How music acts as medicine for the soul

Henry, an elderly man living in a US nursing home and largely unresponsive to the outside world, receives a pair of headphones to listen to his favourite artist, Cab Calloway .

The neurologist Dr Oliver Sacks, who's involved with the project, describes Henry as "almost unalive", but as soon as the music starts there's a complete transformation. He starts moving and singing along, becoming animated. "The philosopher Kant once called music the 'quickening art' and Henry has been 'quickened' – he's been brought to life," Sacks says in the video.

But the effect doesn't stop once the music is turned off. Though he's normally unable to answer the simplest questions, Henry now starts speaking about his love for music, how it makes him feel, and singing I'll Be Home for Christmas, remembering every single word of the lyrics. It's almost magical.

There's a charity here in the UK that knows all about how music can transform the lives of those who suffer from autism, dementia, and a whole range of mental health problems. The work of the founders of Nordoff Robbins – Paul Nordoff, an American composer and pianist, and Clive Robbins, a special education teacher – began more than half a century ago, as they used music therapy to help isolated and disabled children. In 1980 the charity bearing their names was established in the UK.

Nordoff and Robbins discovered music's power to open up the senses and "reawaken" people with dementia doesn't only come from the familiarity of favourite songs. In a mesmerising video, one of the charity's music therapists starts communicating with a woman whose dementia has lead to the loss of speech, by doing a sort of singing and guitar-playing call-and-response. In another one, Jack, an autistic boy with severe learning difficulties, lights up and starts to communicate not only by singing, but with his whole body.

But music can also have a calming and healing effect on those with mental illnesses. Nordoff Robbins works with Lance, who lives with schizophrenia and says music therapy makes him "feel more human again" and is "a haven from intrusive bad thoughts and depression".

The charity provides music therapy at his local centre for people with mental health problems, where he plays guitar, often supporting other people's songs. "I feel that music is holding my hand through all this," he explains.

The therapists who go into schools, hospitals, care homes and prisons, help people communicate where words have failed, raising their confidence, self-esteem and sense of joy through music, one of the most powerful remedies that can't be bought from pharmaceutical companies. Music is medicine for the soul.

Info from The Guardian

Speech-Language Therapy and Music Therapy Collaboration: The Dos, the Don’ts, and the “Why Nots?” - part I

Definition of collaboration: “The process of working jointly with others in an intellectual endeavor to bring about change, and it implies shared responsibility” 

As the number of cases of children being identified with communication disorders increases, so does the need for cost effective treatment. Therefore, many therapists are looking to collaboration and co-treatment as a way to meet this need. This is evidenced by a recent survey of 695 music therapists, as 44.6% said they collaborate with SLPs (Register, 2002).

Why utilize inter-, trans-, or multi-disciplinary collaboration between music therapy and speech therapy?

*It benefits the client’s overall well-being

*It is cost effective

*Language and music are structurally similar in many ways

5 similarities between music and language:

* Music and Language are universal and specific to humans;

* Both have pitch, timbre, rhythm, and durational features;

* Spontaneous speech and spontaneous singing typically develop within infants at approximately the same time;

* Music and language have auditory, vocal, and visual uses (both use written systems) and are built on structure and rules;

* Distinct forms of music and language exist and vary across cultures.

When You Collaborate with the Other Therapist:

Do…

…Communicate with one another on how to best address the needs of the client and what music interventions can be used to enhance and support communication areas the SLP is addressing with the client.

…Co-Treat!

…Collaborate on goal development (find a time that will work for both of you – even if it’s just for 10-15 minutes a week!). If meeting in person does not seem to work, try other technologies, such as email correspondence, using Skype, Twitter, or an instant messaging program. This may work better for both of your schedules.

…Understand your limits (do not overstep your professional training bounds)

…Have a clear understanding of the other profession’s scope of practice. MTs should look at the ASHA scope of practice and SLPs need to be aware of the CBMT scope of practice. By doing this, the professionals can avoid conflict, confusion, and misunderstandings.

…Understand each profession’s strengths and areas of training

…Educate yourself on the lingo of the other field (healthcare professions LOVE annoying, hard-to-remember acronyms)

…Be flexible!

…Share information with one another: therapy news articles, ideas, pamphlets, research papers, etc.

…Communicate, Communicate, Communicate!

References:

- American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA). (n.d.). Standards and implementation procedures for the certificate of clinical competence. 

- Cohen, N. S. (1994). Speech and song: Implications for therapy. Music Therapy Perspectives, 12(1), 8-14.

