Transforming Medicine with Music
Dr. Michael Thaut, Canada Research Chair in Music and Health Sciences, has revolutionized the use of music and rhythm in medicine around the world. His breakthrough findings on the basic neuroscience of music and its uses in rehabilitation are helping people with brain injuries and diseases.
Thaut studies how the brain processes music, and how those processes can be turned into strategies to retrain the injured brain or stimulate brain development. His insights into how our brains understand rhythm—and how this understanding influences motor, speech and cognitive functions—has led to widespread use and acceptance of music as an effective tool for speech therapy, brain rehabilitation, and even brain development. Thaut and his research team also developed the Neurologic Music Therapy system currently in use by thousands of researchers, music therapists and neurorehabilitation practitioners around the world.
Now, Thaut and his team are exploring how music aids cognition, motor activity and language to help people with traumatic brain injuries and conditions like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, stroke and autism.
Thaut’s efforts to shed new light on the mind and brain through music offers us a deeper understanding of the connections between neurology, movement, sound, and mental and physical health. He is also helping people around the world recover from brain injury and disease by emphasizing the value of music as a global language and core avenue of human expression.