Neurologic music therapy (NMT) is the field that sets the medically and scientifically accepted standard for music in the treatment of neurologic disorders. The NMT intervention system consists of 20 evidence-based techniques addressing sensorimotor, speech/language, and cognitive rehabilitation.
NMT is based on applied auditory and music neuroscience research that has been conducted over the past 25+ years. Breakthrough discoveries—e.g., how musical rhythm entrains and improves movement in disorders such as stroke and Parkinson’s, how music-based vocal techniques access alternative language networks and improve respiration and swallowing, and how autobiographically salient music can facilitate and restore memory access in dementia stages—have shaped the clinical applications of NMT to play a critical role in global brain health.
“The Applied Neuroscience of Music in Rehabilitation” shows landmark data from our research and richly illustrates clinical applications (via videos) from treatment and research settings.
About Michael H. Thaut
Michael H. Thaut received his PhD in music with a cognate minor in movement science in 1983 and his master’s in music in 1980, both from Michigan State University. He also studied at the Mozarteum Music University in Salzburg, Austria, and he holds a German diplom degree in psychology/education.
At Colorado State University, Dr. Thaut was a professor of music from 1986 to 2015 and the director of the School of the Arts from 2001 to 2010. He received a joint appointment as a professor of neuroscience in 1998, and in 1994, he became the director of the Center for Biomedical Research in Music. Since 2016, Dr. Thaut has served as a professor of music with cross appointments in neuroscience and rehabilitation sciences at the University of Toronto, where he directs the Music and Health Research Collaboratory and the master’s/PhD programs in music and health sciences. He’s been a visiting professor in medical and music schools around the world (in countries including Germany, Italy, the United States, and Japan), and from 2010 to 2012, he was the chancellor of the SRH University System in Germany.
Over the past decade, Dr. Thaut and his co-investigators have received more than $4 million dollars in prestigious and highly competitive research funding from the United States’ National Institutes of Health and from private foundations. He received the American Music Therapy Association’s National Research Award 1993 and its National Service Award 2001. His publication (with Volker Hoemberg), The Oxford Handbook of Neurologic Music Therapy (2014), was second overall (out of 60 entries) in the British Medical Association’s 2015 Book Awards for Best New Book in Neurology, an unprecedented achievement for a work in music therapy/medicine.
Dr. Thaut has authored or co-authored around 250 scientific publications in multiple fields. His publications have appeared in journals like Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, Brain Sciences, Neuroimage, Music Perception, Biological Cybernetics, and Movement Disorders, among others. His books have been translated into Korean, Japanese, and Chinese, and he’s in demand around the world as a keynote speaker on music, the brain, and neurorehabilitation.
Dr. Thaut’s research career has been focused on the neural and psychophysical basis of music and rhythm perception and the clinical application of music and rhythm to motor, speech/language, and cognitive training in neurologic disorders. He’s the founder of the evidence-based treatment system of neurologic music therapy, whose certificate training has been endorsed by the World Federation of Neurorehabilitation.
Dr. Thaut is the president of the International Society for Clinical Neuromusicology, the vice president of the International Society for Music and Medicine, a management board member of the World Federation of Neurorehabilitation, and an elected overseas fellow of The Royal Society of Medicine in the UK.
In addition to his groundbreaking work as a researcher and clinician, Dr. Thaut is an accomplished musician and violinist in the classical and folk genres, having toured and recorded extensively, especially as a folk musician. His anthology of European and North American fiddle music, Das grosse Fiddlebuch, has been in print since 1981.