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Research in Music Healing Runs from Birth forward…

January 29th, 2010 · Music Medicine

For anyone wanting to know how music can be used for healing or for wellness, there are hundreds of studies in libraries, journals and on the internet. I thought my readers might enjoy seeing just a sampling of some of the published studies from 2009. These studies run the gamut from pregnancy and preemies, to Alzheimer’s patients and end-of-life issues. I welcome your questions and comments.

1. “Music therapy can reduce pain and anxiety in hospice patients” December 2009 23:34

Add guitars and other musical instruments to the tools caregivers can use to help patients in hospice care. Part of Pitts’ motivation for pursuing this research was the lack of resources she could draw on when working with hospice patients. Patients in hospice care, depending on their illnesses, may or may not be able to participate in the playing of music for therapy, Pitts says. But music still matters.

2. The effects of music listening on inconsolable crying in premature infants. Journal of Music Therapy. 2009 Fall;46(3):191-203. Keith DR, Russell K, Weaver BS. Georgia College and State University.
Over the decades, medical staff have developed strategies to manage crying episodes of the critically ill and convalescing premature infant. Twenty-four premature infants with gestational age 32-40 weeks received a developmentally appropriate music listening intervention, alternating with days on which no intervention was provided. The results revealed a significant reduction in the frequency and duration of episodes of inconsolable crying as a result of the music intervention, as well as improved physiological measures including heart rate, respiration rate, oxygen saturation, and mean arterial pressure. Findings suggest the viability of using recorded music in the absence of a music therapist or the maternal voice to console infants when standard nursing interventions are not effective.

3. Music therapy to relieve anxiety in pregnant women on bedrest: a randomized, controlled trial. MCN American Journal of Maternal Child Nursing. 2009 Sep-Oct;34(5):316-23. RESULTS: Anxiety levels decreased and physiological responses improved significantly in the intervention group, which was provided with music therapy while on bedrest. CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS: Carefully selected music that incorporates a patient’s own preferences may offer an inexpensive and effective method to reduce anxiety for antepartal women with high risk pregnancies who are on bedrest.

4. Therapeutic role of music listening in stroke rehabilitation.
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. 2009 Jul;1169:426-30.
We performed two parallel interview studies of stroke patients (n= 20) and professional nurses (n= 5) to gain more insight into the therapeutic role of music listening in stroke rehabilitation. Results suggest that music listening can be used to relax, improve mood, and provide both physical and mental activation during the early stages of recovery from stroke. Thus, music listening could provide a useful clinical tool in stroke rehabilitation.

5. Music for stress and anxiety reduction in coronary heart disease patients.
Cochrane Database Systematic Reviews. 2009 Apr 15;(2):
AUTHORS’ CONCLUSIONS: Music listening may have a beneficial effect on blood pressure, heart rate, respiratory rate, anxiety, and pain in persons with CHD. However, the quality of the evidence is not strong and the clinical significance unclear.Most studies examined the effects of listening to pre-recorded music. More research is needed on the effects of music offered by a trained music therapist.

There are so many other wonderful research studies that are easy to find online if you are interested in more information. If you want to learn how to implement any of these interventions in your life, feel free to contact me through my website!

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Music and Stress in Children Receiving General Anesthesia

January 27th, 2010 · Music and Surgery

Introduction

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The research I am about to present today has taken three years. Its goal was to reduce physiological and emotional stress in patients undergoing general anesthesia. The research questions were:

Is there audio perception when under anesthesia?
Can we find a parameter that would measure the physiological and biochemical effect of music under anesthesia?
As a resident music therapist in the children’s surgery department of the Medical Center in Jerusalem, I witnessed the positive effects of music on the emotional state of pre- and post-operative children. These encounters gave me the incentive to research the effects music might have during the process of the surgery itself.

I speculated that playing music to children undergoing general anesthesia would help to reduce their psychological and physiological stress levels.

Let us begin with my first question and see what we know about hearing during general anesthesia:

Hearing and Memory Under General Anesthesia

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Lately, research has shown that people are able to hear and report what they heard while under general anesthesia (McCarron and Bonny, 1984).

How would you feel, if you were anesthetized during surgery and heard the following?

