Ian Ritchie

The Musical Brain

 

 

The Musical Brain’s core aim is to play a central role in facilitating debate among and between the general public, musicians and artists, neuroscientists, psychiatrists, and the medical profession, concerning the new scientific knowledge of the effects of music and other art forms upon the human brain and body.

 

The understanding among neuroscientists of the effects of music upon the human brain and their potential therapeutic benefits is advancing rapidly, assisted by the development of neuroimaging techniques and analysis software. There is evidence that music and language share neural resources, that there are structural differences between musicians' and non-musicians' brains, that preferred music activates emotion regions of the brain and that rhythmic processing activates motor regions of the brain.

 

The Musical Brain has established an ongoing and varied programme of conferences, lectures, workshops, demonstrations, discussions and interactive online dialogue, bringing this new understanding of the significance of music to human beings before the general public. These conferences and other events are delivered by scientists and artists working in partnership, the artists also exemplifying, in live performance, the scientific matters under discussion, in forms both readily accessible and attractive to a broader audience than would normally attend lectures on biomedical science.

 

View the programmes which I have directed since 2010.