Musical Neurons

This book explores connections between music, neural activations and brain plasticity, in order to better understand its associated psychological and physiological effects. The final goal is to focus on the positive effects of music to treat neurological disorders, establishing a new co-ordination between different brain areas to improve both mental illness and wellbeing. A secondary goal is to analyse the role of music at a psycho-sociological level, to understand both the transformation of music into a cultural model and the vision of music as an innate instinct.Music is able to create both emotions and volitional processes. The application of new neuroimaging techniques allows us to explore and evaluate with accuracy what happens in our brain during the creative and artistic performance. A wide range of brain regions are recruited for creative tasks, and music has the opportunity to help in enhance and reset some brain pathological disturbances being also able to ameliorate and restore some rhythmic body activities such as sleep, movement and co-ordination.

The book represents a valuable and innovative tool both for neurologists as well as healthcare professionals involved in the management of neurological disorders.

Dr. Bruno Colombo is a board cerified Neurologist with a passionate interest in headache management and patient care. He is founder both of the Italian Neurological Association for the Research on Headache (ANIRCEF) and the Italian Foundation for Headache (FICEF), and currently serves on the board of Directors. He has authored and co-authored 200 articles on peer-reviewed journals and also authored three books.

He has served as Clinical Assistant and Research Worker at the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases and Institute of Neurology, London. He is Currently Coordinator and Responsible of the Headache Center at Vita-Salute University, San Raffaele Hospital in Milan. He is academic and tutor in neurology at Vita-Salute University and lecturer at Master on Headache at Biomedical Campus in Rome.

As a musician was first attracted to classical music and progressive rock. At his later teens arrived, Dr. Colombo picked up an interest in jazz music. By the time he began attending Civic School of Music in Milan expanding his listening and playing scope into various jazz forms. Accomplished on guitar and bass, was also adept in drums and percussions. During this time he played around locally semipro with avant-garde jazz combos. Attracted to contemporary music in adulthood he became interested especially in the theories of composer John Cage. At the same time he presented programs for several radio stations considering a broad range of topics: jazz. Rock, popular and contemporary music

During his time at University of Milan he first began music criticism, writing record reviews and cultural commentaries for music magazines. He is actually involved both in promoting the study of popular music with an historical perspective, and in studying neural correlates of consonace and dissonance.