Video: UCSF Professor Sings His Neurology Lessons

It’s not exactly Gagnam Style, but if you want to learn about meningioma or foamy macrophages, Arie Perry may have a musical solution for you.

The University of California, San Francisco pathology professor composes and performs his own original songs for his students.

From the UCSF press release:

While mastering an extensive command of gross and subtle human biology is more complex than memorizing the A-B-C’s, putting some of the most essential facts to music is a helpful way to learn, said Arie Perry, MD, a professor of pathology and neurological surgery and the director of neuropathology at UCSF.

“People who sit through hundreds of hours of lectures and just go through rote memory over and over again might appreciate something different to help them learn,” Perry said.

Perry first began singing about neurology during his medical residency at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. “We had a weekly conference where we presented cases to our attending [doctors],” he said. “One of the weeks, one of the attendings said that the residents weren’t entertaining enough.”

Perry aimed to correct this in the very next case he presented, pulling out a guitar to accompany himself as he sang about his findings.

Here’s a sample of his lyrics:

From the surface of the brain and the arachnoidal membrane
Grows a dural neoplasm, meningioma is its name

As a tumor of adults, with sharp margins and slow growth,
It may require the gamma knife, or surgery alone

Though most are low-grade, with a bland histology,
There’s an aggressive subset, with significant morbidity

Atypical meningiomas, recur quite frequently
Anaplastic cases have a high mortality

A few years ago, Perry recorded a CD with 16 of his favorite songs, and he was recently the subject of a profile in the San Francisco Chronicle.

To hear more of Perry’s songs visit http://neuropathsongs.com.