Main description:

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.

Contents:

Darwin and Spencer on the Origin of Music: Is Music the Food of Love?
Kim Kleinman

Music Evolution and Neuroscience
Charles T. Snowdon

Musicians and Music Making as a Model for the Study of Brain Plasticity
Gottfried Schlaug

Expert Music Performance: Cognitive, Neural, and Developmental Bases
Robert J. Zatorre

Apollo's Curse - Neurological Causes of Motor Impairments in Musicians
Eckart Altenmuller

Music and Its Association with Epileptic Disorders
Melissa Maguire

Treatment and Prevention of Music Performance Anxiety
Claudia Spahn

Music as Therapy in Early History
Michael H. Thaut

An Enlightenment Proposal for Music Therapy: Richard Brocklesby on Music, Spirit and the Passions
Penelope Gouk

Neurological Implications and Neuropsychological Considerations on Folk Music and Dance
Michele Augusto Riva

Music and Dementia
Severine Samson

Apollo's Gift: New Aspects of Neurologic Music Therapy
Gottfried Schlaug

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