Just a moment! I don’t like the patient’s color. Much too blue.
Her lips are very blue. I’m going to give a little more oxygen. . . .
There, that’s better now. You can carry on with the operation.
(Levinson, 1965:544)
Patients are not EXPECTED to be aware of events during anesthesia, and they are not EXPECTED to have any post-surgical memories of events that happened during anesthesia. However, despite these expectations, research (Levinson 1965, Gurman 2000) has shown that in many cases high level auditory processing (as is necessary for music perception) still exists for at least some patients undergoing general anesthesia. In addition, research shows that even if the patients cannot recall exactly what happened in the Operating Room, evidence of their experiences comes up in implicit memory tasks (Gurman 2000).

The implications of such reports are serious indeed. Patients may be at risk of psychological trauma that they not even aware of, or know the source of. In fact, research shows that of those patients who are aware during general anesthesia, 80% show symptoms compatible with Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome (Cundy and Dasey, 1996: 143). So, if nothing else, simply wearing headphones and being exposed to music rather than to stressful comments during the operation could have beneficial results.

However, we hypothesize that the administration of music during anesthesia has much deeper effects. These effects are related to music’s ability to influence physical and psychological states.

Review of Literature

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Discussions about the influence of music on depression and pain have been around since at least the beginning of the 1800’s. Some stories even go back to biblical times. Technological means for measuring results have only come recently. But we still do not know exactly what effect music has on the human body.

So What Do We Know Today?

We know the following effects which music has on the human body:

Physiological and Psychological Aspects:
First of all, we definitely know that music affects the limbic system which regulates deep emotions and many involuntary physical operations and reactions (pulse & blood pressure)
Second, music may alter pain perception and pain sensation.
Third, Music also assists in reducing stress levels:
In the light of the effects mentioned above, it is reasonable to assume that music can provide a significant contribution in reducing stress during anesthesia.

Effects of Music on Patients Under Anesthesia:
A number of studies have shown positive effects of music on patients undergoing general anesthesia. However, there are still many questions unresolved.

Firstly, what are the tests or diagnostics available to measure emotional stress directly?
Secondly, would music have the same positive effects on children undergoing general anesthesia?
Stress caused by Hospitalization
As we know, hospitalization can be a traumatic experience. The experience of being cut off from home, surgery and treatment, creates a stressful reaction (Sekeles, 1996).

As mentioned before, surgery and anesthesia are physically stressful and can be measured scientifically. This contrasts with emotional stress, which is more difficult to define and to measure. In addition, doctors believe that the patients’ emotional state is very important for their recovery.

How to measure emotional stress?
One of the first difficulties I faced was how to measure the emotional stress in children. Since only measurable results are valid, finding a measure for emotional stress was quite important. Such a parameter needs to be standardized, which is not always easy.

We decided to measure the level of Cortisol known as “the stress hormone”.

Although stress isn’t the only reason that cortisol is secreted into the bloodstream, it has been termed “the stress hormone” because it’s also secreted in higher levels during the body’s `fight or flight’ response to stress, and is responsible for several stress-related changes in the body. (Elizabeth Scott)
Since we could not use blood tests for this research because of the Helsinki committee’s limitations on intrusive procedures, we opted for measuring Cortisol levels in saliva.

Research Design

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In order to achieve standardization, my research concentrates on relatively simple eye operations. I investigate the effects of music on patients undergoing general anesthesia, for eye surgery, by comparing both the quality of the post-operative behavior and the biochemical levels of Cortisol – the stress hormone.

I begin by meeting with children ages 6 to18 in the preoperative preparation program. I let them know that they have the option of listening to music during the operation. If the child shows interest, I obtain written permission from the child, their parents and the medical staff. The child then brings their personal choice of music which was pre-selected in an interview before the operation.

During the operation, I supply the child with a set of specially designed earphones that do not interfere with the surgery. The music is turned on and adjusted to a level that does not exceed 65-70 dB (typical for experiments in music cognition).

In order to measure the effects of the music and to measure stress levels before, during and after the time of the operation, the saliva test is taken 3 times:

First, one day before the operation.
Second, immediately before anesthesia
Third, upon awakening from anesthesia after the operation.
Besides the saliva test, we used two additional and complementary scales in order to assess the patient’s state.

