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THE NEUROSCIENCE OF IMPROVISATION

THE NEUROSCIENCE OF IMPROVISATION

Exploring the neurobiology of improvisation and related topics, such as music, meditation, dreaming, psychedelics, consciousness, and behavior change, with science-based insights into deepening your practice of improvisation.

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Author: Bradley Vines

Dr. Bradley Vines is a cognitive neuroscientist specializing in music emotion, perception, and performance, and a saxophonist. He holds a Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from McGill University, an M.B.A. from the University of Oxford, and a B.A. in Cognitive Science from UC Berkeley. He has postdoctoral research training in the Department of Neurology at Harvard Medical School and the Center for Mind and Brain at UC Davis, and has been a Research Associate and Lab Director at the Institute of Mental Health in the University of British Columbia Department of Psychiatry. Bradley has received competitive grants for his research from the GRAMMY Foundation, the National Institutes of Health (NINDS), and the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research. He has 26 academic publications to his name, which have been cited in the literature more than 2,700 times and referenced in major media outlets including the New York Times, US News and World Report, and Businessweek. His published work includes research on music for stroke recovery, the epigenetics of music learning, multisensory integration in the perception of music, neuroplasticity in fine motor coordination, and pitch memory. Most recently, he led research on music for psychedelic therapy as Chief Science Officer at Wavepaths and conducted research on music in advertising and sonic branding as Director of Neuroscience at Nielsen. He currently teaches Music Cognition for Berklee College of Music Online. As a saxophonist, Bradley studied jazz improvisation in the William Paterson University Jazz program and privately with Gary Smulyan, Paul Nedzela, Knoel Scott, and Allaudin Mathieu. He has also studied South Indian Carnatic music with several prominent musicians in that tradition, including Dr. Vijaya Bharati, Ghatam Suresh Vaidyanathan, and Prasant Radhakrishnan. Bradley has contributed to music for psychedelic therapy as a Wavepaths artist and has performed with musicians such as Eddie Gayle, Mel Martin, and Steve Turre, in a variety of venues including Yoshi's Oakland and Zellerbach Hall.

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improvisation, meditation, neuroscience

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