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When neuromuscular specialist Zach London, MD, FAAN, is not at work, he engages in other passions like music and game board development. Here he talks about what drives these interests and why he has pursued them since his busiest days as intern in medical school.

In his professional endeavors and personal life, Zach London, MD, FAAN, relishes the opportunity to be creative. Dr. London's innovative nature has come in handy as professor and director of the neurology residency program at the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arborthe same institution where he completed his training and a fellowship in clinical neurophysiology.

Among the interactive educational tools he has designed is a web-based training simulator called EMG Whiz. And his efforts were instrumental in developing two mobile applicationsNerve Whiz and Neuro Localizerto teach neuroanatomic localization.

For Dr. London, the goal is to engage learners any way he can, no matter how boring or challenging the subject may be. He credits his former neuroanatomy professor John K. Harting, PhD, at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health in Madison with instilling this belief in him.

With textbooks, workbooks, educational handouts, flash cards, and whatever else he could devise, he would teach the same material in 20 different ways, Dr. London recalled. All that mattered was that at least one of those ways clicked with his students. That was really inspirational to me.

A neuromuscular specialist, Dr. London has published online learning modules for the AAN and other national organizations. He also has received many teaching awards, including the the Consortium of Neurology Program Directors Recognition Award in 2014, the American Neurological Association's Distinguished Teacher Award in 2017, and the American Association of Neuromuscular and Electrodiagnostic Medicine Innovation Award in 2020.

The AAN recently tapped his expertise to promote an upcoming conference in a novel way. He posted this recording on Twitter.

Neurology Today spoke with Dr. London about his musical hobby as well as his interest in developing board games. One of those inventions is The Lesion: Charcot's Tournament, a tabletop strategy board game about neuroanatomy that he co-designed and published.

I was 14 years old when I first started playing. I took one or two lessons and hated it, so I put it down for a few years. Then, when I was a senior in high school, I read a modern translation of Beowulf, and for some reason, I got in my head that I was going to write a rock opera about Beowulf for my English class. I enjoyed that so much that it got me hooked on songwriting and recording. I've never really been a performer. I like the recording process more than anything else.

It's a great instrument for people who are learning to play music. The reason it's so popular is that it's easy to become good enough to play a few songs. It's also portable. You can pick it up and take it with you.

I have a few guitars hanging up on the wall. I have five guitars, a ukulele, a banjo, a mandolin, a bass guitar, and an Irish bouzouki.

I play a little piano, bass, mandolin, and accordion at the novice to intermediate level. I like to pick up new instruments and play them well enough that I can record something once.

The real turning point was when I was an intern. Your life suddenly becomes very busy. A lot of people lose their hobbies when they get into residency. It was a now-or-never moment. I decided I'm either going to stick with it or dedicate myself only to my career. It was really important for my mental health to have a creative outlet.

I record exactly one song per month and post it online at http://www.hardtaco.org. That's a realistic goal for the rest of my life. Having this self-imposed deadline has helped me focus. Some of the songs are throwaways, and some of them are ones I'm proud of. The fact that I stuck with that schedule is something I'm most proud of.

They're mostly simple pop, rock, folk, hip hop, and electronica. I don't have a classical music background. I know some music theory, but I'm not good enough to compose classical or jazz. They're the kind of songs you could hum in your head and put music to. I try to experiment with different genres, so they don't all sound the same. If there's a common thread, half of the songs tend to be silly or clever. I'm always thinking about rhyming words while I'm in the shower or I'm in the car.

My wife, Lauren London, is a trained singer with a musical theater background. She probably is on 75 percent of the songs as a lead or background singer. Professionally, she is a lawyer and the general counsel for Eastern Michigan University, while serving as executive director of a local professional theater company in Ann Arbor.

Our kidsScarlett, 16, and Malcolm, 13occasionally do vocals on the songs. Sometimes I'll write songs that have different characters in them. A few years ago, we did a song about a court trial for a bee who had murdered an elephant. One of the kids played the judge and one played the attorney. They rapped about what happened to this particular elephant.

I've been a board game player my whole life. I got into the modern board game in the mid- or late 1990s, and since then, I've been into trying out new games, especially complex ones. There's definitely a market for more complex games. Board game sales have skyrocketed in the last 20 years.

As a family, we have been involved in making games. We are also board game reviewers. When the pandemic started last year and we were all on lockdown, we decided as a family project we would play one new board game a day. We bought some and borrowed others from friends who are board game enthusiasts. Michigan's stay-at-home order was in place. We called it the Play-At-Home Order [www.theplayathomeorder.com]. The kids and my wife and I would write reviews. By now, we have reviewed up to about 130 games. Some are ones you can play in 10 minutes. It has been a wonderful family activity. Since the kids are back in school, it's harder to convince them to play a new game.

One is a board game called The Lesion: Charcot's Tournament, named after Jean-Martin Charcot, the French physician often considered to be the father of modern neurology. I developed it about five years ago with a colleague, Jim Burke, MD, MS, associate professor of neurology, who is also a board game fanatic. It's essentially based on the concept of neurologic localization on a map of the central nervous system. With any neurologic symptom in the bodysuch as weakness in the arm or facea pathway is interrupted somewhere between the brain and peripheral nerve.

The game's strategy involves looking at a bunch of symptoms and finding where those pathways overlap and where the most likely source of the problem is, where the lesion is.

There's also a non-neurological game we just published that was invented by my son. It's called Battle Thunder Worm (three words in the game), and it's a family-friendly party game. [For more information about the game, visit http://www.battlethunderworm.com.] Players have to put together a combination of two random words to name an invention that would solve a specific problem. And then they have to do a sales pitch as to why their invention is better than everyone else's.

Another game in the works is a card game about the brachial plexus called The Plexus. I'm just putting the final touches on the graphics.

We've sold over 1,000 copies of the Lesion, which has been out for five years. I use a print-on-demand board company called The Game Crafter. People order it through their website. I posted about it on Twitter a couple of months ago, and we sold over 50 copies in a few days. A bunch of neurologists and medical students were interested. It's definitely a target market for sure, very niche. I haven't made any profit. I'm not much of a businessman. I think of this as more of a fun academic project.

At my house every year for the last 25 years, we have done the fortress party. We convert our entire house into a giant maze of sheets. You can't see the walls or the ceiling of the house because everything is covered with sheets. It's a private event and not a good pandemic party.

You have to make time. That's kind of that crossroad I was at as an intern. It's really easy to let things go that are important to you when you're busy. I don't watch as much TV as I used to. I don't read as many books as I would like to. It's important to me and my family to support it, and they've been really wonderful in helping.

Definitely. It helps keep me centered. When I finish writing a song, I record it and I upload it to the website. It's a real sense of accomplishment. In academic medicine, it's good to have several irons in the fire in life, so when one of them isn't succeeding, maybe another one is. Usually, something is going well. Whether it's a work project or a home project, it keeps me engaged and helps me through the stuff that's harder.

Making board games about neurology is fun for me, but I'm also doing it as career development tool. I have to learn the material well, which probably makes me a better doctor. It's an academic niche for me. Some people do research on Alzheimer's. It's totally at opposite ends of the spectrum of what you can do as an academic neurologist.

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This Neuromuscular Specialist Keeps Life Humming with... : Neurology Today - LWW Journals