The first scale was the 4-point Watcha Agitation Scale, which was applied when the child awoke from the anesthetic by the attending nurse, who reported the child’s agitation level to the researcher.

As you can see on the 4-point Watcha Agitation Scale:

TABLE 1. 4-Point Agitation Scale – Watcha Relaxed
3

Crying but consolable
2

Crying inconsolably
1

Restlessness
0

The second scale was the Oucher Visual Pain Scale, which was also applied on awakening from the anesthesia

FIGURE 1. Oucher Visual Pain-Scale

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Subject Demographics
The research population included children between the ages of 6-18. This age range was selected so as to enable me to communicate with them freely. The children came from 4 different cultural backgrounds:

Secular Jews
Secular Arabs
Religious Jews
Religious Arabs
The patients’ languages included Hebrew, Arabic, English and Russian.

In the case of Arabic speaking children, I invited the parents to assist in translation. In the case of Hebrew, English and Russian speaking children, I personally communicated with the children myself.

How was the music chosen?
My first thought was to choose relaxing music, for example ocean waves or classical pieces. In the end, however, I decided to let the child bring his or her favorite music because it gives them a sense of comfort and security.

By playing the child’s favorite music during the operation, the music served as a “transitional object” (Winnicott, 1971), which helped to overcome unpleasant feelings and loneliness.

What type of music did the children want?
The interesting thing about their choice of music was its intensive tempo and rhythm. I will now play some examples of their choices.

As we have heard, their choice of music is far from “lullaby”, but does contain some common features:

It is familiar
It is music they have at home
There is a singer
Fast rhythm and tempo
Results

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As the next table shows, the results, despite not being statistically conclusive, show that the music group’s awakening was much more pleasant. We compared several categories as we see from the table

The most significant effect, 21 percent, appears in the comparative study of short operations (less than 65 minutes).

TABLE 2. Comparative Results of Quality of Awakening between Control Group and Music Group Description
Results
Conclusion

Study of the effect of music therapy on quality of awakening

The result shows an effect (11.9 %) of provided treatment on patients’ awakeness. (student t-test, 0.1664)

Study of the effect of music therapy on quality of awakening in Jewish patients

The result shows an effect (15.3%) of the therapy on patients’ awakeness for Jewish patients. (student t-test, 0.129). It is also important to note that there is no difference between the awakeness quality values for Jewish and general patients

Study of the effect of music therapy on quality of awakening after operation for Strabismus correction.

The result shows an effect (14.3%) of the therapy on patients’ awakeness after Strabismus correction operation (student t-test, 0.187).

Study of the effect of music therapy on quality of awakening after short time (less 65 min) operations.

The result shows a significant effect (21%) of the therapy on patients’ awakeness after short time operations (student t-test, 0.081).

Study of the effect of music therapy on quality of awakening for both genders

The result shows an effect of the therapy on patients’ awakeness for boys (15.6%) and girls (13.6%) (student t-tests, 0.155 and 0.213, comparatively).

It is also interesting to mention that the studied girls show better post-operative awakeness capability in both, control (17.3%, t-test 0.205) and treated (15.4%, t-test 0.17), groups.

FIGURE 2. Salivary cortisol test

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This table shows the results of the cortisol test. The first time checkpoint was one day before surgery; the second checkpoint was one hour before surgery, and the third checkpoint was one hour after surgery. As we can see, the results are not statistically conclusive, but they do show a clear tendency in favor of the music group.

CONCLUSIONS

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Initially, I thought that measuring the effects of music would be simple. That I would play music to patients, measure their stress levels, and immediately see the benefits that music gave. It turned out that the process was much more complicated. Factors such as the depth of anesthesia, levels of emotional stress, standardizing, and measuring results have all added to the complexity of the experiment. Apart from that, the experiment lacked the optimal infrastructure necessary for a clinical study in the field. And in addition, we discovered during our work that testing for cortisol is a non-routine test and has no acknowledged base line. Nor did we take into account the fact that cortisol levels fluctuate during the day. They can be high in the morning and lower later on, and the cortisol tests we carried out were on children whose surgery was scheduled at different times of the day.

