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

Como a música pode melhorar a saúde

Usada como terapia, a música é capaz de melhorar a concentração, alterar o estado de espírito e ajudar a combater algumas doenças.

O Daily Mail reuniu alguns dos mais recentes estudos que comprovam o quão poderosa pode ser a música na saúde e na mente. Algumas melodias possuem efeitos mais notórios do que outros, mas a verdade é que a música é já usada como terapia no combate ou cura de determinadas doenças, especialmente psicológicas.

Em 2008, escreve a publicação, o Centro Médico da Universidade de Maryland, nos Estados Unidos, concluiu que a música, principalmente a clássica, consegue ajudar na redução da pressão sanguínea. Músicas agradáveis conseguem deixar o sangue mais fluído em 26%, enquanto sons relaxantes apenas o fazem em 11%.

Mas se há músicas com efeitos benéficos, existem compositores capazes de autênticos milagres. Conta o Daily Mail que um estudo sueco de 2005 revelou que os pacientes operados a uma hérnia que ouviram música durante a cirurgia tiveram menos dores no pós-operatório. Mas Bach e Louis Armstrong conseguem resultados ainda mais notórios: uma investigação de 2011 indica que estes dois grandes nomes da música ajudam a que sejam dados menores doses de anestesia em determinadas cirurgias, incluindo a de colocação de próteses na anca.

Dois anos depois, um outro estudo relacionou a música com o combate à demência. Tese reforçada com uma investigação de 2013, que concluiu que os doentes com demência que ouviam música como forma de terapia tinham menos necessidade de tomar antidepressivos ou outro tipo de medicamentos.

O coração e a música são também dois bons aliados, como indica um estudo que revela que algumas canções “melhoram a variação dos batimentos cardíacos” e reduzem os riscos de ataque cardíaco. Além disso, um estudo da Western University, no Canadá, indica que a música é capaz de acelerar a recuperação de AVCs.

Há três anos, uma investigação publicada no Journal of Nursing Studies revela que as músicas relaxantes são a melhor forma de adormecer depressa e manter uma noite tranquila de sono.

Mas não é só ouvir música que faz bem. Conta o Daily Mail que cantar pode ajudar a combater a asma, uma vez que permite melhorar a respiração e aprender quais os limites de cada pessoa.

Fonte: Notícias ao minuto

This is your brain in your favorite song

Illustration by Mark Alan Stamaty

When people listen to music they enjoy, their brains drift into a resting daydream, regardless of the genre.

Some prefer the twangs of the steel guitar in country, others the soaring arias of opera. Yet despite individual preferences, people’s favorite tunes generate strikingly similar brain activity patterns and can even enhance their creative ability, according to new research.

We already know that emotional connections to music can be strong, but exactly how favorite melodies influence brain patterns is an ongoing area of discovery.

The researchers scanned the brains of 21 young adults using an MRI machine while piping in music recordings. Each person listened to a genre they liked, one they disliked and their favorite song. 

By separating out the patterns that were related to the music’s beat or lyrics, the researchers found the underlying changes in brain activity related to enjoying a favorite song.

A person's preferred music enhances connections between different regions of the brain, a pattern called the default mode network (DMN), the researchers report. This network is associated with introspection, self-awareness, mind-wandering and possibly imagination. 

When the DMN is activated, another network, the task-positive network (TPN)—which is involved in goal-oriented activity—is shut down. The two states can be thought of as focus on the outside world (the TPN) and focus on inner thoughts (the DMN). Earlier this month, another research group figured out how to switch between these two modes in mice. 

Certain brain disorders seem to involve trouble with activating one mode or another or with switching between the two. For example, since people with autism seem to have problems with DMN activity, the new study’s authors suggest that music therapy may help.

More work needs to be done to investigate the connection between music and mental states before we know if music can help people with autism, but for now, know that the frisson of happy feelings you get when you listen to your favorite song has basis in biology.

