMovie and have published it on YouTube. Enjoy:

But wait! There’s more… 😉

Some of you may remember that last spring I started writing the blog “Your Musical Self” for Psychology Today. In my very first post, I shared a story about a gentleman I worked with while a student at Iowa. This gentleman had Parkinson’s and had various gait and balance challenges. One afternoon, through the music of Sousa, we jointly “discovered” the link between rhythm and movement.

The story caught the eyes of one of the writers for the Psychology Today print magazine. She interviewed me about that story and, guess what?, it’s in the print magazine now!

If you end up purchasing the magazine (which I recommend as there are lots of great articles and information in there!), check out page 39.

But if you just want to check out page 39, then click here to download the story. It’s in a zip file, so you’ll have to double-click it to “un-zip” and read the article.

P.S. Earlier this week I published my latest article on Psychology Today: Music Training Roadblocks. Click here to check it out.

Tagged as: cognition, language, music, music education, music training, neuroscience

{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }

Marion September 29, 2010 at 11:43 am: Wonderful! Thank you for sharing this!
Parker October 2, 2010 at 9:19 am: Great video! I am curious on how the scientific community is certain of music’s abstraction representations. What studies were used to reach the conclusion that music is “symbolic?”
Kimberly October 6, 2010 at 1:03 pm: There are definite differences of opinions about how we perceive and understand music. What the video implies is that music does not inherent “mean something.” Any meaning derived from music is based from our associating the music with a non-musical event, person, occurrence, etc. In that way, music is a representation of something non-musical. ~Kimberly
guitar lessons raleigh April 24, 2013 at 2:18 am: Wow that was strange. I just wrote an very long comment but after I clicked submit my comment didn’t show up. Grrrr… well I’m not writing all that over again.
Regardless, just wanted to say fantastic blog!
Kimberly April 24, 2013 at 10:47 am: Oh no, how frustrating! I appreciate the shout-out 🙂 ~Kimberly