Music as medicine
Listen carefully and you’ll hear the same refrain at a rising number of hospitals. From Massachusetts General to the Mayo Clinic, patients are hearing the first strains of a harmonious movement — the infusion and inclusion of music in the treatment of ailments, from brain disorders to cancer. This goes beyond the psychological smile favorite songs can induce.
Doctors are increasingly studying — and employing — the physiological dance music does with the body’s neurons and blood-carrying cells.
“We’re in the infancy,” said Dr. Ali Rezai, director of the Center for Neurological Restoration at Ohio’s Cleveland Clinic. During a surgery called deep brain stimulation — performed while patients with Parkinson’s disease are awake — Rezai and his team play classical compositions and measure the brain’s response to those notes. “We know music can calm, influence creativity, can energize. That’s great. But music’s role in recovering from disease is being ever more appreciated.”
Using music to help the ill has been employed for thousands of years, even though modern medicine is just starting to understand how it works
For nine days after his surgery at the Gagnon Cardiovascular Institute in Morristown, N.J., Fabry soaked up that tranquil, wordless strumming. And while he praised his surgeon, he raved about the musical score that accompanied his recovery.
His heart literally fell in rhythm with guitarist Tomaz Lima. The music became his medicine.
Comments (7)
before we had a house full of kids ;) May and I did regular music sessions at the Mary Street Home extended care hospice in Wiarton; there were several residents in various deep states of Parkinsons and other neurological impairments, and I'm quite confident in saying that yes, the music helped a great deal, not just for those few hours while we were there as a distraction, but full time, the radios/CD-players were in constant use, some even had small electronic keyboards to hack around with. During our shows, though, they'd just fly, and we'd hear from the workers there that they'd be constantly nagging about "when is the next music day?"
Last spring we did a session out in Collingwood with a Toronto group that included some MS/Parkinsons and some autistic adults, and we brought a portable synthesizer in addition to the usual drums, marracas and what-have-you (the kitchen pots and pans are also put to good use) -- we set them in groups for each instrument type and teach them a part to play and then bring it all together into a jam session -- it was great to watch the great beaming smiles as they would first struggle to get TO the keyboard with their fingers, but from then on they were engaged.
Curiously the autistic adults approach to the keyboard was very different to the others; those with crippling neuro conditions are of course just like you and me inside, and as such they like dance rhythm, we'd put something kinda funky on the drum machine and they'd play the keys like drums making little patterns best they could, the odd bit of flourish across the keys, but mostly they'd play a techno-like segment and repeat it like a dance tune, in short, reacting to it the same as any other untrained in music.
But the autistic adults, who I expected to be like children in being especially fond of short-phrase repetition, were simply not interested! They could do it, they'd smile politely when I'd show them something, maybe do it a few times just to try it out, but left alone for a few seconds they'd go off exploring the whole keyboard, in rhythm, but with a more exploratory attitude. It was very interesting to watch.
thanks for the detailed response; I live next to a guitar monster and I'll quiz him re road trip to Owen Sound. I used to camp at Bass Lake, north of the sound, and like the area a good deal.
the stories you shared re your connections with people w Parkinson's makes me think my mother wasn't shut off from the world all the time. she would like the tunes w pots and pans - my childhood toys.
Cheers,
Gord H.
With a science, with a Tone Science, perhaps we can learn how to recognize and correct these wrongly applied self-medications, and learn how to play a music people need to hear, rather than just what they WANT to imbibe. Buddha asked if a mind in right tuning would necessarily think better thoughts, and Guelph U is exploring the power of improvisational musics in creating social harmony, so perhaps its not just some crazy Sun Ra idea to make a better world through a better (and as yet unknown?) music. Maybe there is a real goal here?
Music as medicine hits home with me (a family member suffered and died with Parkinson's; was music a relief?)
I'll let a few musical buddies know re Owen Sound's music fest (date? I'll google); have guitars - could travel.
Cheers,
Gortd H.
London ONT