It should be noted that, for technical reasons, the number of subjects tested for cortisol levels was limited, which should be taken into account in future experiments and the number increased. We also felt that objective tests of cortisol and awakening quality should be complemented by subjective psychological tests such as questionnaires. We did not use questionnaires in this study, but in conversations a week after surgery the importance of providing emotional support by means of music for children and their parents was clear.

It is certainly clear from the above that future research should include the use of questionnaires which give insight into subjective experiences and complement the objective use of cortisol.

Finally, I should say that the most important thing my research has shown me is that despite the lack of statistically conclusive results in the physiological and biochemical test I stay convinced more than ever, that music is an effective means for lowering stress in children during general anesthesia and surgery.

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References of this conference paper can be obtained by the author

This article can be cited as:
Bogopolsky, H. (2007) Music and stress in children during general anesthesia and surgery. Music Therapy Today Vol.VIII (3) December. available at http://musictherapyworld.net

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Learning to Meditate with Music

January 27th, 2010 · Music and the Mind-Body

Published with the author’s permission:
How to Meditate with Music BY JAVIER RAMON BRITO

I will offer you a guide on how to meditate with music, summarized in 10 easy steps to make the most of this kind of meditation.

1. Choose a good piece of meditation music or meditative, inspirational, instrumental music. Why instrumental music? Because instrumental music stimulates your right brain’s activity (the intuitive side of your brain). Music with lyrics involves your left brain’s activity (the rational side of your brain), because linguistically spoken words makes you think. When you meditate, what you want is to quiet and transcend your rational mind, which is usually overtaxed by hectic modern life styles. So choose an instrumental song when you want to meditate with music. Songs with choirs are fine as long as the voices do not utter linguistically spoken words. A notable exception to this might be the so called sacred sounds coined in ancient languages, which are used as mantras along with the music, as in the case of Tibetan music.

2. Go to a quiet, peaceful place. Take the phone off the hook. Make sure you will not be disturbed or interrupted. Find a comfortable, relaxed position to sit or lie for a half hour. The more relaxed you are, the more beneficial your meditation with music will be because you will grasp better the music vibrations. This is due to the fact that, as you relax, you become more sound sensitive. So before you listen to your piece of meditation or inspirational music, you may wish to spend some moments focusing your quiet attention on each part of your body, starting with the feet and moving up to the top of your head, while you breath deeply but slowly.

3. Next, listen to your meditative music with headphones, at a comfortable volume. You can use a cassette deck, a CD player or an iPod to meditate with music, but the use of a pair of good quality headphones is necessary to better receive the musical vibrations. It does make a difference. If you use an iPod, make sure that your selected music has been converted by your iPod system to the highest possible bitrate (ideally to Wav or Aiff music files) to ensure maximum sound quality (you can edit your preferences in the advanced/importing menu; then right click on the song and choose “convert to”).

4. While you listen, use a natural (not forced) diaphragmatic breathing to meditate with music. This is the so called “belly breathing”. On inhaling through your nostrils, direct your breath into your abdomen and feel it rise. On exhaling through your nostrils, feel your abdomen fall. If you want to center even further, lightly press your tongue against the roof of your mouth while you inhale deeply (but slowly) through your nostrils and exhale not through your nostrils but through your slightly parted lips.

5. Relax. Do not worry about what you should be thinking, visualizing or doing while you meditate with music. This is not about “doing” but about “being”.

6. When different thoughts cross your mind, just let them be and pass away. Focus on the music. Let the sounds be your mantra. If you find yourself directing your thoughts or attention to the past or the future, return to the here and now. Be present in the moment.

7. As you focus on your inspirational music, allow its vibrations to passively stimulate your positive energies. Give yourself up to the music. Allow it to naturally work upon your emotions, mind and soul. Feel it surrounding you, embracing you, filling you. Absorb its vibrations with each breath. When you begin to resonate with the music, you will notice that your breath and your heartbeat gradually synchronize to the “pulse” of the music. This is called entrainment. Your mood is matching the mood of the music and moving already into the desired direction.

