Wartburg Partners with Institute for Music & Neurologic Function

Wartburg, a senior residential and healthcare facility in Mount Vernon, NY, is partnering with the Institute of Music and Neurologic Function (IMNF) to provide innovative music therapy programs to residents throughout its 34-acre campus and advance neurologic studies of music and the brain through research.

The Institute developed out of the many years of clinical work and research of renowned author and neurologist Oliver Sacks, MD and Dr. Concetta Tomaino, distinguished music therapist, who demonstrated that people with neurological problems could learn to move better, remember more, and even regain speech when music was used in specific ways.

In 1995, under the leadership of Edwin H. Stern III, Arnold H. Goldstein, and the late Ben Rizzi, the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function was founded to pursue this passion, and this mission – to bring together the two worlds of basic neuroscience and clinical music therapy.
The Institute is world-renowned in the medical and scientific communities for its pioneering advances in understanding, teaching and clinical applications of music therapy. With the unique powers to heal, rehabilitate and inspire, Wartburg, in partnership with IMNF, will expand its music therapy program to its residents, Adult Day Care registrants and rehabilitation patients, particularly those with neurologic issues, a population who has been clinically shown to receive significant benefits from this type of arts-based therapy.

To provide the same benefits to the surrounding communities to those of all ages, IMNF will offer individualized one-on-one music therapy sessions to those living with neurological issues such as Aphasia, Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s and dementia as well as children with developmental needs, in Wartburg’s Outpatient Rehabilitation Program. Held weekly, IMNF also offers a “Healing Music” program for veterans with traumatic brain injury, neurological issues and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

Through a grant from the ASCAP Foundation, the IMNF will provide a “Music Therapy for Aphasia” program as part of Wartburg’s Outpatient and post-acute Rehabilitation Programs. In addition, with innovative technology developed by the Biodex company, the IMNF will research the impact of music therapy on gait rehabilitation of improved mobility in persons with Parkinson’s disease.

Through the Institutes “Music Therapy Professional Practice,” IMNF offers professional consultations and program advisement on the use of music therapy in the treatment and rehabilitation of a board spectrum of neurological conditions as well as share expertise through workshops on new music therapy advances and protocols that have been proven to be effective for specific disorders.

http://www.wartburg.org/ – Wartburg.org