Renee Fleming's Music and the Mind

The OHSU Brain Institute is proud to partner with the Oregon Symphony to present Renée Fleming, world-renowned soprano and art advocate, for an evening discussion of music and neuroscience. Following her presentation of Music and the Mind, Ms. Fleming will be joined by Marc Freeman, Ph.D., director of the Vollum Institute, Larry Sherman, Ph.D., senior scientist at the Oregon National Primate Research Center at OHSU and musician, and Erick Gallun, Ph.D., associate professor in OHSU's department of Otolaryngology for a conversation with our Portland Community.

Friday, September 21, 2018, 6 p.m.

OHSU Auditorium, Marquam Hill

See the OHSU News Hub for a summary of this event.

Renée Fleming

Renée Fleming's Music and the Mind presentation explores the power of music as it relates to health, including childhood development, music therapy and discoveries that are changing our understanding of the brain. Ms. Fleming's presentation is inspired by the Sound Health initiative, which she spearheaded as part of her role as Artistic Advisory to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The initiative, established in partnership with the National Institutes of Health and in association with the National Endowment for the Arts, explores and brings attention to research and practice at the intersection of music, health and neuroscience.

Throughout Ms. Fleming's journey as an artist, she has been struck by music's power to heal and transform lives. "Today we are riding a wave of scientific discovery in music and neuroscience, and I'm fascinated by the breadth of the research being conducted. Beyond its ability to enthrall and entertain, music can offer a host of health benefits - from childhood development to therapeutic applications for Alzheimer's disease, autism, PTSD, Parkinson's disease and chronic pain," said Ms. Fleming. "And close to my heart, singing can retrain the brain to use different neural circuitry, helping those who have sustained a traumatic brain injury or suffered a stroke regain the ability to speak."

See Renée Fleming in Concert
One Night Only!
September 23, 2018, 7:30 p.m.
Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall

America's favorite soprano, also known as "the People's Diva," returns to Portland to showcase her legendary voice and spell binding artistry alongside Music Director Carlos Kalmar and the Oregon Symphony, in a program that features her extraordinary range, from Strauss to Sondheim to Sting.

Order now for best seats and prices. Tickets at orsymphony.org.

Marc Freeman, Ph.D.

Marc Freeman is Director of the Vollum Institute at OHSU. He earned his B.S. in Biology from Eastern Connecticut State University in 1993. He carried out his doctoral training in the laboratory of John Carlson at Yale University, where he studied Drosophila olfaction. Freeman trained as a postdoctoral associate with Chris Doe at the University of Oregon from 1999-2004, studying Drosophila embryonic neurogenesis. He started his laboratory in the Department of Neurobiology at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in 2004. Freeman was selected as a Smith Family New Investigator (2004), an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow (2005), and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Early Career Scientist (2009-2013).

Larry Sherman, Ph.D.

Larry Sherman is a senior scientist at the Oregon National Primate Research Center at OHSU, a well as a professor in the department of Cell and Developmental Biology in the OHSU School of Medicine. He has over 80 publications related to brain development and neurodegenerative disease including Alzheimer's disease and multiple sclerosis. He serves on several U.S. and international scientific review panels for the U.S. National Institutes of Health, and he is also the President of the Oregon Chapter of the Society for Neuroscience.

Larry has given numerous hugely popular talks and performances (including playing the piano) around the globe on topics that include music and the brain, the neuroscience of pleasure and love, and a deeply personal presentation exploring the contributions of genes and the environment to brain development and personality.

Frederick (Erick) Gallun, Ph.D.

Frederick J. Gallun, Ph.D. is a researcher at the VA RR&D National Center for Rehabilitative Auditory Research, and Associate Professor in Otolaryngology/Head and Neck Surgery and the Neuroscience Graduate Program at Oregon Health and Sciences University. He studies the impacts of aging, hearing loss, and brain injury on the ability to parse the auditory scene.

Dr. Gallun received his BA in Psychology from Reed College, where he did a thesis on the perception of interleaved melodies that was published in the journal "Music Perception". His interest in music perception led him to study sound processing in general in graduate school at University of California, Berkeley, where he received a PhD in Cognitive Psychology.