Music for life

Exploring the area of musical gestures had led me to an investigation of the effect of music on our brain. We don’t need to read academic studies to know that music has an effect on us. Whether it affects our emotional state (makes us happy or sad), assist us with performing physical or mental tasks or bond us with other people, music have a great effect on us . I didn’t think of expanding the research into the area of the music therapy, and the effect of music on people with mental and physical disabilities up until last month when I was encouraged by my mother to visit a school in Israel called “nitzanim”. The school is a regional school for people from the age of 3 to 21 with special needs. Besides the intense effect of the visit in the school, I have been extremely fascinated by the music therapy classes, which ware talking place during my visit.

I kept on asking questions, trying to understand better the methods of treatment and the effect on the children. Coming back to London, I have decided that as a part of my project I want to research more about music and its effect on people with special need and perhaps aiming the project towards this group. There is a huge amount of information concerning musical therapy and the effect of music on people with different disabilities, but I had to start somewhere.

Today I’ve met Pam Heaton, a Professor of Psychology at Goldsmiths, University of London. Pam’s primary research interest is in developmental disorders, especially autism. She has completed a PhD on musical cognition in autism and she is now investigating remediation of sensory abnormalities, pitch and colour discrimination and memory, and colour categorisation in autism. Pam is also trained as a classical singer and retains a strong interest in the cognitive neuropsychology of music. I find Pam’s field of exploration extremely interesting, and today we tried to understand whether there is any potential for design within that area. The following video gives a better description of Pam's work: http://www.vega.org.uk/video/programme/50

I’m hoping the exploration of this field will assist me with developing my project. But even if it isn’t, I am happy I had the opportunity to meet Pam which is, besides being a lovely person, is intellectually inspiring.