Neuroscientist Aniruddh D. Patel will discuss "Music, Evolution & the Human Mind" as part of the UC Irvine Distinguished Lecture Series on Brain, Learning & Memory. The series is sponsored by UCI’s Office of the Executive Vice Chancellor & Provost, Institute for Memory Impairments and Neurological Disorders (UCI MIND), and Center for the Neurobiology of Learning & Memory (CNLM).

Irvine Barclay Theatre (bldg. 1, grid E9 on campus map)

Free and open to the public. Media planning to attend should contact Tom Vasich at 949-824-6455 or tmvasich@uci.edu. Parking is available for $8 in the Student Center Parking Structure at West Peltason and Pereira drives. For more information, call 949-824-5193 or visit www.cnlm.uci.edu/public.htm.

Music, like language, is a universal human accomplishment. The recent explosion of research on music and the brain has brought new life to old questions, including ones first raised by Charles Darwin: Why is music so pervasive in human life? Are we musical today because music helped our ancestors survive? Has the human mind been shaped by natural selection for music? Patel, the Esther J. Burnham Senior Fellow at The Neurosciences Institute in San Diego, will offer a new perspective from the standpoint of neuroscience.

His research focuses on how the brain processes music and language, especially what the similarities and differences between the two reveal about each other and the brain itself. He has pursued this topic with a variety of techniques, including neuroimaging, theoretical analysis, acoustic research and comparative studies. Patel has published more than 40 articles and a book, “Music, Language & the Brain,” that won a 2008 ASCAP Deems Taylor Award. In 2009, he received a Music Has Power Award from the Institute for Music & Neurologic Function in New York. He is president of the Society for Music Perception & Cognition and is interested in promoting student involvement in the field of music cognition.

UCI’s Distinguished Lecture Series on Brain, Learning & Memory, which was founded and organized by the CNLM in 1995, comprises three public talks a year that typically attract capacity audiences of community members, professionals, and high school and college students. To learn more about the CNLM and its research, visit www.cnlm.uci.edu.