The performer is actually a neuroscientist and had the ability to have a little keyboard created and take it into an MRI machine to show the difference between the brain processing pre-composed music and the brain processing improvised music. What do you prefer?

J Oral Maxillofac Surg. 2010 Aug 11. [Epub ahead of print]

Musical Intervention Reduces Patients’ Anxiety in Surgical Extraction of an Impacted Mandibular Third Molar.

Kyoung Kim Y, Kim SM, Myoung H.

Primary Researcher.

PMID: 20708320 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]

J Clin Nurs. 2009 Aug;18(15):2153-61.

Soothing music can increase oxytocin levels during bed rest after open-heart surgery: a randomised control trial.

Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery and Centre for Health Care Sciences, Orebro University Hospital and School of Health, Orebro University, P.O. Box 1324, Orebro SE 70113, Sweden. ulrica.nilsson@orebroll.se

Introduction

——————————————————————————–

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

——————————————————————————–

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

——————————————————————————–

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

——————————————————————————–

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

——————————————————————————–

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

——————————————————————————–

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

——————————————————————————–

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

——————————————————————————–

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.

—–

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

http://the-brain-and-music.blogspot.com/2009/07/music-releases-endorphins-in-brain.html

Everyone knows that music makes them feel better, but apparently, music immediately after surgery is even more powerful than previously known. today I came across this article: By Denise DadorLOS ANGELES (KABC) — A local hospital takes the healing properties of music right to the patients.
She’s in the hospital, but Carol Starks feels she’s being transported to another place.
“A little music goes a long way and it soothes the soul,” said Starks.
Bariatric surgeon and musician, Dr. Peter Crookes, heals for a living but says modern medicine can only bring people so far. The rest depends on the patient and he believes music helps.
“It may cause the release of endorphins and that is one of the postulate mechanisms. Anything that will open the patient’s mind to other dimensions of life helps them to cope with it,” said Dr. Crookes.
Musician Jane Kim founded the USC volunteer program. She saw music’s medical effects firsthand when her father was a patient.
“At the time that he was in the hospital he found it very beneficial listening to music. And seeing the positive effects it had on him I wanted to share that with others,” said Kim.
Once a month, some patients get treated to an impromptu concert.
“It was just great. It just made me feel very good and it made me feel very special,” said patient Ceci Montalvo.
We all enjoy hearing music, but if it’s just in the background and you’re just passively listening, experts say it’s not going to work on your body and mind. To truly experience music you have to actively listen to it.
“If you attend to music it channels the brain and trains certain actions in the brain which I think are beneficial,” said Dr. Crookes.
Studies show music can help people recovering from pain and reduce the need for post-op medications.
Another study reveals music can reduce the anxiety of patients just before surgery. Patients say music’s ability to alter their mood can be quite beneficial.
“It makes happiness. It doesn’t matter how sad you are or how hurt you are, music can bring it out,” said Starks.
If you are interested in being a volunteer for the Music Heals program send an e-mail to musichealsgroup@gmail.com.

Click here for more headlines from ABC7 Eyewitness News

(Copyright ©2009 KABC-TV/DT. All Rights Reserved.)

Music, the Brain, and Academic Performance

June 21, 2009

Music affects many areas of brain function
by Marjorie H. Weil
Recently the Albion School District announced that, beginning this fall, all fifth- through 12th-graders would be required to take band or choir. Why? Because statistics show that students who do so perform better academically, have higher SAT scores, are more self-confident and are better adjusted socially.
This is not news. Many studies over the years have confirmed these findings. Unfortunately, most of these past studies have been anecdotal in nature or are the result of extensive surveys, and there was little that could address the cause-effect relationship – or why and how music affects the learning process.
But that is beginning to change. And Albion may be on to more than they realize. Researchers in neuroscience, utilizing recent advances in MRI technology, are actually studying the human brain in the act of creating, or listening to, music. And what they are finding is remarkable.
One of the leaders in this field is Dr. Daniel J. Levitin, author of “This Is Your Brain On Music.” Published in 2006, the book remained on the New York Times best-seller list for over a year and has been translated into 11 languages. I felt fortunate to hear Dr. Levitin speak last fall at the 75th anniversary celebration of Western Michigan University’s School of Music Therapy. His work and that of other neuroscientists in “brain-mapping” is challenging several previously held beliefs.
Where it was once thought, for example, that a particular region of the brain was dedicated to music, it has now been shown that music actually affects many areas of brain function. Combined with the fact that music is a basic part of every human culture around the globe has led Levitin to conclude that the human brain is actually “hard-wired” for music, and music may be even more fundamental to our species than language.
Understanding the strong connection between the auditory and motor regions of the brain has made it possible for people with motor disorders such as Parkinson’s disease to improve their ability to walk while listening to a rhythm track, and stroke patients have been able to improve their speech through music therapy.
Perhaps the most exciting news, however, is that there is new evidence that music can actually change the physical structure of the brain – a fact that has critical implications for both education and medicine. Music may even be a major key to unlocking the mystery of how the brain actually learns.

