Healthy Aging

WATCH: Mickey Hart Beats the Drum for Alzheimer’s Research

By Senior Planet Thursday, June 6, 2013 3 Comments Share This:

“The first connection to music as a healing power had to be with my grandmother, who had advanced Alzheimer’s and hadn’t spoken for 6 or 8 months. We were in a car, and I had a little drum, and I started playing it. She looked over and she said my name. I said, ‘Grandma, you spoke!’ She smiled at me and kept saying my name, and I realized that the drum had triggered that response in her.”

Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart has been getting all Rhythms of the Cosmos for years. Now he’s working with medical researchers to come up with rhythms that might repair the diseased brains of Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s patients.

Hart, 69, and neurologist Adam Gazzaley, M.D., Ph.D., professor at the University of California San Francisco, last year became the first team to sonify and visualize brain activity in real-time in front of a live audience at AARP’s Life@50+ expo. But as this PBS My Generation video shows, the drummer’s interest in the healing potential of fundamental rhythms goes back a little further.

COMMENTS

3 responses to “WATCH: Mickey Hart Beats the Drum for Alzheimer’s Research”

Joyce Thomson:

Sunday, November 26, 2023 at 11:31am

A link that connects to a clip of the PBS Clip on Mickey Hart and Alzheimer’s research: https://youtu.be/NWwYjfPdgQM?si=y3h5-rEAaSzhlC7P
(Part2 will follow when you watch!)

Reply to Joyce Thomson
Jeff McGuire:

Tuesday, January 21, 2020 at 5:00pm

Thank you for sharing! I used to play the drums when I was a youngster.

Reply to Jeff McGuire
Russell Maude:

Tuesday, January 21, 2020 at 10:30am

My 80 year old sister has Alzheimers also My mother died with Alzheimers. My grandson is a phenomenal drummer in a band. Could drumming music, played to my Sister be helpful to her, . Like Mickey Hart did with his grandmother? I would love any pertinent information you could provide.

Reply to Russell Maude