Musicians and scientists talk ‘Music and the Mind’ at Yale Center Beijing | Arts & Humanities - Yale News

Soprano Renée Fleming, Yale music Dean Robert Blocker, and researchers Bin Hu and Kunlin Wei discussed music’s role in wellness during an Oct. 29 panel, continues Yale News. 

Renée Fleming at Yale Center Beijing on Oct. 29

A packed audience of over 150 Yale alumni and friends gathered at Yale Center Beijing on Oct. 29 to hear from renowned soprano Renée Fleming, a four-time Grammy Award winner, National Medal of Arts recipient, and a member of the Schwarzman Center Advisory Board. But on this evening, the audience wasn’t gathering to hear her sing. Instead, they were there to hear her and a panel of experts discuss “Music and the Mind,” exploring the power of music in relation to health and neuroscience.

Robert Blocker, the Henry and Lucy Moses Dean of Music at Yale, moderated the panel discussion, which also featured Dr. Bin Hu, a professor at the University of Calgary who specializes in Parkinson’s research, and Kunlin Wei, a professor of psychological and cognitive sciences at Peking University, who works on sensorimotor control and learning.

At the beginning of the event, Fleming discussed her own interest in connecting music and physical health by looking back at when she suffered from stage fright, which sometimes even presented as physical pain. But the moment she started singing, she said, the pain would go away. This experience sparked her interest in the brain and how the brain and music interact, which in turn made her curious as to why scientific researchers were also becoming so interested in music...

The Yale Center Beijing, Yale’s first university-wide center outside of the United States, is a convening space and intellectual hub that advances Yale’s mission to improve our world and develop leaders worldwide who serve all sectors of society. Founded in 2014, the center acts as an activity space for Yale’s collaborations in China, enables the university to expand existing activities and form new partnerships, supports research and study from each of the university’s schools and divisions, and serves as a gathering place for alumni from throughout Asia.
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Source: Yale News