Author: Marietta (Page 1 of 2)

Playlist for Parkinson’s LIVE! in Lucerne 09.05.2023

What an evening! On Tuesday, 09.05.2023, after almost 18 months of preparation and almost a year after the concert in Manchester, the second Playlist for Parkinson’s concert took place with us at the Lucerne School of Music.

Finally! I can’t tell you how relieved not only I am, but also the whole team. It was a great evening, which would not have been possible without the active support of all musicians, technicians, the marketing team, co-organizers, technical assistants and many more. A very special thanks goes to my brave co-organizer, Valérie, who rocked the organization as well as the artistic aspects with her wealth of experience and as musical director. Thank you very much and I think we are really a good team 🙂

On the day of the concert, a television team from Tele1 came to visit the rehearsals in the morning to film an exclusive report about the concert and our project. Dawn as the project leader and Toni as the affected person, who actively participated in the concert with his hand organ, were interviewed.

Here is the link to the wonderful Tele1 report:

https://www.tele1.ch/nachrichten/musik-gegen-parkinson-hslu-praesentiert-studien-resultate-151457509

The evening itself was filled with stimulating conversations, music of various genres, an interactive Shaky Egg perfomance and wonderful food.

The evening was opened by Dawn and afterwards I gave a short presentation about our project, the initial findings that led us to this evening. This was followed by a panel discussion with Valentin, Elena, Antonio and our international guests, Jane, Michelle and Fiona. After the aperitif that followed, the concert started with its colorful mix of musical pieces. Have a look at the program of the evening:

It was an exhilarating evening and I think our international guests were also excited and eager to sing and shake along. It was wonderful to speak with so many interested sufferers who are enthusiastic about our research approach and the power of music. I had the pleasure of interviewing two of them on stage about their experiences with music and Parkinson’s, which was great and provided valuable insight into their lives.

It just goes to show again very clearly how important it is what we are doing and to keep going with it.

Here are a few impressions of the evening:

So thank you for reading and sharing this blog and see you next time!

Funfair at the BNA 2023 Festival in Brighton

From Sunday 23rd of April to Wednesday 26th of April the international British Neuroscience Association’s festival of neuroscience of 2023 took place at the Brighton Centre. And please check out the view of one of the conference rooms:

As a systematic musicologist with only very specific knowledge of neuroscience in relation to music – as in what happens in the brain when we listen to music or making music ourselves – Lucy, one of my PhD supervisors, had suggested to join the conference and present a preregistration poster of our MMMP-project to learn more about the neuroscientific side of Parkinson’s research as well as getting feedback on our work from a different perspective. And, wow, I can tell you, it was a buzzing time and fascinating experience that I wouldn’t want to miss. So, thank you very much, Lucy!

I arrived on Saturday to give myself the chance to see something of Brighton as well. It is an amazing city that feels like it is buzzing with all the excitement of the people in it. Unfortunately, the weather has been quite mixed, but after living in the UK for about 2 months, I now know that is very normal and the weather can change every 10 minutes.

On Sunday morning, after collecting my badge and getting lost in the Brighton Centre (really it is like a huge maze and it happened to other people as well, so, totally not my fault), I visited the first parallel session about the neuropsychiatry of neurodegenerative diseases hosted by the British Neuropsychiatry Association. After the lunch break and some mingling, I attended the patient and public involvement (PPI) workshop conducted by Parkinson’s UK and researchers who have years of experience in doing PPI work. This workshop was especially helpful to me and my PhD research. Indeed, I have already learned much about PPI work due to my work for the MMMP-project, but it was great hearing the inside thoughts of Parkinson’s UK on it as well as their guidelines. Even more exciting, a lovely person with Parkinson’s was also part of the facilitating team as a so-called Parkinson’s contributor. They also provided us with a lot of literature tips which is also great for my PhD. During the first poster session I had the chance to talk to a researcher developing a new questionnaire to assess psychiatric symptoms in neurodegenerative conditions by synthesizing existing standardized questionnaires. We were able to chat about their way of choosing the appropriate questionnaire to assess the symptom of apathy which provided a lot of supportive information for me since I’m focusing on apathy in Parkinson’s in my PhD thesis. After four talks about research about hippocampal neurons, the BNA 2023 festival was officially opened with a great opening ceremony and four talks about research credibility in neuroscience. This was followed by the opening reception.

On Monday, after listening to more fascinating talks and having nice conversations during coffee and lunch breaks, I got to present my poster for about 2 hours. Even though the methods of the project are not neuroscientific, I talked to a lot of interested people about it and exchanged contact details. It was great having neuroscience research asking questions and providing feedback from a different perspective. Ellen Poliakoff, who I had met last year at our concert ‘Playlist for Parkinson’s LIVE’ in Manchester, was also presenting a poster right next to me. Afterwards she introduced me to some of her PhD students and invited me to visit her team and give a talk about my work in the next months. So awesome! 😀

On Tuesday I attended a workshop (amongst more talks and poster presentations of course) about research communication delivered by editors of the ‘Inspire the Brain’ magazine. They provided a lot of useful tips on how to communicate your researcher on a lay level to help engage the public more.

