The Longwood Symphony Orchestra is named for the Boston medical mecca that is second home to most of its musicians. Doctors and other health care workers from Longwood Avenue hospitals and clinics are interested in the symphony not just as musicians, but as scientists. So, in addition to offering concerts, the organization sponsors medical meetings like Saturday’s “Crossing the Corpus Callosum II: Neuroscience, Healing & Music.” As the “II” suggests, this is the second such meeting; the group held an inaugural neuroscience meeting two years ago. But, as LSO president, Harvard pediatrician and violinist Lisa Wong explains, much has changed since then. In particular, she notes advances in fMRI, scans that can give researchers insight into which parts of the brain respond to music.
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It also means that presenter Nina Kraus, of Northwestern University got to use Deep Purple’s opening riff from “Smoke on the Water” in her presentation on music and the development of learning skills. Other speakers later treated the packed house to bit of a Chopin waltz as well as “The Witch Doctor” song – “ooh-ee-ooh-a-a-bing-bang-walla- walla-bing-bang.”Members of the orchestra played chamber music during the poster session.
Kraus’s lab “investigates the neurobiology underlying speech and music perception and learning-associated brain plasticity. We study normal listeners throughout the lifespan, clinical populations (poor-readers; autism; hearing loss), auditory experts (musicians) and an animal model.” She launched her talk by acknowledging that most people in the audience already know “that music is indeed biologically powerful and it changes the nervous system throughout our lives.
“We want to know why,” she said. “We want to know how – from a biological perspective.”
Focusing on the act of making music – as opposed to listening – Kraus talked about how musicians are better able to detect pitch changes in foreign languages. Research now shows that some autistic children’s have trouble following pitch changes – something that may explain why they sometimes don’t understand others. And musicians are better able to hear sound in noise – a conversation in a noisy room — which is a skill many people lose as they age. Krause suggested that could be an incentive to get kids to stick to their lessons. Other speakers included Nadine Gaab, of Children’s Hospital Boston, who spoke on “Influences of musical training on language processing and executive functioning in typical and atypical developing children,” and Laurel J. Trainor, of McMaster University in Ontario, who spoke on “Making music with infants: Benefits for cognitive, social and emotional development.”
Gottfried Schlaug, a neurologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and an organist in the orchestra spoke about the effects of music on brain rehabilitation. He showed films of “”https://musicianbrain.com/#aphasia”>Melodic Intonation Therapy” for stroke patients with aphasia — the inability to talk. In one case, therapists were able to get a client to sing the song “Happy Birthday” with little problem after he had been unable to recite even one lyric. For more on the meeting, go to the LSO site or check out this video.
Music and science from the Longwood Symphony from Tinker Ready on Vimeo.