Author: Marissa Fessenden

Info from: Smithsonian.com

Seven Ways That Music Benefits Your Health - part II

Lets see the effect music can have on a physical/ mental and psychological level. Take a look at the first part of this post here;

4) Makes you Happier

Music affects our emotional state, making you feel happy, ecstatic or even sad. According to a study, your brain releases dopamine, a feel-good chemical, when you listen to tunes that move you. Sometimes you also experience feeling of shivers or chills while listening to a particular track, this shows that brain releases large amount of dopamine, that gives you happiness and pleasure. So listening to music gives us the same hit of happiness that we would get from a piece of chocolate, sex or drugs.

While another study shows that Music with a quick tempo in a major key, brought about all the physical changes associated with happiness in listeners. In contrast, a slow tempo and minor key led to sadness.

Even when we listen to happy music with the intention to feel happy, it always works as opposed to simply listening to music without attempting to alter our mood.

5) Boosts your immune system and reduce Pain

Music has been found to reduce the levels of stress hormone, cortisol, which can weaken the immune system and is responsible for many illnesses. If you like to dance to uplifting music, then you are definitely on a path to better health. Scientists found that after listening to just 50 minutes of uplifting dance music, the levels of antibodies in participants’ bodies increased.

Different types of music might have different effect, but it also depends on your personal preference and what tunes resonate with your soul. What resonates with the spirit, does have a healing effect.

6) Reduces Depression and Anxiety

Listening to music has much more effect on the human mind and psyche. Researchers say that it can helpease anxiety among cancer patients, have positive effects on their mood, pain and improve quality of life. Researchers from Drexel University found that cancer patients who either listened to music or worked with a music therapist experienced a reduction in anxiety, had better blood pressure levels and improved moods.

7) Keeps an aging brain healthy

Having musical training could help keep the brain healthy as people grow older. Any kind of musical activity in life serves as a challenging cognitive exercise, making your brain sharper and more capable of dealing with challenges of aging.

Even someone with brain damage or dementia can recover memories through listening to music. It is ingrained in our deepest core of being, no matter the language, the sound and the rhythm resonates deep within. Like Kahlil Gibran puts it, “Music is the language of the spirit. It opens the secret of life bringing peace, abolishing strife.”

Info from The Mind Unleashed

Seven Ways That Music Benefits Your Health - part I

“I think music in itself is healing. It’s an explosive expression of humanity. It’s something we are all touched by. No matter what culture we’re from, everyone loves music.” 

Billy Joel

From reducing stress levels, to elevating your current state of consciousness, or taking you in a state of trance – it opens the doors to newer dimensions – dimensions which can only be accessed in a certain state of mind.

Music seems to be part of our biological heritage, because infants have excellent musical abilities, that’s why many to-be mothers sing to their unborn child, because they respond/dance to different types of music.

No human culture on earth has ever lived without it: Music has been used across different cultures for healing purpose. In ancient Greece, music was used to ease stress, promote sleep, and soothe pain. Native Americans and Africans used singing and chanting as part of their healing rituals, like the shamans. Even the Chinese character for medicine includes the character for music. Music and healing goes hand in hand.

Lets see the effect music can have on a physical/ mental and psychological level: 

1) Improves your visual and verbal skills

Early music education stimulates a child’s brain, leading to improved performance in verbal intelligence. This was suggested in a study among 4-to 6-year-olds who received only one month of musical training. It included training in rhythm, pitch, melody, voice and basic musical concepts, and this proved to have a “transfer effect,” enhancing their ability to understand words and explain their meaning.

Another study among 8 to 11-year-olds found that those who had extra-curricular music classes, developed higher verbal IQ, and visual abilities, in comparison to those with no musical training.

Even one-year-old babies who participate in interactive music classes with their parents smile more, communicate better and show earlier and more sophisticated brain responses to music.

2) Affects the heartbeat, pulse rate and blood pressure

As Nietzsche, said, ‘We listen to music with our muscles.’ Studies have proved that music can not only strengthen the heart but also improve the recovery of patients suffering from heart disease.

No matter the genre of music, listening to one’s favorite music releases endorphins in the brain that improves the vascular health. (Opera, classical and other types of ‘joyful’ music were more likely to stimulate endorphins as opposed to heavy metal)

At Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis, men and women who listened to music soon after undergoing cardiac surgery were less anxious and reported having less pain than those who just rested quietly.

