Yale Symposium Explores the Therapeutic Effects of Music on the Brain and Features Dr. Oliver Sacks

The Departments of Psychiatry and Neurology at Yale School of Medicine will present the “Neurotherapeutic Effects of Music,” on Saturday, September 9 from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. in Harkness Auditorium, 333 Cedar Street.

The symposium will explore recent neuroscience and music therapy research that explores the effectiveness of music in treating neurological disorders such as Parkinson’s, stroke and dementia. Speakers will also investigate music’s influence on physical and mental functioning, and a range of music interventions used with neurological disorders.

The program includes special guest speaker, Oliver Sacks, M.D., renowned author of seven books on science, medicine and the human experience, and consulting neurologist at the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function at Beth Abraham Health Services in New York. Sack’s books include “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat,” “Awakenings,” and “An Anthropologist on Mars.”

Other symposium speakers include Joseph Arezzo, professor of neuroscience and neurology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York; and prominent music therapists Michael H. Thaut, professor of neuroscience, music and biomedical engineering, and director of the Center for Biomedical Research in Music at Colorado State University; and Connie Tomaino, director of music at the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function, Beth Abraham Health Services, New York.

Symposium moderator, Nash Boutros, M.D., associate professor of psychiatry at Yale, will lead a panel discussion and take questions from the audience at 3:10 p.m.

Educational grants for the symposium were provided by Brighton Gardens of Woodbridge Assisted Living, the Fraenkel Family Foundation, Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation, New England and Mid-Atlantic Regions of the American Music Therapy Association, MMB Music, West Music and the Massachusetts Music Therapy Alliance.

For further information and to register, please contact the Office of Postgraduate and Continuing Medical Education at the School of Medicine 203-785-4578.