Music opens memory key – A Perth neuroscientist is championing music therapy as a serious game changer.

The West Australian newspaper journalist Angie Tomlinson meets Emeritus Professor Alan Harvey, UWA neuroscientist and Chair of the Perron Institute Research Advisory Committee.

“There have been several forks in the road in Alan Harvey’s life. One led down the path of music, the other neuroscience.

He chose neuroscience with an occasional musical deviation, including as a long- haired folk-rocker of the Gigymen in the 1970s and now as a decidedly less-hairy board member of the Perth Symphonic Chorus.

While neuroscience has dominated his professional life, as a University of Western Australia emeritus professor and senior research fellow with Perron Institute for Neurological and Translational Science, music has never been far away.

“I’ve loved music since I can remember. I thought wouldn’t it be nice if I could put my professional life as a neuroscientist and my life as musician together,” Professor Harvey reminisces.

Combining his two loves places him in a unique position as a persuasive advocate for the power of music to help treat neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.”

Continue reading the full West Australian newspaper article here