Music, Neurology, and Neuroscience: Historical Connections and Perspectives provides a broad and comprehensive discussion of history and new discoveries regarding music and the brain, presenting a multidisciplinary 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 that plagued famous musicians and how they affected both performance and composition are critically discussed, as is music as medicine and its potential health hazard. Additional topics, including the way music fits into early conceptions of localization of function in the brain, its cultural roots in evolution, and its important roles in societies and educational systems are also explored. Examines music and the brain both historically and in the light of the latest research findings The largest and most comprehensive volume on "music and neurology" ever written Written by a unique group of real world experts representing a variety of fields, ranging from history of science and medicine, to neurology and musicology Includes a discussion of the way music has cultural roots in evolution and its important role in societies

The Oxford Handbook of Music and the Brain is a groundbreaking compendium of current research on music in the human brain. It brings together an international roster of 54 authors from 13 countries providing an essential guide to this rapidly growing field.

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. Topic: Music is interesting to almost everybody Orientation: This book looks at music and the brain both historically and in the light of the latest research findings Comprehensiveness: This is the largest and most comprehensive volume on "music and neurology" ever written! Quality of authors: This volume is written by a unique group of real world experts representing a variety of fields, ranging from history of science and medicine to neurology and musicology

About the publication Embodiment and the Arts: Views from South Africa presents a diversity of views on the nature and status of the body in relation to acting, advertisements, designs, films, installations, music, photographs, performance, typography, and video works. Applying the methodologies of phenomenology, hermeneutic phenomenology, embodied perception, ecological psychology, and sense-based research, the authors place the body at the centre of their analyses. The cornerstone of the research presented here is the view that aesthetic experience is active and engaged rather than passive and disinterested. This novel volume offers a rich and diverse range of applications of the paradigm of embodiment to the arts in South Africa. Table of Contents List of figures List of tables Acknowledgments Notes on contributors PART 1 Conceptualising embodiment and the arts Chapter 1 Embodiment and the arts in context Jenni Lauwrens 1 Plotting a course 2 Embodiment 3 Aesthetic embodiment 4 The sensorium 5 Too deep for words? 6 Overview of chapters Chapter 2 Enactive cognition in improvising musical ensembles: A South African perspective Marc Duby 1 Introduction 2 The promise of embodied cognition 3 4E cognition: A brief overview 4 Musicking and enactive cognition 5 Conclusion PART 2: Sensory scholarship Chapter 3 Sight/site-specific recording: Embodiment and absence Marc Röntsch 1 Introduction 2 Background 3 Embodiment and artistic research 4 Jazz ensemble playing 5 Blinding 6 On absence 7 Conclusion Chapter 4 The art of touch in remote online environments Jenni Lauwrens 1 Introduction 2 The significance and boundaries of touch 3 Out of touch 4 Holding hands over the internet: Telepresence, co-presence and the promise of digital touch 5 Chasing the Holy Grail of touch 6 Haptic visuality and the memory of touch 7 Conclusion Chapter 5 Outer space and sensory deprivation (or why is outer space so bland?) Amanda du Preez 1 Introduction 2 On blandness 3 What does outer space smell, taste and look like? 4 Falling down or falling up? 5 Gravity mimicked 6 Unfolding within the fourfold 7 Conclusion Chapter 6 The typographic sensorium: A cross-modal reading of letterforms Kyle Rath 1 Introduction: Function(s) of type 2 Design and the typographic sensorium 2.1 Sight: Type as image 2.2 Touch: Type as haptic and kinaesthetic 2.3 Sound: Type as wave-form 2.4 Olfaction: Type as scent and taste 3 Conclusion PART 3: Material presence Chapter 7 A haptic and humanising reading of the subjects of studio portraits and asylum photography in colonial South Africa Rory du Plessis 1 Introduction 2 The Black Photo Album 3 Interpreting photographs from the Orange Free State Asylum, c 1900 3.1 First encounter 3.2 Second encounter 4 Conclusion Chapter 8 Athi-Patra Ruga’s politics of disorientation: Queer(y)ing threads Adéle Adendorff 1 Introduction 2 Spinning tales and fashioning avatars 3 The politics of disorientation 3.1 Queer(y)ing phenomenology 3.2 Miss Congo and the table in the drawing-room 4 Casting off: Tying up loose threads Chapter 9 Seeing an image at the University of Pretoria’s Africana collection in context Sikho Siyotula 1 Introduction 2 The grass at the University of Pretoria’s gates 3 The world visualised in Ethnic map of Southern Africa 4 Visualising the Nguni estate or Shakan period 5 Visualising the Mapungubwe and Zimbabwe estate 6 Conclusion PART 4: Embodied performance and composition Chapter 10 Navigating dissonance: Bodymind and character congruency in acting Èmil Haarhoff, Marth Munro and Marié-Heleen Coetzee 1 Introduction 2 Bodymind and embodiment 3 Acting as an embodied craft 4 Actor-character dissonance and heightened awareness 5 Navigating actor-character dissonance 5.1 Choice and reappraisal 5.2 Actively applying heightened bodymind awareness 6 Conclusion Chapter 11 Advocating the importance of nonverbal communication in multimodal actor training Elri Wium and Janine Lewis 1 Introduction 2 Case control study 3 Nonverbal communication as an analysis model 4 Discussion of syncretic behavioural communication design 5 Data collection and analysis through a mixed-methods approach 5.1 Observation study 5.2 Analysis of habitual characterisation (coded narrative recordings) 5.3 Assessing the semi-structured interviews 6 Conclusion Chapter 12 Embodied composition ontologies, process and technology: Gesture heuristics and creative potential in music Miles Warrington 1 Introduction 2 Creative spaces 3 Compositional approaches, processes and models 3.1 Gesture schemas and embodiment of sound 3.2 Gesture signification 3.3 Problem solving and gesture models 3.4 Hyperinstruments 4 Conclusion Index

