Category: Better Hearing

Please join The Friends of the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA and the Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital Board of Advisors for a fascinating Open Mind program with Nina Kraus, PhD, author of the groundbreaking new book, OF SOUND MIND: How Our Brain Constructs a Meaningful Sonic World.

Dr. Nina Kraus, Northwestern University professor, neuroscientist, and director of the renowned Brainvolts Lab, uses her thirty years’ experience studying the interplay of the brain and sound to show for the first time that the processing of sound drives many of the brain’s core functions. She leads us through a fascinating exploration of sound’s surprisingly unrecognized role in both the healthy and hurting brain and brilliantly makes the case that the sounds of the world around us—and what sounds we’re exposed to throughout our lives—impact the development of our brains, the abilities and weaknesses we develop, and who we are as human beings.

Dr. Kraus is a scientist, inventor, and amateur musician who studies the biology of auditory learning and investigates the neural encoding of speech and music and its plasticity. She holds the Hugh S. Knowles Chair in Audiology at Northwestern University.

Mark Jude Tramo, MD, PhD, will join Dr. Kraus in discussion. Dr. Tramo is the Director of the Institute for Music & Brain Science, Co-Director of the University of California Multi-Campus Music Research Initiative, and both an Associate Clinical Professor of Neurology at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine and an Adjunct Professor in Ethnomusicology at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music.

To watch videos of our past Open Mind programs, please visit www.friendsofnpi.org/open-mind-videos or our YouTube Channel.