At Massachusetts General Hospital, a nurse-led team found that heart patients confined to bed who listened to music for 30 minutes had lower blood pressure, slower heart rates, and less distress than those who didn’t listen to music.

The rhythm, the melody and harmony, all play a role in the emotional and cardiovascular response.

3) Improves sleep quality in students

Young or old, we all face sleep problems, in some cases, regularly, in other cases, when we’ve had an overactive day. Listening to soft music is indeed relaxing, hence improving the quality of your sleep.

Research shows that music can help reduce several factors known to interfere with sleep (including stress and anxiety), promote physical changes that support more restful sleep (such as lowered heart and respiratory rates), and aid in treatment of Insomnia.

Info from The Mind Unleashed

Playing classical music to your child can improve their listening skills later on in life

Susan Hallam, professor of education and music psychology at the Institute of Educadtion, Univeristy of London, evaluated a programme which introduces children aged seven to ten to classical music and its composers. 

The scheme involves a whole school assembly followed by six lessons at class level, with children experiencing different instruments and musical concepts and a formal concert.

Musicians explain what children should listen for and launch question and answer sessions. As the sessions progress, the listening tasks become more complex. 

The programme has been delivered to 4,500 children in 26 primary schools in Hackney and Tower Hamlets, East London, as well as to over 22,000 youngsters in assemblies and concerts. 26 members of staff and 252 children in nine primary schools were questioned about the programme.

Teachers rated developing the ability to listen as the main benefit, followed by musical knowledge and development and the boosting of concentration levels, aspirations, self-discipline and personal and social skills. Some staff also pointed to improvements to English.

One teacher said: ‘The children really enjoy the sessions. I think that listening to music in such an intimate environment (the classroom) engages them and allows them to develop their listening skills.’ Another said that pupils’ communication skills improved.

In a report on the scheme, Professor Hallam said children developed ‘enhanced listening skills and the development of other skills necessary for careful listening to take place including concentration and self-discipline’.

She added: ‘For some of the children the programme was inspirational. The children’s positive reactions suggest that they were ‘open-eared’ and had not developed prejudices against classical music. We know that preferences for music are affected by the extent to which individuals are exposed to them, the greater the exposure the greater the liking. Opportunities to listen extensively to classical music in the early years of primary school are therefore likely to lead to children appreciating a wider range of music than might otherwise be the case.’

Meanwhile a study from the University of St Andrews, Fife, Scotland, last September suggested that musicians have sharper minds and are less likely to suffer a mental decline.

Researchers said that mastering instruments such as the piano, flute or violin improves people's ability to pick up mistakes and fix them quickly. They perform tasks faster and do not allow occasional slip-ups to derail them due to their hours of practice.

The study indicated that playing an instrument could protect against a deterioration in mental abilities through age or illness.

Info from DailyMail

Long-Term Benefits of Music Lessons

Childhood music lessons can sometimes leave painful memories, but they seem to carry benefits into adulthood. A new study reports that older adults who took lessons at a young age can process the sounds of speech faster than those who did not.

“It didn’t matter what instrument you played, it just mattered that you played,” said Nina Kraus, a neuroscientist at Northwestern University and an author of the study, which appears in The Journal of Neuroscience.

She and her collaborators looked at 44 healthy adults ages 55 to 76, measuring electrical activity in a region of the brain that processes sound.

They found that participants who had four to 14 years of musical training had faster responses to speech sounds than participants without any training — even though no one in the first group had played an instrument for about 40 years.

Dr. Kraus said the study underscored the need for a good musical education. “Our general thinking about education is that it is for our children,” she said. “But in fact we are setting up our children for healthy aging based on what we are able to provide them with now.”

Other studies have suggested that lifelong musical training also has a positive effect on the brain, she added. Dr. Kraus herself plays the electric guitar, the piano and the drums — “not well but with great enthusiasm,” she said.

A version of this article appears in print on November 12, 2013, on page D4 of the New York edition with the headline: Neuroscience: Long-Term Benefits of Music Lessons.