8. Once you have reached the entrainment point, enjoy it. Stay there as long as it feels good to you. If the music stimulates your imagination at this stage, enjoy it. That signals the release of stress. If you fall asleep, do not worry. That is also a sign of the release of stress. You can end your meditation with music at this point. You would be refreshed afterwards and in a better position to go back to your daily life.

9. While at the entrainment point, some people may wish to go further and incorporate visualization tools to your meditation with music. This entails visualizing yourself comfortably succeeding at a specific goal of yours. Do not do this before you reach the entrainment point, since it could transform your meditation with music into a mere exercise of will power in the arena of your rational mind. Do it only after you reach the entrainment point and you are in a relaxed state. At this point you can incorporate visualization tools.

When doing so, vividly imagine the experiences you want to have. I say to visual people: visualize your dreams; to auditory people: hear them; to kinesthetic people: feel them; to smellers: scent them; to tasters: relish them.

A word of caution: do not waste your time visualizing or wishing things that may invade the sphere of other people, since this will take you out of the positive energy creative field, wasting your meditation energy and making it work in reverse, against you. Your desires must be honest and aligned with the highest good of all, pursuant to the law of unity.

10. Once your meditation with music ends, do not rush back into your daily life. You have to ground and assimilate the energy. Remain still for several minutes. If you meditated with your eyes closed, gently open them and let them adjust to the light. Slowly stretch each major part of your body. Sit or lie quietly for about five minutes. Notice and enjoy how relaxed, refreshed and strengthen you feel. Finally, express gratitude for the benefits of your meditation with music.

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Published with the author’s permission:
How to Meditate with Music BY JAVIER RAMON BRITO
http://www.personal-growth-can-be-fun.com

Namaste,

Javier Ramon Brito

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Music and the Brain: Meet Melody Gardot

January 25th, 2010 · Music and the Brain

This morning on CBS Sunday Morning there was a fabulous, inspiring, uplifting story!  Definitely wanted to share this with all my readers!

Her sultry voice has made Melody Gardot an international sensation. Her latest album, “My One and Only Thrill,” has dazzled critics in the U.S., and sold more than half a million copies in Europe.

It’s Number One on a key French chart this week . . . ahead of the Black Eyed Peas.

“What is it with you and the French?” Mason asked the singer.

“I’m glad that question is about France and not about a man,” she laughed. “The country, I love it so, and it loves me back the same way, you know?”

They do share a taste for glamour, as evidence by her pretty wild shoes:

“These are like Corvettes,” she said. “I don’t drive so well. So instead of collecting cars, you could say I collect shoes.”

Not the most practical footwear for a singer who at 25 needs to walk with a cane.

That smooth voice can make you forget Melody Gardot lives with almost constant physical pain:

“You gotta be pretty tough,” Mason said.

“I went to the school of hard knocks. I don’t mess around.”

Six years ago, as a college student in Philadelphia, she was riding her bike through an intersection, when a Jeep ran a red light:

“And the next thing is, I remember I heard this sound, and I thought, ‘Who is that? What is that?’ And I realized that it was me screaming.”

“Well, I’m buckled up inside,
Miracle that I’m alive”

The accident fractured her pelvis, damaged her spine, and Gardot suffered a traumatic brain injury that affected her memory, her speech, and left her hypersensitive to light and sound.

“My mother dropped a dish on the floor one day and the sound made me collapse,” Gardot said.

(CBS)The prognosis at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey was not good. When he first saw her, Dr. Richard Jermyn didn’t think she would recover. “I had hope,” he said. “And as I told Melody at the time, I said ‘Your brain is like a computer. And your computer’s still intact. Your hardware, your memory, it’s there. You can’t access it.’

“That’s what a brain injury does – It takes your ability to access that away.”

Therapy and drugs had failed. In desperation, Dr. Jermyn suggested Melody try music. (She had played piano in college.)

“It’s a different part of your brain that perceives music,” said Dr. Jermyn, who recalled Gardot returned to him to say, ‘”The music is there.'”

Gardot never gave up. Slowly . . . it would take years . . . music therapy began to rebuild the neural pathways in her brain.

“How did that grow into what you’re doing now?” Mason asked.

“That is almost a question for God,” she said.

From the wreckage of the accident, a musical career was born. When her songs were posted on MySpace in 2006, word quickly spread.

