I met Dr. Karen Chan Barrett when she gave a fascinating talk as part of a special presentation called Music and the Mind with world renowned soprano, Renee Fleming, at The Juilliard School in NYC. This program is inspired by Ms. Fleming’s collaboration with the National Institutes of Health in association with National Endowment for the Arts, called the Sound Health initiative, and created for general audiences, the program explores the power of music in relation to our health and neuroscience.

This evening’s highlight was “ improvisation and the brain”. Dr. Karen Chan Barrett, Ph.D. representing Dr. Charles Limb's Music and Perception Lab at the University of California San Francisco discussed research on the neuroscience of musical creativity and improvisation. Dr. Barrett is also faculty at San Francisco Conservatory of Music, co-teaching a class on Music and the Brain with Dr. Indre Viskontas.

Dr. Barrett was adjunct faculty at the Peabody Institute of Music and Johns Hopkins University, where she taught seminars on music cognition. Dr. Barrett has a Ph.D. from Northwestern University in Music Theory and Cognition and is an accomplished pianist.

She tells us about the fascinating research on  the impact that music and musical training has on our brain development, - hint, it’s not just about listening to classical music - she discusses how they gather data on creativity, even improv comedy, and the brain.

Karen also tells us the surprising reason she, a classically trained pianist, pivoted to become a neuroscientist and how her husband, a classically trained cellist, taught himself into a whole new career.

If you have kids taking music classes or kids who are interested in STEaM fields, get them to listen along with you. You may even get them to practice more and start the conversation about how all of these seemingly disparate fields connect!

That was Dr. Karen Chan Barrett, mom, neuroscientist, classical pianist, showing us that STEM is really STEAM and you can definitely excel at more than one thing in life, and yes, lifestyle matters!

Find out more about Dr. Karen Chan Barrett and Dr. Charles Limb's Music and Perception Lab and Renee Fleming’s work in the show notes at MindBodySpace.com podcast Episode #62

Look out for the upcoming monday meditation inspired by Music

You can email me at [email protected] with questions for myself or my guests for the new Tuesday Q&A segment starting in 2021.