On the last day of the conference, I went to a special session called ‘Desert Island Discs Papers’ in which researchers talked about inspiring papers, their careers, and what keeps them motivated when it comes down to writing a paper. They provided a lot of interesting and useful trips, such as having a dog with you that unconditionally supports you throughout the writing process is key. I might have to try this for my thesis then 😉

It was also great to get to spend some more time with Lucy who was also attend the conference. She has introduced me to a lot of people, and we had a great time trying out different seafoods at restaurants in the evenings.

After the end of the conference, I even had some time to try out some of the arcade machines at the famous Brighton Palace Pier.

Even though I haven’t won anything, it was still a lot of fun! I also let Zoltar predict my future, and according to him more relaxing times lie in front of me. I hope this means the next measurements, the concert and the ‘Songlines’ course will be fine?

Anyways, I will see you for the next read. As always, please feel free to leave any comments and have a look at the other posts.

Many thanks, see you soon and take care!

Moving to the UK

Hello dear research friends, enthusiasts and those who would like to become one!

The great adventure has started!

With suitcases heavily loaded, I left yesterday at 11 a.m. by train in the direction of Zurich airport, where the plane that is to take me safely to my new home for the next 12 months was already waiting for me. Luckily the flight went well despite the bad starting weather in Switzerland. Here you can see my jump over the channel, luckily I had a window seat 😉 :

I always find it exciting to watch the French coastline pass by behind you and only a few minutes later the English one seems to appear out of nowhere.

I can’t wait to start working and if I’m completely honest, I haven’t really realized that I’ve now arrived in England. However, I am thrilled and hugely grateful to have been given this opportunity. I will do my best to represent HSLU here in England in a worthy way.

Thank you for reading this blog and feel very free to leave comments. I can’t wait to keep you guys updated about my time in England! 🙂

Love and see you next time you read!

Hertfordshire January 2023

Hello again research friends, enthusiasts, and those who would like to become one!

 

I would also like to wish you all a happy new year in Hertfordshire, UK!

Shortly before Christmas we had got ethical clearance for doing the Songlines course in the UK 2023, so I, once again, visited the UK to start getting people enthusiastic about our project. For this reason, we organized two talks at local Parkinson’s groups in Hertfordshire.

The first one took place at the Hampson Park Community Centre in Stevenage, which is the same venue as for our course Songlines. Lovely Jane invited me to give the talk, and I have to admit that I have been quite nervous, but luckily Penny, who is another PhD student at UH, was there to support me, thank you very much! 🙂

We decided it would be nice to go to the talk together and introduce ourselves properly because besides our brilliant facilitator, Maria, Penny and I will be helping to run the course. As all of you know that music is quite a crucial part of our research project, and for Songlines is going to be a music and movement course, we thought it might be funny to introduce ourselves via a favorite piece of music. Here are the two pieces, and I leave it to you to guess which one belongs to who 😉

I think the attendees liked our tunes, immediately the ice was broken, and my nervousness was gone. It really was a great experience, and I felt like everybody enjoyed themselves. It was also fantastic to see that the people liked what we are doing, and they would very much like to be a part of it. I think they especially liked our little dance exercise…oh sorry, I meant to write “moving to music” exercise 😉

On Thursday 19th of January, Penny and I went to the West Herts branch of Parkinson’s UK to give the talk again. This time my supervisor, Lucy, was joining us because she knows most of the attendees. The second talk was also a wonderful experience, and the people were just as lovely as the Big Movers. The response to our project and the Songlines course was amazing and I hope some of the attendees will take part in it.

I’m flying back home today, but I will be back in the UK by the end of February. That is when my year abroad starts officially and I’m very much looking forward to it! 🙂

 

Thank you for reading this blog, and please feel free to leave some comments. I am very interested in your opinion. I can’t wait to keep you posted with all the exciting things going to happen.

Take care and see you for the next read!

Happy New Year in Lille

On 1 January, Dawn and Sabrina travelled to Lille to present our project in France and create new collaborations. Sabrina was able to talk about our Motion Capture Lab and present her first data to the REBOOT team (University of Lille).

It was incredibly exciting to see the innovative team and their lab. The research team is known for their work, which deals in particular with the interaction between humans and robots. Emotions play a central role in this. We were able to gain an exciting insight into their work. Even more exciting, however, was their input on our data and the exchange of ideas on how we can optimise and expand the measurement of people with Parkinson’s disease.

On our third day in Lille, Dawn presented our project in detail to a wide audience. Enthusiasm was clearly visible in the faces and the project aroused great interest.

We look forward to continuing to work with the whole team in Lille and to presenting you with new insights soon!

Author: Sabrina

Lucerne October 2022

Hello dear research friends, interested and those who would like to be!

 

Yay, it’s done! The last of the 15 workshops took place yesterday at HSLU Music and was also a great success. Can you imagine 15 workshops? In the almost six months I’ve been involved, a lot has happened and we’ve accomplished a lot more. Don’t forget the 20 interviews with the workshop participants from all three locations, because they weren’t without their share either.

