One of the most portable technologies on tour is adding entertainment value to former Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart's concerts and collecting data to help medical researchers develop strategies for attacking Alzheimer's disease.  A specially equipped cap captures brain wave activity with electrodes and transforms them into a light show that displays in real time as the drummer performs.  The brain storm of an idea was developed by Hart in collaboration with a University of California neuroscientist that specializes in cognitive problems related to aging.  Hart began thinking that music's interaction with the mind could be a portal reseachers and doctors would find useful when he noted that playing drums for his grandmother made her more responsive.  Speaking with KGO radio, the neuroscientist, Adam Grazzaley said, 'This concept that rhythm might be therapeutic has been around for a long time; there's just really not studies that have carefully controlled a rhythmic experiemnt and looked for changes in the brain'.
TimesColonist.com

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