Pioneer Spotlight - Norman M. Weinberger

"Many of us became musicians to fill an emotional need, not knowing the mind was benefiting too. As more research ties the mind to health and emotional well being, music will become both medicine and exercise for the mind!"

The work, the research, and the prolific publications of Norman Weinberger on Music, Cognitive Processes, Learning and Education continue to provide a rich source of knowledge and inspiration to my own understanding of Music as Medicine. The scientific validation that music provides a tool to improve learning, enhance memory and provide beneficial health results becomes irrefutable through the work of Music Medicine Pioneers like Norman Weinberger.

As a professor in the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior at the University of California Irvine, Norman Weinberger's research has focused on how the brain learns and remembers information, particularly how it stores what we hear. In 1998, he became Executive Director of the International Foundation for Music Research. The goal of the Foundation is to fund basic and applied research on music, learning and behavior.

Much of Norman Weinberger's attention has revolved around the importance of Music in Education. It is not difficult to see the results in our society from the removal of music in our public education system. The testimony given before the International Foundations for Music Research in July of 1999 still speaks loud and clear. If you have children in the public school system please consider the value of Norman Weinbergers testimony in the learning and behavioral development of your children.

- The devaluation of music because it involves emotion falsely assumes that music is not cognitive. Actually, music involves as many or more cognitive processes than any other school subject. For example, playing from a score involves most if not all cognitive processes. These include perception of the score and of the music produced, interpretation of images on the page based on prior learning of an abstract language with its own complex syntax, continual and focused attention, planning highly intricate movements, adjusting this motor program to not only match the score,s meter and rhythm but also the ongoing tempo as indicated by the conductor, executing the motor plan to make an appropriate level of sound, with appropriate phrasing, nuance and expression, attending to the results both aural and kinesthetic, and beginning this continual process of problem solving again. Where in all of this is there mental activity less exalted or less important for cognitive development than in reading, riting or rithmetic? Of course, these are important subjects, but so is music. If one is concerned with developing the human intellect, rather than whether the school band wins prizes, how can one possibly justify treating music as a second-class subject in education?

Norman Weinberger's work, as it relates specifically to music can be found at;

MuSICA - The Music & Science Information Computer Archive.

Norman Weinberger's current research interests;

Neurobiology of learning and memory

I am in personal gratitude to Norman Weinberger for his contributions to my own personal growth and for his generous contributions to the understanding of Music as Medicine