Tony DeBlois, 18, has been blind from birth, and he is autistic, which means he has enormous difficulty speaking and understanding. Yet despite these handicaps DeBlois is an extremely gifted pianist. He can play virtually any piece of music after hearing it once, and he also improvises freely.
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“Music and the Brain” will attempt to provide some answers. The three-day symposium (November 16-18) will bring together neurologists, psychologists, and musicians who will deliver public lectures (in plain English, the organizers promise) on the latest research into how the brain creates and perceives music.
“So much knowledge about the brain has come from people who have suffered brain damage,” Shindler said. “I realized I had been educated in rehabilitating these people, and I thought, we can learn from artists who have sustained brain damage by studying what abilities they have lost and how they have reorganized the abilities that remain.”