She said when she went onstage, “the first maybe half a dozen times experiencing this, that was the only 30 minutes in my life that I did not feel pain for that moment. And it was addictive.”

(CBS)She still has to wear dark classes because of her sensitivity to light, and carry the cane to counter occasional attacks of vertigo. But she wears her disability with style.

On the day we visited with her, Melody heard, off-camera, that her album had gone double platinum in France, prompting a scream of delight. She’s sold 200,000 copies there:

“Do you consider yourself a Philadelphian?” Mason asked.

“Yes, it’s where I’m from. It’s my nest. How could a bird forget the tree he fell out of?” she said. “But Paris has a pretty big pull on me, too!”

“Yeah, well, platinum’ll do that to ya.” Mason laughed.

The French word for it is “Renaissance” – a rebirth. It’s as if Melody Gardot has been born again.

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Your Brain on Music: A video

January 20th, 2010 · Music and the Brain


The research team showed that music engages the areas of the brain involved with paying attention, making predictions and updating the event in memory. Peak brain activity occurred during a short period of silence between musical movements—when seemingly nothing was happening.

Beyond understanding the process of listening to music, their work has far-reaching implications for how human brains sort out events in general. Their findings are published in the Aug. 2 issue of Neuron.

The researchers caught glimpses of the brain in action using functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, which gives a dynamic image showing which parts of the brain are working during a given activity. The goal of the study was to look at how the brain sorts out events, but the research also revealed that musical techniques used by composers 200 years ago help the brain organize incoming information.

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“In a concert setting, for example, different individuals listen to a piece of music with wandering attention, but at the transition point between movements, their attention is arrested,” said the paper’s senior author Vinod Menon, PhD, associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and of neurosciences.

“I’m not sure if the baroque composers would have thought of it in this way, but certainly from a modern neuroscience perspective, our study shows that this is a moment when individual brains respond in a tightly synchronized manner,” Menon said.

The team used music to help study the brain’s attempt to make sense of the continual flow of information the real world generates, a process called event segmentation. The brain partitions information into meaningful chunks by extracting information about beginnings, endings and the boundaries between events.

“These transitions between musical movements offer an ideal setting to study the dynamically changing landscape of activity in the brain during this segmentation process,” said Devarajan Sridharan, a neurosciences graduate student trained in Indian percussion and first author of the article.

No previous study, to the researchers’ knowledge, has directly addressed the question of event segmentation in the act of hearing and, specifically, in music. To explore this area, the team chose pieces of music that contained several movements, which are self-contained sections that break a single work into segments. They chose eight symphonies by the English late-baroque period composer William Boyce (1711-79), because his music has a familiar style but is not widely recognized, and it contains several well-defined transitions between relatively short movements.

The study focused on movement transitions—when the music slows down, is punctuated by a brief silence and begins the next movement. These transitions span a few seconds and are obvious to even a non-musician—an aspect critical to their study, which was limited to participants with no formal music training.

The researchers attempted to mimic the everyday activity of listening to music, while their subjects were lying prone inside the large, noisy chamber of an MRI machine. Ten men and eight women entered the MRI scanner with noise-reducing headphones, with instructions to simply listen passively to the music.

In the analysis of the participants’ brain scans, the researchers focused on a 10-second window before and after the transition between movements. They identified two distinct neural networks involved in processing the movement transition, located in two separate areas of the brain. They found what they called a “striking” difference between activity levels in the right and left sides of the brain during the entire transition, with the right side significantly more active.

In this foundational study, the researchers conclude that dynamic changes seen in the fMRI scans reflect the brain’s evolving responses to different phases of a symphony. An event change—the movement transition signaled by the termination of one movement, a brief pause, followed by the initiation of a new movement—activates the first network, called the ventral fronto-temporal network. Then a second network, the dorsal fronto-parietal network, turns the spotlight of attention to the change and, upon the next event beginning, updates working memory.

“The study suggests one possible adaptive evolutionary purpose of music,” said Jonathan Berger, PhD, associate professor of music and a musician who is another co-author of the study. Music engages the brain over a period of time, he said, and the process of listening to music could be a way that the brain sharpens its ability to anticipate events and sustain attention.

