A one-day symposium explores the link between neuroscience and music, writes Arminta Wallace
We all know about love and marriage going together like a horse and carriage, but what about music and neuroscience?
A Stroke of Genius - which takes place this month - is a project aimed at showing they're not such unlikely bedfellows as you might think.
On September 24th, a one-day symposium on stroke and creativity at the National Concert Hall, Dublin, will culminate in a performance by the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra of music composed following stroke and neurological disease.
Stroke is the most common cause of acquired physical disability and the third most common cause of death in the developed world. But although modern treatments offer the prospect of a significantly better outcome for those affected by stroke, attitudes to the disease are still overwhelmingly negative.
"We're trying to change the landscape a little," says Prof Desmond O'Neill, head of the Department of Medical Gerontology at Trinity College, Dublin and the driving force behind A Stroke of Genius.
"In the 1960s, nobody talked about cancer - but now, people understand that coming out and talking about it will give you a better life.
"We don't want to romanticise stroke and neurological disease. We acknowlege that these are difficult and significant illnesses. What we want to say is: 'Life continues. You can continue. You can create, and you can contribute.'"
The symposium, which is open to health professionals, students, musicians and interested members of the public, will address a wide range of topics. Speakers will include Prof Bob Turner, who is engaged in a brain imaging programme at the University of London, music therapist Dr Wendy Magee, Prof Stefan Evers of the University of Münster and the principal conductor of the NSO, Maestro Gerhard Markson.
The concert programme includes works by Stravinsky, Schnittke and Ravel. "Stefan Evers has written some wonderful things on music," says O'Neill, who believes doctors are no slouches when it comes to music.
"He introduced me to a piece by Marin Marais, which is a description of an operation to remove a stone from the bladder," he says.
Another speaker at the symposium will be Prof Paul Robertson, a musician who has acquired a considerable amount of expertise on the medical front. For many years as leader of the Medici String Quartet, he developed an interest in neuropsychiatry and presented a series called Music and the Mind for Channel 4.
"It was a fantastic opportunity to talk to people who were doing fascinating work - the most fascinating aspect of which was that none of them knew about each other," he says.
"So, for example, there are people doing work with brain-damaged children using music therapy but there's very little contact between them and the people doing brain mapping.
"And there's virtually no connection between either of those groups and the people doing artificial intelligence in computing. But it doesn't take a mastermind to see that a huge cross-fertilisation is possible in those areas."
Robertson now spends a good deal of his time trying to carry out a bit of cross-fertilisation of his own. "I have a variety of interests, all of which involve the use of music in a broader, cultural personal sense," he says.
"The question I like to ask is: 'Why do we have music?' One universal human attribute is that we have extremely precocious musical abilities from before birth and, following neurological damage, those abilities are almost the last thing to go. That cannot be accidental.
"If we take an evolutionary view, and start to wonder why nature has given us musical abilities which are necessary to our survival, then we put music in a completely different place."
As part of his presentation, Robertson will play some music by the English amateur composer Stephen Wade, who was a multi-lingual telephonist until a massive left-side stroke knocked out 85 per cent of the functions of that side of his brain.
"He can understand words, but his short-term memory has been destroyed, so he can't process either-or questions," Robertson explains. "If you ask him whether he wants coffee or tea, while he's processing the word tea, he loses the word coffee - a pretty desperate predicament.
"But Stephen's partner became an exceptionally fine carer, which in itself is no small thing, and, by dint of huge dedication, managed to get him set up through a keyboard to an electronic synthesizer.
"And what is extraordinary is that the music he writes now is very coherent across time - so, clearly, he has retained a facility of memory that he can't access in language."
As Robertson points out, in many other cultures music is regarded as one of the healing arts - and Desmond O'Neill, who has presented programmes on classical music for Lyric FM, insists that in the 21st century, music and medicine should be singing from the same hymn-book.
"It's all too easy to portray science and the humanities as separate," he says. "But art is not alien to the medical culture. It's deeply embedded there in a way that people don't, perhaps, realise."
With any luck, projects such as this one will begin to spread the word.
A Stroke of Genius will take place at The National Concert Hall on September 24th. The symposium, which is supported by the Meath Foundation, runs from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and costs €100 for the day (which includes concert tickets) or €60 for students. Booking is on 01-4143215, or on the day. The performance is part of the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra's 2004/5 season, sponsored by Anglo Irish Bank, in collaboration with the Department of Medical Gerontology at Trinity College, Dublin.