- Miller, S. (1982). Music therapy for handicapped children: Speech impaired. Project Monograph Series. Washington, DC: National Association for Music Therapy.

- Peters, J. S. (2000). Music therapy for individuals who have communication disorders or impairments. In Music therapy: An introduction (2nd ed., pp.170-188). Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas Publisher.

- Register, D. (2002). Collaboration and consultation: A survey of board certified music therapists. Journal of Music Therapy, 39(4), 305-321.

- Rychener-Hobson, M. (2006). The Collaboration of Music Therapy and Speech-Language Pathology in the Treatment of Neurogenic Communication Disorders: Part II — Collaborative Strategies and Scope of Practice. Music Therapy Perspectives, 24(2), 66-72.

- Zoller, M. (1991). Use of music activities in speech-language therapy. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 22.

Info written by Rachel See Smith, from Explore Music Therapy

Music, Language & Learning

One might ask, why do music, language and learning complement each other?

Without getting into the neuroscience of music and brain theories, the simple answer is that music involves or stimulates both sides of the brain, and when both hemispheres are engaged, we tap into more potential for cognitive growth or learning.

The other great aspect of music is that it’s auditory, visual, vocal, tactile and physical, and the more senses that are involved in an activity, the greater the capacity for learning and retention.

In a nutshell, one could say that music is an effective teaching strategy, and teaching strategies make learning highly transferable!

Music stimulates both sides of the brain, and when both hemispheres are engaged, we tap into more potential for learning. 

Music is a multi-sensory experience, and the more senses that are involved in an activity (e.g., hearing, seeing, doing), the greater the capacity for learning and retention. 

Music is universal and is accessible to anyone, regardless of age, gender, culture, intellectual or physical ability. 

Music is structured, predictable, and repetitive, and these components are all essential parts of promoting speech and language skills. 

Info from TheSpeechStop

How Music Can Reach the Silenced Brain

Words Spoken And Sung

There are several cases in which a patient has recovered speech through the systematic use of rhythmic patterning, leading first to recovery of familiar lyrics and words embedded in songs, then to self-initiation of normal, fluent speech.Image courtesy of Concetta M. Tomaino

Because music has parallels to spoken language, much research on music and the brain has zeroed in on the similarities and differences between them. The similarities could be clues to more successful methods of using musical cueing to stimulate similar language responses in people with brain injuries. One remarkable example of the functional difference between music and language, however, occurs in people who have suffered a left-side stroke, resulting in a type of aphasia where verbal comprehension still exists but the ability to speak or find the right words is lost. In these cases, the brain lesion is often located in what is called Broca’s area; speech is slow, not fluent, and hesitant, with great difficulties in articulation.  Yet, despite the loss of speech, many people with this type of aphasia can sing complete lyrics to familiar songs. This has usually been attributed to the separation of function of the left and right hemispheres of the brain, speech being dominant on the left and singing on the right.

Because many clinicians assume a complete separation of function between singing and speaking, they give little attention to the potential for using music to aid speech. But there are several cases in which a patient has recovered speech through the systematic use of rhythmic patterning, leading first to recovery of familiar lyrics and words embedded in songs, then to self-initiation of normal, fluent speech. In each case, however, this remarkable change had been attributed not to the music but to spontaneous recovery during the early months after the stroke.

A similarity shared by music and speech is what we call “prosody,” which includes the elements of stress, pitch direction, pitch height, and intonation contour, or inflection. People with nonfluent aphasia can perform a type of prosodic speech that includes the inflection and contour of previously known phrases. This speech differs, however, from propositional speech (which includes verbal expression of new thoughts and ideas) in its rate, discrete pitch, and increased predictability. Aniruddh D. Patel, Ph.D., a scientist at the Neurosciences Institute in California, theorizes that rhythm and song, which are inherently predictable, may create a “supra-linguistic” structure that helps cue what is coming next in an utterance.

Brain-imaging studies by Dr. Pascal Berlin, of the Service Hospitalier Frederic Joliot in France, and more recently by Dr. Burkhard Maess at the Max Planck Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, used PET and MEG scans to determine that areas peripheral to the left language regions of the brain are involved in processing the singing of single words. Additional imaging studies suggest that some aspects of music and language are processed in both the right and left sides of the brain. In many patients who are able to carry over speech techniques from music, success seems to come from their increased ability to attend to sounds and to initiate them, perhaps because parallel mechanisms for these functions have been called into play by music and singing.

Info from The music instinct