According to the researchers, their findings expand on previous functional brain imaging studies of anticipation, which is at the heart of the musical experience. Even non-musicians are actively engaged, at least subconsciously, in tracking the ongoing development of a musical piece, and forming predictions about what will come next. Typically in music, when something will come next is known, because of the music’s underlying pulse or rhythm, but what will occur next is less known, they said.

Having a mismatch between what listeners expect to hear vs. what they actually hear—for example, if an unrelated chord follows an ongoing harmony—triggers similar ventral regions of the brain. Once activated, that region partitions the deviant chord as a different segment with distinct boundaries.

The results of the study “may put us closer to solving the cocktail party problem—how it is that we are able to follow one conversation in a crowded room of many conversations,” said one of the co-authors, Daniel Levitin, PhD, a music psychologist from McGill University who has written a popular book called This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession.

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Gift of music thrills Holy Angels

January 18th, 2010 · Music and the Brain

New program enables people with disabilities to perform with even the slightest motion.

The musical instrument is invisible – played by hand movements or nods of the head.

Sounds showering the air may be like the sweet purr of a harp or a full orchestra’s blast.

The players are residents of Belmont-based Holy Angels, a center for children and adults with severe disabilities that is run by the Sisters of Mercy.

They’re taking part in a new program that allows them to create musical sounds by interrupting an invisible beam that sends out ultra-sonic pulses. The sounds – anything from a guitar to a piano – are programmed into a computer/synthesizer connected to microphones that emit the ultrasonic waves. When the waves are broken, sounds come out in long or short bursts against background music created by the synthesizer.

Introduced in Germany in the late 1980s, the sound beams open up a world of possibilities for people who are extremely limited in what they can do.

“They can really enjoy music in a way in which they can actually participate,” said Gaye Dimmick, director of creative arts at Holy Angels. “They’re independent in a way they’ve never been before. It’s a big step for them.”

The sound beam is an addition to the recently announced Don & Lynn Leonard Music Program, named after two longtime volunteers at Holy Angels.

Don Leonard, who died of cancer in 2008, ran a Charlotte heating and air-conditioning business, but he made music on the side at Holy Angels.

Before he died in 2008 at 61, he asked that donations in his memory be made to Holy Angels, where he was considered the “resident musician.” Nearly $12,000 came in.

“Don wanted to do something that would last,” said Lynn Leonard of Gastonia. “I think he would be thrilled over this program. He knew the power of music.”

Faces light up

Lexington native Don Leonard got his first guitar in junior high. His passion for music took off, even though he couldn’t read a note and played by ear.

In the mid-1960s, as a student at Salisbury’s Catawba College, he traveled with a band called The Jokers Six & the Marlboros, playing beach, rock and soul.

Don and Lynn Leonard married in 1971 and moved from Salisbury to Gastonia in 1981.

Lynn Leonard connected with Holy Angels 10 years later when she helped build an endowment fund there and became a volunteer.

“I saw the care the kids were getting,” Leonard said. “The situations were sad, but their lives were so enriched.”

Her three children also became volunteers. So did her husband, who put his musical talent to use.

He and a friend, vocalist Johnny Brincefield of Salisbury, performed at Holy Angels’ special events – everything from groundbreakings to holiday parties.

“This was another way Don had of sharing his music,” Lynn Leonard said. “He said it just warmed his heart to see these children love music as much as he did.”

Don Leonard was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2000. Following surgery, he had 35 radiation treatments and experimental treatment in the Dominican Republic.

In the long fight for his life, music helped.

He liked all kinds: Eric Clapton and Carlos Santana; Chet Atkins and Jim Croce; Spyro Gyra and the Rippingtons.

“Music was his obsession,” Lynn Leonard said. “Don would go down to his little music room and spent time there. He said it put him in another place.”

Leonard stayed involved with Holy Angels, music and his job – right until the end.

Donations in his memory are also paying for another part of the music program: the Rhythmic Arts Project. Hand-held drums are used as a simple method of teaching residents such things as numbers, concentration and focus.

Lynn Leonard has watched the children’s reaction.

“Their faces light up,” she said. “They’re very moved by music. It calms them, inspires them and excites them.”

