Dr. Elizabeth Stegemoller earned her bachelor’s degrees in Music Therapy and Biology from the University of Missouri – Kansas City. Following her degrees, she worked as a clinical music therapist before returning to graduate school earning her doctoral degree in Neuroscience at Northwestern University and then a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Florida. She is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Kinesiology and Director of the Interdepartmental Graduate Program in Neuroscience at Iowa State University. Dr. Stegemoller’s main research focus is to determine how music influences motor and non-motor symptoms and associated brain activity in persons with Parkinson’s disease (PD). She currently has multiple funded projects examining the effects of music/singing on swallow, stress and inflammation, repetitive movements, and associated neurophysiology in persons with PD, with over 60 publications. Along with her research, Dr. Stegemoller offers several yearly events and weekly outreach programs for persons with PD, including singing, dance, and boxing groups. Dr. Stegemoller hopes that through her research and outreach efforts, she can contribute to the development of new and innovated therapies involving music that demonstrate effectiveness of music therapy in treatment and care of persons with PD.
We are a therapeutic singing group for persons with Parkinson’s disease (PD). We meet once a week, both in person and virtually, throughout the year and perform annually at our PD Singing Festival in August. We have persons with PD and students from Dr. Stegemoller's lab that make up the group.