All Things Considered, May 22, 2009 · We’ve all heard the stories about near-death experiences: the tunnel, the white light, the encounter with long-dead relatives now looking very much alive.
Scientists have cast a skeptical eye on these accounts. They say that these feelings and visions are simply the result of a brain shutting down.
But now some researchers are giving a closer neurological look at near-death experiences and asking: Can your mind operate when your brain has stopped?
‘I Popped Up Out The Top Of My Head’
I met Pam Reynolds in her tour bus. She’s a big deal in the music world — her company, Southern Tracks, has recorded music by everyone from Bruce Springsteen to Pearl Jam to REM. But you’ve probably never heard her favorite song. It’s the one Reynolds wrote about the time she traveled to death’s door and back. The experience has made her something of a rock star in the near-death world. Believers say she is proof positive that the mind can operate when the brain is stilled. Nonbelievers say she’s nothing of the sort.
Reynolds’ journey began one hot August day in 1991.
“I was in Virginia Beach, Va., with my husband,” she recalls. “We were promoting a new record. And I inexplicably forgot how to talk. I’ve got a big mouth. I never forget how to talk.”
An MRI revealed an aneurysm on her brain stem. It was already leaking, a ticking time bomb. Her doctor in Atlanta said her best hope was a young brain surgeon at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Arizona named Robert Spetzler.
“The aneurysm was very large, which meant the risk of rupture was also very large,” Spetzler says. “And it was in a location where the only way to really give her the very best odds of fixing it required what we call ‘cardiac standstill.’ ”
It was a daring operation: Chilling her body, draining the blood out of her head like oil from a car engine, snipping the aneurysm and then bringing her back from the edge of death.
“She is as deeply comatose as you can be and still be alive,” Spetzler observes.
When the operation began, the surgeons taped shut Reynolds’ eyes and put molded speakers in her ears. The ear speakers, which made clicking sounds as loud as a jet plane taking off, allowed the surgeons to measure her brain stem activity and let them know when they could drain her blood.
“I was lying there on the gurney minding my own business, seriously unconscious, when I started to hear a noise,” Reynolds recalls. “It was a natural D, and as the sound continued — I don’t know how to explain this, other than to go ahead and say it — I popped up out the top of my head.”
A Tunnel And Bright Light
She says she found herself looking down at the operating table. She says she could see 20 people around the table and hear what sounded like a dentist’s drill. She looked at the instrument in the surgeon’s hand.
“It was an odd-looking thing,” she says. “It looked like the handle on my electric toothbrush.”
Reynolds observed the Midas Rex bone saw the surgeons used to cut open her head, the drill bits, and the case, which looked like the one where her father kept his socket wrenches. Then she noticed a surgeon at her left groin.
“I heard a female voice say, ‘Her arteries are too small.’ And Dr. Spetzler — I think it was him — said, ‘Use the other side,’ ” Reynolds says.
Soon after, the surgeons began to lower her body temperature to 60 degrees. It was about that time that Reynolds believes she noticed a tunnel and bright light. She eventually flat-lined completely, and the surgeons drained the blood out of her head.
During her near-death experience, she says she chatted with her dead grandmother and uncle, who escorted her back to the operating room. She says as they looked down on her body, she could hear the Eagles’ song “Hotel California” playing in the operating room as the doctors restarted her heart. She says her body looked like a train wreck, and she said she didn’t want to return.
“My uncle pushed me,” she says, laughing. “And when I hit the body, the line in the song was, ‘You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave.’ And I opened my eyes and I said, ‘You know, that is really insensitive!’ ”
A Vision That Matches The Record
Afterwards, Reynolds assumed she had been hallucinating. But a year later, she mentioned the details to her neurosurgeon. Spetzler says her account matched his memory.
“From a scientific perspective,” he says, “I have absolutely no explanation about how it could have happened.”
Spetzler did not check out all the details, but Michael Sabom did. Sabom is a cardiologist in Atlanta who was researching near-death experiences.
“With Pam’s permission, they sent me her records from the surgery,” he says. “And long story short, what she said happened to her is actually what Spetzler did with her out in Arizona.”
According to the records, there were 20 doctors in the room. There was a conversation about the veins in her left leg. She was defibrillated. They were playing “Hotel California.” How about that bone saw? Sabom got a photo from the manufacturer — and it does look like an electric toothbrush.
How, Sabom wonders, could she know these things?
“She could not have heard [it], because of what they did to her ears,” he says. “In addition, both of her eyes were taped shut, so she couldn’t open her eyes and see what was going on. So her physical sensory perception was off the table.”
An Alternative Explanation?
That’s preposterous, says anesthesiologist Gerald Woerlee.
“This report provides absolutely no evidence for survival of any sort of consciousness outside the body during near-death experiences or any other such experiences,” he says.
Woerlee, an Australian researcher and near-death experience debunker who has investigated Reynolds’ case, says what happened to her is easy to explain. He says when they cut into her head, she was jolted into consciousness. At that point, they had not yet drained blood from her brain. He believes she could hear — despite the clicking earplugs.
“There are various explanations,” Woerlee says. “One: that the earphones or plugs were not that tightly fitting. Two: It could have been that it was due to sound transmission through the operating table itself.”
So Reynolds could have heard conversations. As for seeing the Midas Rex bone saw, he says, she recognized a sound from her childhood.
“She made a picture in her mind of a machine or a device which was very similar to what she was familiar with — a dental drill,” Woerlee says.
Woerlee says Reynolds experienced anesthesia awareness, in which a person is conscious but can’t move. He figures back in 1991, that happened in 1 out of every 2,000 operations.
That doesn’t convince cardiologist Sabom or neurosurgeon Spetzler. They believe the combination of anesthesia and the sluggish brain activity caused by hypothermia meant that Reynolds could not form or retain memories for a significant part of the operation. At the very least, Sabom says, Reynolds’ story raises the possibility that consciousness can function even when the brain is offline.
“Is there some type of awareness that occurs from a nonfunctional, physical brain?” Sabom asks. “And if there is, does that mean that there’s a soul or spirit?”

