Dr. Joseph (Joe) Schlesinger’s biography tells the story of an anesthesiologist and intensivist who began playing the piano at just five years old. He paid his way through college by performing at jazz clubs in New Orleans and on Carnival Cruise Lines’ “fun ships”. During his residency, Dr. Schlesinger was a Benjamin Howard Robbins Research Scholar, and made sure that his research incorporated his musical training from his undergraduate degree.
Through this, Dr. Schlesinger found extra-departmental and extra-institutional mentorship and formed his music and medicine research group.
His experience in music medicine led to partnerships which culminated in the therapeutic music program at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, where he started the first live music and virtual-live music (during COVID) program in the ICU.
Expanding on qualitative benefits, he delved into quantifiable benefits utilizing EEG and those data to form the basis for his lab – the Schlesinger Lab – where he investigates multisensory integration and EEG correlates of music genre to understand the dose-response effects of music such that music can be part of the “prescription” in clinical medicine.
Through his vast mentorship, Dr. Schlesinger was awarded a faculty position at the Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt University, the first anesthesiology faculty member in Vanderbilt’s history to receive such a designation.
The conversation with Dr. Schlesinger will explore how music research can impact a research career as one thinks of music at a deeper level, from the soundscape, and acoustic features of sound, and how we interpolate that in our lives, passively and actively, to improve patient care and patient outcomes.
Learn more about Dr. Schlesinger’s work here. Register for the event below: