Music and the Brain

Damaged Brains Rewired by Singing

The damaged brains of stroke patients can be "rewired" by singing, restoring the ability to speak to patients who have lost it, according to a study conducted by researchers from Harvard Medical School and presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Diego.

The findings came out of an ongoing trial in which stroke patients who have lost the ability to speak are treated with music therapy and taught to put words into simple melodies that they tap out with their hands. According to the lead researcher, patients who had previously been unable to form any words at all became able to say "I am thirsty," after just one session.

Mucic has ben used as a form of therapy for stroke patients since the discovery that damage to the brain's speech centers did not affect the ability to sing. "People sometimes ask where in the brain music is processed and the answer is everywhere above the neck," said Aniruddh Patel from the Neurosciences Institute in San Diego. "Music engages huge swathes of the brain--it's not just lighting up a spot in the auditory cortex."

Speech and movement are mostly controlled from the left side of the brain, making stroke patients vulnerable in the case of damage to that side. "But there's a sort of corresponding hole on the right side," said Gottfired Schlaug, lead researcher. "For some reason, it's not as endowed with these connections, so the left side is used much more in speech. If you damage the left side, the right side has trouble [filling that role]"

Putting words into song, however, appears to stimulate the formation of speech connections on the brain's right side. "Music might be an alternative medium to engage parts of the brain that are otherwise not engaged," Schlaug said. NaturalNews.com

Suzanne

The Brain Can't Get Enough Music

"Nothing activates as many areas of the brain as music," researcher Donald A. Hodges asserts. A Covington Distinguished Professor of Music Education and director of the Music Research Institute at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Hodges shares his findings on the relation of Music to the brain.

A video presentation by Hodges shows scans of the brain in the midst of musical activity. Both hemispheres were lit up in his words, "like a pinball machine."

Other major findings regarding music:

* Disproving earlier assumptions that musical activity takes place in the right hemisphere of the brain, the activity occurs with equal vigor in the left--or rational--hemisphere. Music is an emotional and intellectual activity that engages almost all of the brain.

* Studies show that a person with brain damage from a stroke may not be able to speak but can sing because the area that controls Music is not damaged. A therapist will get the patient to sing a phrase then change it to spoken language with an exaggerated rhythm and finally to natural language.

* The spinal chord reacts immediately to rhythm, according to one researcher, who suggests that Music therapy can be used with Parkinson's patients. And researchers have learned that autistic children are capable of reproducing patterns of music. --adapted from the Press-Enterprise, May 9, 2006.

Suzanne

Music Exposure Helps Premature Babies

By Sherry Baker, Health Sciences Editor

Babies born prematurely are at increased risk for a host of health problems. But now research by Israeli scientists has uncovered a non-drug way to help preemies gain weight and grow stronger quickly. A new study by Dr. Dror Mandel and Dr. Ronit Lubetzky of the Tel Aviv Medical Center, which is affiliated with Tel Aviv University's Sackler School of Medicine, found premature infants exposed to thirty minutes of Mozart's music daily grew far more rapidly than premature babies not exposed to the classical music.

"It's not exactly clear how the music is affecting them, but it makes them calmer and less likely to be agitated," Dr. Mandel said in a statement to the media. "The repetitive melodies in Mozat's music may be affecting the organizational centers of the brain's cortex. Unlike Beethoven, Bach or Bartok, Mozsrt's music is composed with a melody that is highly repetitive. This might be the musical explanation. For the scientific one, more investigation is needed."

By measuring the physiological effets of music by Mozart played to pre-term newborns for 30 minutes, Dr. Mandel an Dr. Lubetzky and colleagues documented that when the babies were exposed to the music, they expended less energy--a process that can lead to faster weight gain an growth. That's important because the sooner preemies attain an acceptable body weight, the sooner they can go home. The longer they have to stay in the hospital, the more they are exposed to possible infections. What's more, a healthy body weight is believed to strengthen their immune systms so the babies are more likely to avoid illness in the future.

The researchers noted that several other environmental effects, such as tactile stimulation (whther the baby is held and stroked adequately) and room lighting, are already known to affect the survival and benefit the health of fragile premature infants. The new study, however, is the first to directly study the effect of music on these newborns.

"Medical practitioners are aware that by changing the environment, we can create a whole new treatment paradigm for babies in neonatal care," Dr. Mandal stated. "The point of our research is to quantify these effects so that standards and care-guides can be developed. We still don't know the long-term effects of the music, or if other kinds of music will work just as well."

For more information:
www.aftau.org/site/News2?pag...
www.naturalnews.com/026668_t...

Suzanne

Very interesting! Thank you, Suzanne. I always learn with these articles.

I found these interesting too.

I've read that music related activities (humming, singing, listening to music) can be helpful for a number of "mental" issues.

Music trains the nervous system and improves learning ability

by Jonathan Benson, staff writer

(NaturalNews) Researchers from Northwestern University recently published a series of data in the journal Nature Reviews Neuroscience, revealing that music plays an important role in nervous system development. According to various, diverse scientific literature, musical training improves the brain's overall ability to learn new things.

After poring through data from numerous labs and research centers around the world, Nina Kraus, lead author of the report, and her team, came to realize how valuable music is in enhancing learning ability.

"The brain is unable to process all of the available sensory information from second to second, and thus must selectively enhance what is relevant. Playing an instrument primes the brain to choose what is relevant in a complex process that may involve reading or remembering a score, timing issues and coordination with other musicians," she explained.

In other words, musical training helps to develop the foundation for thinking by which cognitive function is able to improve throughout a person's lifetime.

"Science has studied the effects on humans of various kinds of sound, and the consensus is that the right sort of music definitely has a beneficial effect on our state of health," explains Alfred Vogel in his book The Nature Doctor: A Manual of Traditional and Complementary Medicine.

The data also revealed that children who receive musical training are more adept at interpreting pitch changes in speech, and they generally have a better vocabulary and reading ability than children who receive no musical training.

Sources for this story include:

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_relea...

http://www.naturalpedia.com/Music-1...

Suzanne

Music for your Brain

Finnish researchers divided 60 recovering stroke patients into 3 groups: One group listened to their favorite music for at least an hour a day for 2 months, another listened to audio books, and a third received no listening materials. All were treated wih standard medical care and rehabilitation.

The study, published in the March 2008 issue of the journal Brain, found that after 3 months the
patients who listened to music showed marked improvement in their mood, ability to focus, and verbal memory, compared with those in the other groups. --Consumer Reports, On Health, May 2008.

Suzanne

Music

Attune to Pain. Listening to music may reduce your response to pain, especially if you're the anxious type. Indeed, according to a study where participants focused on a song while receiving safe electric shocks to their fingertips. The more anxious they were about pain, the more likely they were to be engaged in their musical tasks. Participants were asked to pick out the wrong musical notes in simple songs like "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star." They became so absorbed that their physical response to pain stimuli decreased considerably.

Another benefit of music: It activates sensory pathways that compete with pain pathways, which distract listeners from pain sensation. --Journal of Pain, vol. 12, p. 1262.

Suzanne

The healing effects of music proven in tests

by D Holt

(NaturalNews) Easy listening or classical music has been proven to increase healing rates of convalescing patients, researchers have revealed. Patients taking part in the study at John Radcliffe Hospital Oxford were split into two groups - one group underwent operations under local anesthetic and was played music during the operation, whilst the other group was operated on without music. Levels of anxiety were measured through the patients respiratory rate and asking them to rate their anxiety on a scale. Measurements were taken on the operating table prior to the operation, during the procedure and again at the end whilst still on the operating table.

The results, published in the 'Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons,' showed that the patients who were played the music during their operations measured 29% less on anxiety levels and had a lower average breathing rate. The research was the first of its kind as it measured the effect of music on both planned and emergency operations. The music used was classical or easy listening music such as Vivaldi, Beethoven, or Sinatra.

The anxiety before, during, and after an operation can release natural stress hormones that can cause inflammatory responses and therefore slow or prevent healing, leading to longer hospital stays and use of anti-inflammatory drugs.

Is music or sound energy responsible?

The power of music has long been associated with benefits due to releases of stress and the ability to change or enhance moods. Other research has studied whether the actual vibration of the music can have an effect on biological systems; the use of ultrasound on sperm producing capabilities is one of these. One thing that is often disregarded is, just as visible light is only a small fraction of the electromagnetic spectrum, audible sound is only a small fraction of the sound spectrum. The higher and lower frequencies of the sound spectrum such as VLF (very low frequency) and ELF (extremely low frequency) have been proven to be very powerful.

Sound from music played live has a much more dynamic 'feel' as the live strings, reeds, drums etc. can vibrate independently in ways that a speaker cone cannot. These instruments emit on frequencies both inside and outside of the audible spectrum, and with a purity of sound that cannot be matched by technology. This is because all electrical devices are only designed to emit sound in the audible range.

Whilst the calming and distracting effects of the music can be translated through speakers, the full effect of the vibrations cannot. This is a very interesting area of research that stirs some interesting questions such as, Are we affected by sounds and vibrations that we cannot hear in music? Are sound vibrations emitted from the earth? And how do they affect us? Are the sound vibrations emitted from electrical appliances (the humming) causing effects on our bodies? And so on.

Calming meditation music is able to create a calming effect, helping the person to relax the parts of the mind that chatter and interrupt. Most of this music is of a kind that uses a multi layered, orchestral or nature based sound, causing the brain to have a kind of thought resonance, allowing the mind to 'zone out' the outside world. This is why people use it.

Music has many more wondrous properties and this kind of research is a great start, however it is only scratching the surface of this exciting subject.


Sources for this article include:

http://stephen-knapp.com/frequencies_that_can_kill.htm
http://www.healingsounds.com/articles/sonic-entrainment.asp
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UU4qaZuUuVQ
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk
http://www.dailymail.co.uk

Suzanne

No doubt music can be a healing balm to the soul. But where does it cross the line and become a source of evil? Some people listen to classical music and wonder where the inspiration comes from. Most Christians would be shocked how many of their favorite classical music pieces are inspired by imagery of pagan god's.

The violin virtuoso Niccolo Paganini was similar in many ways to modern day rock stars. Drinking, Womanizing and gambling was his true passion with stories of how the devil lead him to be the best violin player ever, yet people listen to that music and think how wonderful but the outcome has a completely different effect than Beethoven.

I believe the source of inspiration comes out in the music. So we must be careful as children of God in even the classics that we listen to.

And these 'studies' done as to the effect on the body and brain. How many of us have heard that a glass of wine is one of the best preventative measures there are, but this is in direct conflict with what God says in the Spirit of Prophecy... who should we listen to? Just be careful to find the source of inspiration.

Should we listen to music from non Adventist sources? How many of our new hymns are from so called Christian Rock bands?

After becoming an Adventist I tried to find ways to continue to use my skills as a professional sound engineer and I volunteered at a huge Christian club called Club Three Degrees here in Minneapolis. I watched as under 18 year old kids did the bump and grind on the dance floor as the music pulsed from the 20,000 watt state of the art sound system and I wondered, how many of these kids moms know what is really going on here. I had to leave because of the promptings of the Holy Spirit.

David soothed Saul by playing for him, but we know where David's inspiration came from.

Healing Through Music, Not Drugs: Brain-wave Music Therapy Miraculously Reduces Night Terrors, Bad Behavior In Children

by David Gutierrez, staff writer

(NaturalNews) A British mother says she has basically cured her daughter's night terrors by playing music specially crafted to produce calm brain waves.

Laura Mulligan of Manchester, England, said that her daughter's screaming night terrors woke their whole family every night for three years.

"My husband and I were on our knees waking up to 20 times every single night," Mulligan said. "When our second daughter Annie was born last year, we had to move each night between the two children, without any possibility of having sleep ourselves.

"I wished someone would just take them for me when they were sleeping and when I came back it would all be fine," she said. "It was really, really strenuous and at times I did feel like I was at the end of my tether."

With the new calming music, however, Mulligan's daughter is able to get back to sleep on her own.

Three sleepless years

Night terrors differ from nightmares in that they do not occur during the dreaming, or REM, phase of sleep. A person who suffers from night terrors will begin to scream, shout or thrash around in seeming panic, but without waking up, and will have no memory of the event the next morning. Night terrors are particularly common in children between the ages of three and eight.

From a very young age, Mulligan's daughter Niamh needed white noise to sleep. Eventually this stopped working, however, and then the night terrors began.

"Niamh would scream the house down," Mulligan said.

The problem became worse when their next daughter, Annie, was born, as Niamh's screams would wake the baby, whose crying would then wake Niamh. This could occur as often as 20 times per night.

"With two children crying and screaming, trying to get one asleep before the other wakes up, it is hard," Mulligan said. "There have been moments when all three of us have just sat on the bed sobbing our hearts out."

"[My husband] James and I were literally only getting one or two hours sleep at night," Mulligan said. "There was no way just one of us could stay awake with her, it was all of us, she would even wake the baby up.

"I don't think James and I were managing very well. We needed some outside help to deal with this.

"I was actually scared about driving the car, because I didn't feel safe as I was so tired."


Alphamusic calms brain, at night and during day

None of the techniques that Mulligan tried worked, until a friend mentioned the "Alphamusic" of Australian piano composer John Levine. Levine's music is designed to "heal people through the power of music" by triggering calming brain waves.

"I got the My Little Sea Shell track," Mulligan said. "The results outdid our expectations. We now put this music on all night on a loop and if she briefly wakes, she goes back to sleep immediately without fuss."

Not only are Mulligan and her husband well rested again, but the music even seems to reduce conflict between their daughters during the day.

"While they do craft work at the kitchen table, normally they are fighting and pulling - there is a lot of jealousy that goes on," Mulligan said. "I just put this special brainwave music on and Niamh is a lot calmer whilst they are cutting out and playing with each other.

"I would like to thank John for composing this piece," she said. "I can't tell you how much of a difference this has made in our lives. I'll tell everyone who will listen."

Sources:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk

Suzanne