This workshop will bring together neuroscientists from the New York area and beyond to present their research and methodological approach from a broad, interdisciplinary perspective. Scientists in the field of neuroscience will present and discuss frontiers in music- and rhythm-related perception, cognition, rehabilitation, and neural plasticity.

The event, hosted by the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America at Columbia University in cooperation with the Department of Music will feature talks by Gyorgy Buzsaki, Steven Frucht, John Iversen, Lutz Jancke, Nina Kraus, Isabelle Peretz, Gottfried Schlaug, Sarah Woolley, and Robert Zatorre.

Location: The Italian Academy, 1161 Amsterdam Ave (just south of 118th St)  |  New York, NY.

FEATURING

Gyorgy Buzsáki
Board of Governors Professor, Center for Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience, Rutgers University

Gyorgy Buzsáki is a Board of Governors Professor of Neuroscience at Rutgers University. His primary interests are brain oscillations, sleep and memory. With more than 250 papers published on these topics, he is among the top 150 most-cited neuroscientists. Buzsáki is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and an honorary member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and he sits on the editorial boards of several leading neuroscience journals, including Science and Neuron. (Book: G. Buzsáki, Rhythms of the Brain, OUP, 2006) | MORE INFO

Steven Frucht
Professor of Neurology, Director of Movement Disorders in the Robert and John M. Bendheim Parkinson and Movement Disorders Center at Mount Sinai Medical Center

In addition to evaluating the full spectrum of patients with movement disorders, his research interests focus on the evaluation and treatment of hyperkinetic movement disorders, specifically task-specific dystonia affecting musicians (an area of interest given his training as a classical musician), myoclonus and tremor.
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John Iversen
Research Fellow in Theoretical Neurobiology and Karp Foundation Fellow at The Neurosciences Institute

Dr. Iversen's research on music and the brain is devoted to understanding how humans actively create a rich and detailed view of the world from sensory stimuli. Fundamental to this work is the use of music, and especially rhythm, as a tool for the study of complex brain processes. Using neural, behavioral and cross-species methods, his research has addressed the role of culture in rhythm perception, whether rhythm perception is uniquely human and is specially tied to the auditory sense, and the brain mechanisms involved in interpreting musical rhythm, all aimed at helping in the treatment of movement disorders using music. | MORE INFO

Lutz Jäncke
Professor of Neuropsychology, Department of Psychology, Division of Neuropsychology, Neuroscience Center Zurich

He is a cognitive neuroscientist and neuropsychologist working at the UZH. He works on several topics including brain plasticity, the neural basis of synesthesia, learning and memory and motor control. A new research branch of his institute works on the question how virtual reality impacts the human brain. His heart, however, "beats" for the examination of the neural basis of musical expertise. He is especially interested to study exceptional musicians.

Nina Kraus
Hugh Knowles Professor, Neurobiology & Physiology, Otolaryngology; Director - Auditory Neuroscience Lab, Northwestern University

Dr. Kraus investigates biological bases of speech and music. She investigates learning-associated brain plasticity throughout the lifetime in normal, expert (musicians), clinical populations (dyslexia; autism; hearing loss) and animal models. In addition to being a pioneering thinker who bridges multiple disciplines (aging, development, literacy, music, and learning), Dr. Kraus is a technological innovator who roots her research in translational science.
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Isabelle Peretz
Canada research chair in neurocognition of music; Co-director, International laboratory for Brain, Music and Sound research (BRAMS), University of Montreal

She is a cognitive neuropsychologist who focuses on the musical potential of ordinary people, its neural correlates, its heritability and its specificity relative to language. She is renowned for her work on congenital and acquired musical disorders (amusia) and on the biological foundations of music processing in general.
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Gottfried Schlaug
Director, Music and Neuroimaging Laboratory, Stroke Recovery Laboratory, and Division Chief, Cerebrovascular Diseases. Associate Professor of Neurology, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School

His laboratory's mission is to reveal the perceptual and cognitive aspects of music processing including the perception and memory for pitch, rhythmic, harmonic, and melodic stimuli; investigate the use of music and musical stimuli as an interventional tool for educational and therapeutic purposes; reveal the behavioral and neural correlates of learning, skill acquisition, and brain adaptation in response to changes in the environment or brain injury in the developing and adult brain; and reveal the determinants and facilitators for recovery from brain injury.
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Sarah Woolley
Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, Columbia University

Her laboratory studies the neural processing and perception of vocal sounds and the relationship between vocal behavior and auditory system structure and function. Her research is focused on songbirds because they, like humans, learn their communication vocalizations as juveniles by copying them from adult tutors.

Robert Zatorre
Professor, Departments of Neurology and Neurosurgery, Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University; Co-director of the International Laboratory for Brain, Music and Sound Research (BRAMS)

He is a cognitive neuroscientist working at the Montreal Neurological Institute of McGill University. His research explores the functional and structural organization of the human brain using neuroimaging and behavioral methods. His principal research interests relate to the neural substrate for auditory cognition, with special emphasis on two complex and characteristically human abilities: speech and music.
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