Professor Michael Thaut’s CRC Tier 1 Chair in Music, Neuroscience, and Health renewed for 2024-2031
Dr. Michael Thaut, Professor of Music & Health Sciences, was among the forty-two faculty members from the University of Toronto recently awarded Canada Research Chairs in support of their research, either through new appointments or renewals. Awarded by the Government of Canada, Canada Research Chair positions are designed to reinforce academic research and training excellence with a view to improving depth of knowledge and quality of life, strengthening Canada’s international competitiveness and helping to train the next generation of highly skilled people.
As the Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) in Music, Neuroscience, and Health, Dr. Michael Thaut conducts clinical trials and investigations of neural mechanisms underlying music-based interventions in neurorehabilitation, neurodevelopment, and motor and cognitive learning in music. Dr. Thaut’s work includes novel approaches to rehabilitation research in autism, Alzheimer’s disease, and Parkinson’s disease through speech-language audiology, brain connectivity mapping, cellular entrainment response, cognition studies, dopamine imaging, kinematics, and sensorimotor studies.
With the renewal of his CRC Chair, Dr. Thaut will expand his research to focus on under-studied diagnostic populations in high need of effective interventions through Global Brain Health collaborations with low- and middle-income health care systems. Dr. Thaut’s research program will investigate the clinical benefits of NMT training in subacute and chronic stroke; the efficacy of music-based stimuli to enhance neurodevelopment and long-range brain connectivity in autism; and the effect of NMT-based interventions on cognitive and motor recovery in Traumatic Brain Injury rehabilitation.
Please join us in congratulating Dr. Thaut on this great news!
Click here to learn more about Dr. Thaut via his biography and click here to view the U of T news article with the full list of the forty-two University of Toronto faculty members being awarded Canada Research Chairs.