Beat goes on

Sister Nancy Nance, Holy Angels’ vice president of community relations, has also seen the power of music at work.

For a few minutes, the children’s limitations are loosened. The slightest body movement unlocks a flood of wonder.

“They’re delighted,” Nance said.

In the future, more sounds can be added to the program that’s a continuing legacy for the man who couldn’t read music, but loved sharing it.

“Don’s up in heaven smiling,” Lynn Leonard said. “The beat goes on.”

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Fascinating Vibrational Research on Music and the Body

January 16th, 2010 · Vibrational and Sound Healing

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Fabien Maman showed that our very cells respond directly to music. In 1974, while working as a professional jazz musician, he observed that certain musical keys would energize both the musicians and the audience. He brought this insight to French physicist Joel Sternheimer, who discovered that elementary particles vibrate in accordance with musical laws. Their combined research indicated that body tissues, organs and acupuncture meridians each have a musical note.

Maman used Kirlian photography to photograph the changes in the electromagnetic fields around healthy cells while playing a xylophone to them. He found that the slight difference of a half tone would produce a completely different shape and color in the energy field of the cell. When he played the note C, they became longer, D elicited a variety of colors, E caused them to become spherical, and A changed their color field from red to pink.

Maman took a sample of blood from a subject’s finger and asked her to sing the seven notes of the major scale to her own blood cells. The cells’ energy field changed with each note until she sang the note F, at which point the cells resonated perfectly with her voice, producing a balanced, round shape with vibrant magenta and turquoise colors. He concluded that this note was the fundamental sound of the singer, and that a person’s fundamental sound, produced by his or her own voice, is the most powerful healing tool to harmonize and regenerate the body at the cellular level.

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Mozart helps preemies gain weight!

January 13th, 2010 · The Mozart Effect...why Mozart?

A new study had just been published in the journal Pediatrics, suggesting that playing Mozart for preemies can speed up weight gain!
”
.Playing Mozart music to premature babies seems to help them gain weight faster and become stronger, new research found.

Once a day for two consecutive days, doctors played either 30 minutes of music by the 18th-century composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, or no music, to 20 pre-term babies at the Tel Aviv Medical Center in Israel. After listening to the music, the babies were calmer and so expended less energy than the no-music group. When babies’ energy expenditure is decreased, they don’t need as many calories to grow, so can gain weight and thrive more quickly – exactly what preemies need.

“It’s not exactly clear how the music is affecting them, but it makes them calmer and less likely to be agitated,” said researcher Dror Mandel, a lecturer at Tel Aviv University.

Though the sample size was small, the scientists said their findings were statistically significant.

Previous research has shown that music can reduce stress, decrease heart rate, and increase oxygen saturation in preterm infants. Oxygen saturation is a measure of the amount of oxygen carried in the blood relative to the maximum amount the blood could carry. When this number gets low it can be a sign of heart or lung problems.

The researchers didn’t try playing any music other than Mozart’s, so they don’t know whether the effect would hold true for other tunes.

“We want to know if what we found is a Mozart effect, or just music,” Mandel told LiveScience. “I think that other composers will also have effects, however it might be that the Mozart music has particular effects compared to other composers.”

The researchers decided to try Mozart music because of a 1993 study that found that college students could temporarily improve their performance on spatial–temporal tasks by listening to a Mozart sonata for 10 minutes a day.

“The repetitive melodies in Mozart’s music may be affecting the organizational centers of the brain’s cortex,” Mandel said. “Unlike Beethoven, Bach or Bartok, Mozart’s music is composed with a melody that is highly repetitive.”

However, the so-called Mozart effect has sometimes been taken too far. A company called Baby Einstein (now owned by Disney) that publishes a series of Baby Mozart videos and music disks offered a refund last year for all Baby Einstein videos, after receiving complaints that the company had falsely claimed the videos were educational.

The Israeli researchers plan to test out different kinds of music soon. One team member suggested that rap music might evoke the same response as Mozart, since it has a similar pulsating and repetitive frequency.

Mandel and his colleague Ronit Lubetzky published their findings in the January issue of the journal Pediatrics. ”
By Clara Moskowitz, LiveScience Staff Writer

posted: 13 January 2010 09:18 am ET

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