Colorado State University Researcher Elected to Elite Neuroscience Academy

Michael H. Thaut, director of the Center for Biomedical Research in Music at Colorado State University, recently was elected a member of the World Academy for Multidisciplinary Neurotraumatology. Thaut holds two appointments as a professor of music and neuroscience in the Department of Molecular, Cellular and Integrative Neuroscience.

The purpose of the highly selective World AMN is the advancement of neurotraumatology in research, clinical applications regarding brain rehabilitation and teaching. Thaut has been internationally recognized for his research in the neurobiology of music and his discoveries into how music and auditory rhythm are an important sensory language that can be effectively used to rehabilitate perception, cognition and motor function in people with serious brain injury.

Thaut also is chairman of Colorado State’s Department of Music, Theater and Dance and co-executive director of Colorado State’s School of the Arts, part of the College of Liberal Arts. He received his master’s and Ph.D. in music from Michigan State University; a master’s in psychology from the University of Muenster, Germany; and is a graduate of the Mozarteum Music Conservatory in Salzburg, Austria.

As a former professional violinist in the classic and folk genre, he has made several recordings of chamber and folk music in the United States and Germany and has toured in Europe extensively with folk and chamber groups.

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