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Free online lectures: Explore a world of ideas

Funding provided by:
Mental Health Month

Tuneful Treatments: Musical Therapy

In partnership with:
With support from: Lowell Institute
Date and time
Friday, October 2, 2009

Music therapist Suzanne Hanser shares examples of how the neurobiological foundations of music are leading to exciting new treatments for a variety of health problems. Music not only energizes us and calms us; research shows that it has powerful healing properties. Music can ease pain, lower blood pressure, and relieve anxiety and depression. It can even alleviate the symptoms of neurological disorders such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases, mitigate the side effects of cancer, and help women in childbirth.

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Suzanne B. Hanser, EdD, MT-BC is the founding chair of the Music Therapy Department at Berklee College of Music; music therapist at the Leonard P. Zakim Center for Integrated Therapies; research associate at the Phyllis F. Cantor Center for Research at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute; and a visiting research scholar at the Women's Studies Research Center at Brandeis University. She has also served as lecturer in the Department of Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Hanser is past president of both the World Federation of Music Therapy and the National Association for Music Therapy, and was a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the World Congress for Music Therapy. In 2006 she was named by the *Boston Globe* as one of 11 Bostonians changing the world. Dr. Hanser has presented at many international conferences and is widely published. She is the author of *The New Music Therapist's Handbook*, numerous book chapters, and articles in such diverse journals as *Nursing Home Medicine*, *Journal of Gerontology*, and *Journal of Music Therapy, Psychosomatics, Pediatrics*, among others. In 2010 Berklee Press published *Manage Your Stress and Pain through Music* by Dr. Hanser and Susan Mandel. Dr. Hanser received her music therapy training at The Florida State University and her doctoral degree from Columbia University, where she was a Fellow of the Center for the Behavioral Analysis of School Learning. She was also a Senior Postdoctoral Fellow in Psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine.
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