But that shouldn’t sound negative now, because I really enjoy the work a lot and I got the impression that the participants also enjoyed it a lot. It was great that all the people with Parkinson’s who had already participated in the workshops in June were also present this time. And we even got a new member, because Jane joined us. Since last Wednesday she is on a trip to Switzerland and because she speaks excellent German, she gave us the honor of her presence. It was wonderful that our Lucerne participants had the chance to speak with one of our British collaborators.

I also tried to make the workshop a bit more active compared to the other two and to lead exercises on and with the music to really test out what is possible and what is not. For Jane it was therefore certainly also exciting to take part in the workshop again in a different way. So there was a lot of dancing again, including salsa, African and line dancing. It was really great! 😀

After the workshop we had lunch together again, which must have lasted 1 1/2 hours because there was so much to talk about. It was really great to see how the participants were happy about the reunion. I really hope they felt comfortable with us and I look forward to working with them again.

Now that the data collection of the consultation phase is complete, it is time to finalize the course program. Fortunately, the feedback from most has been very positive, so we don’t have to completely rewrite it but just tweak the details.

So wish us luck and keep your fingers crossed that the ethics committees will be as enthusiastic about the program as our hard-working collaborators from England, Lucerne and Ticino! 😉

Thanks for reading this blog and feel very free to leave comments. I can’t wait to tell you about all the other exciting things and experiences.

Best wishes and see you next time you read!

 

Brissago October 2022

Ciao cari amici della scienza,  persona interessate e che vorrebbe esserlo!

 

Last Monday Dawn and I went to the beautiful Ticino again to hold the fifth and final workshop at the Clinica Hildebrand. Well, Dawn had a very early start on Monday, because I arrived on Sunday and had a great day in sunny Brissago. Oh, it’s wonderful to be under palm trees like that! 😀

                       

And the trip over the Nufenen, which connects the Valais with the Ticino, was not lacking in scenic eye-catchers either:

             

Well, enough about my private highlights for now, after all, this was a business trip and we came to work 😉

Just like in England or in Ticino in spring, the final workshop in Brissago was a complete success and that of course gives us hope for the next workshop in Lucerne. Paolo did a great job again by constantly stimulating the exchange about our course programme. Again, not only the people with Parkinson’s were enthusiastic about the programme, but also the therapists, Daniele, Amanda and Daria, the head of neurology at the clinic. Dawn and I also had great fun performing a little line dance choreography that we would like to teach to the participants of our course. I had the impression that this went down very well with everyone and there was even applause at the end!

The only downer from the Parkinson’s sufferers was that the course would not start in Switzerland until 2024, so they would have to wait over a year to try it out. But we assured them that even if they have to wait now, there will definitely be an opportunity for them to participate in the Ticino course if they want to.

After the workshop ended, Dawn and I went out for lunch with Paolo and Daniele to celebrate the success of the final workshop as well as to discuss the way forward. It was a lovely day and we enjoyed the business lunch on a sunny terrace in Locarno. Truly a successful conclusion!

 

Grazie mille for reading this blog and feel very welcome to leave comments. I can’t wait to tell you about all the other exciting things and experiences.

Ciao and see you next time!

Hatfield September 2022

Hello dear research friends, enthusiasts and those who would like to become one!

 

Dawn and I have been back in the UK to do the final workshop two weeks ago and the trip has been just as brilliant as the last one. It was so nice seeing all those great and lovely people again and working together on the programme for next year’s course. Once again, I can only say how much I’m looking forward to spending the next year  in the UK 🙂

The final workshop went really well and it was so great seeing that the people with Parkinson’s liked the programme we co-developed during spring time. Also, it was amazing that almost everybody had returned to join the workshop to give us their feedback. They were genuinely interessted it what we had done and I felt like they really appreciated to be treaten like the experts they are, and without their feedback it would be impossible to design the holistic programme we are aiming for.

Besides the work related stuff as well as meeting kind and lovely people, I had to do some very important PhD work at the UH like for example collecting my GO HERTS! hoodie.

And doesn’t it look great?! Thank you very much again, Dawn, for buying me the second purple hoodie from the sports village.

I also had to finish my Induction Checklist with my other supervisor Lucy, which meant meeting important and helpful people of the UH as well as geeting some adminstrational stuff done like collecting my UH member card. Dawn and Lucy gave me a tour on the campus and pointed out major buildings like the Science Building. It has been a lot of fun and I feel confident now to find my way on campus next year.

On the last day, we had a lovely lunch with Lucy and our collaborator Ruth at a pub called the crooked chimney. I guess you can see where the name comes from, can’t you? 😉

 

Thank you for reading this blog, and please feel free to leave some comments. I am very interested in your opinion. I can’t wait to keep you posted with all the exciting things going to happen.

Take care and see you for the next read!

Hello dear research friends, interested people and those who would like to become one!

 

Here is a short announcement about a symposium that will take place on 24 and 25 November at the Lucerne School of Music.

“Empowering Musicians: Healthy for Success” deals with topics around the health of musicians. The symposium is open to all interested parties and we can expect exciting guest lectures from scientists from all over the world. So feel free to come along, you are cordially invited and we are happy about every visitor!

« Older posts

© 2024 MMMP English

Theme by Anders NorenUp ↑