This book analyzes and discusses in detail art therapy, a specific tool used to sustain health in affective developments, rehabilitation, motor skills and cognitive functions. Art therapy is based on the assumption that the process of making art (music, dance, painting) sparks emotions and enhances brain activity. Art therapy is used to encourage personal growth, facilitate particular brain areas or activity patterns, and improve neural connectivity. Treating neurological diseases using artistic strategies offers us a unique option for engaging brain structural networks that enhance the brain’s ability to form new connections. Based on brain plasticity, art therapy has the potential to increase our repertoire for treating neurological diseases. Neural substrates are the basis of complex emotions relative to art experiences, and involve a widespread activation of cognitive and motor systems. Accordingly, art therapy has the capacity to modulate behavior, cognition, attention and movement. In this context, art therapy can offer effective tools for improving general well-being, quality of life and motivation in connection with neurological diseases. The book discusses art therapy as a potential group of techniques for the treatment of neurological disturbances and approaches the relationship between humanistic disciplines and neurology from a holistic perspective, reflecting the growing interest in this interconnection.

Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828) was always a controversial figure, as was his doctrine, later called phrenology. Although often portrayed as a discredited buffoon, who believed he could assess a person's strengths and weaknesses by measuring cranial bumps, he was, in fact, a serious physician-scientist, who strove to answer timely questions about the mind, brain, and behavior. In many ways a remarkable visionary, his seminal ideas would become tenets of modern behavioral neuroscience. Among other things, he was the first scientist to promote publicly the idea of specialized cortical areas for diverse higher functions, while taking metaphysics out of his new science of mind. Moreover, although he obviously placed too much emphasis on "tell-tale" skull features (mistakenly believing that the cranium faithfully reflects the features of underlying brain areas), he fully understood the strength of "convergent operations," conducting neuroanatomical, developmental, cross-species, gender-comparison, and brain-damage studies on both humans and animals in his attempts to unravel the mysteries of brain organization. Rather than looking upon Gall's "organology" as one of science's great mistakes, this book provides a fresh look at the man and his doctrine. The authors delve into his motives, what was known about the brain during the 1790s, and the cultural demands of his time. Gall is rightfully presented as an early-19th-century biologist, anthropologist, philosopher, and physician with an inquisitive mind and a challenging agenda--namely, how to account for species and individual differences in behavior. In this well-researched book, readers learn why, starting as a young physician in Vienna and continuing his life's work in Paris, he chose to study the mind and the brain, why he employed his various methods, why he relied so heavily on cranial features, and why he wrote what he did in his books. Frequently using Gall's own words, they show his impact in various domains, including his approach to the insane and criminals, before concluding with his final illness and more lasting legacy.

Discover how the creative brain works across musical, literary, visual artistic, kinesthetic and scientific spheres, and how to study it.