From NYTImes

Music Therapy for Children with Language Impairments

“I would teach children music, physics, and philosophy; but most importantly music, for the patterns in music and all the arts are the keys to learning.”

Plato

 

Music as a therapeutic intervention is effective in healthcare and educational settings for children and adults. Music interventions can promote wellness, improve communication, and engage cognitive functioning. Children who had received musical training were shown to have improved speech segmentation abilities, according to research published in the journal Cerebral Cortex.

 

Speech segmentation is the process of identifying boundaries between words and syllables, and the ability to extract words from continuous speech. Recent research has found that musical expertise facilitates speech segmentation in adults. Musicians were shown to score better in both musical and linguistic tests compared to non-musicians. The results from this study were taken as evidence that musical training facilitates improved speech abilities, and led researchers to examine whether there is a similar correlation between music and children with learning impairments.

 

In this study, a longitudinal measurement was designed to follow 8-year-old non-musician children over the course of two school years. Children were enrolled into three experiment groups; none of them had been involved in music or painting lessons before or during the study. One of the experimental groups consisted of painting lessons rather than musical training to understand whether music training had any advantage in improving speech abilities.

 

Each group went through an initial “test session,” in which participants listened to 5 minutes of a sung artificial language. After listening to the song, participants were presented with two spoken items and were asked to decide which item sounded more familiar. One group of children were assigned to music and the other to painting classes for 45 minutes, twice a week in year one and once a week in year two.

 

Music training was shown to improve children’s speech segmentation abilities while children in the painting group did not exhibit improved abilities. The findings are important in understanding children’s language development, because speech segmentation is one of the building blocks of language acquisition.

 

Parents and teachers should consider the implications musical training has as a therapeutic method for children and the encouragement it can provide in the acquisition of new skills.

 

Journal reference: François, Clément, Julie Chobert, Mireille Besson, and Daniele Schön. 2013. “Music Training for the Development of Speech Segmentation.” Cerebral Cortex 23(9):2038–43.

The Benefits of Drumming

This article was taking from Back Mountain Music Therapy

"The wonderful thing about a drum is that there are no wrong notes. This makes playing successful to anyone who tries it. Who would ever think that giving some drums to a small group of chaotic, unfocused, hyper children could actually pull their attention together and help increase their social skills. 

Knowing that children automatically speed up and automatically want to bang away as soon as they get the drums, stir some doubts. But with careful management, the magnetic pull of a good beat pulls our brains in its direction. Watch a classroom move in sync as a good beat is pumped into the room. Most all children will move in one way or another. They may all move in a different way, but their movement and attention is pulled to the same direction at once. All are moving at the same time: they can’t help it. Doing this in a fun, game-like way is much easier than trying to “teach” them how to follow a beat or pay attention. “Teaching” requires too much attention on “getting it right,” while playing puts us all on automatic. 

When children are all beating together, the social skill possibilities are endless; impulse control, attending, focus, listening to others, sequencing, turn-taking, and the list keeps going. Drumming in this way build self-confidence and self esteem and allows safe nonverbal communication. Drumming in this manner simultaneously raises the level, focuses, and contains the children.

The added plus to the scenario is that it leaves little room for interruption and will likely continue in their head after the session ends. Rhythm now creates organization, actually changing a neurological pathway and helping the child focus.

There are also children who have such poor fine motor skills they can barely hold a drumstick. Many of these children who are slower at developing these skills are pulled so by the beat that they continue to try until they gradually get there. I have often seen children who begin poking a drum occasionally with the wrong end of a drumstick because of such fine motor delay, hat within one or two sessions are pulled so by the pulse they they are using an alternating hand pattern and beating the drum the right way with delight. Some of the children’s muscles that are too rigid and tight to beat a drum find that an accompanying beat pulls their bodies and arms to move in the direction of the beat with significantly greater ease.

Drumming helps us get out of our own heads. Drumming gets us to play. We are moved to play through the pulsating rhythm. It can not only facilitate physical, but also emotional, cognitive, and neurological change. Playing a beat, coming in the back door, effecting change."

by Antoinette