Music, Neurology, and Neuroscience: Evolution, the Musical Brain, Medical Conditions, and Therapies

More than 40 historians of science and medicine and researchers look at music and the nervous system today--disentangling historical facts from neuroscience myths

Eckart Altenmüller (Series edited by), Stanley Finger (Series edited by), Francois Boller (Series edited by)

9780444635518, Elsevier Science

Hardback, published 19 February 2015

292 pages
23.4 x 19 x 2.3 cm, 0.69 kg

Did you ever ask whether music makes people smart, why a Parkinson patient's gait is improved with marching tunes, and whether Robert Schumann was suffering from schizophrenia or Alzheimer's disease? This broad but comprehensive book deals with history and new discoveries about music and the brain. It provides a multi-disciplinary overview on music processing, its effects on brain plasticity, and the healing power of music in neurological and psychiatric disorders. In this context, the disorders the plagued famous musicians and how they affected both performance and composition are critically discussed, and music as medicine, as well as music as a potential health hazard are examined. Among the other topics covered are: how music fit into early conceptions of localization of function in the brain, the cultural roots of music in evolution, and the important roles played by music in societies and educational systems.

1. Darwin and Spencer on the Origin of Music: Is Music the Food of Love?

Kim Kleinman

2. Music Evolution and Neuroscience

Charles T. Snowdon

3. Musicians and Music Making as a Model for the Study of Brain Plasticity

Gottfried Schlaug

4. Expert Music Performance: Cognitive, Neural, and Developmental Bases

Robert J. Zatorre

5. Apollo’s Curse – Neurological Causes of Motor Impairments in Musicians

Eckart Altenmüller

6. Music and Its Association with Epileptic Disorders

Melissa Maguire

7. Treatment and Prevention of Music Performance Anxiety

Claudia Spahn

8. Music as Therapy in Early History

Michael H. Thaut

9. An Enlightenment Proposal for Music Therapy: Richard Brocklesby on Music, Spirit and the Passions

Penelope Gouk

10. Neurological Implications and Neuropsychological Considerations on Folk Music and Dance

Michele Augusto Riva

11. Music and Dementia

Séverine Samson

12. Apollo’s Gift: New Aspects of Neurologic Music Therapy

Gottfried Schlaug

13. The Discovery of Human Auditory-Motor Entrainment and Its Role in the Development of Neurologic Music Therapy Michael H. Thaut

Subject Areas: Neurology & clinical neurophysiology [MJN], Music [AV]