The following article appeared in the Fall 2008 edition of Parent to Parent, a quarterly publication of the Kentucky School for the Blind) and is reprinted with permission.  

If you had asked me ten years ago about music therapy, I’m sure I couldn’t have given you a good answer. Actually, there’s a lot that I couldn’t have told you about. In 2001, my husband and I entered into a whole new world. That’s the year our son Theo was born. They say that having a child is a life altering event. Boy, they weren’t lying. Let me tell you a little about our experiences so you know where my insight comes from. With any luck, some of your questions about music therapy, therapeutic listening therapy, music instruction and their differences will be answered.

In November 2001, Theo was born 18 weeks early at 22 weeks 5 days gestation. He weighed in at 1.21 lbs. and was 11.5 inches long. This begins the journey into many new, exciting and at the same time terrifying worlds. Theo stayed in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) in Louisville for 18 weeks. About a month into his stay, he contracted MRSA pneumonia. Most of the medical personnel did not expect him to make it through the night. He made it through the night and to this day still fights pneumonia at times. He requires daily breathing treatments and we are ever watchful for signs of upper respiratory illness. He is improving all the time.

About 2 ½ months into his NICU stay, Theo had frequent eye exams to watch for Retinopathy of Prematurity (ROP). By three months into the stay, he had a round of laser surgery in both eyes. A quick footnote! ROP occurs when the blood vessels in the retina do not form correctly. Instead of forming in a line, they start forming on top of each other, which results in a rupture and eventually will cause torn and/or detached retinas. The laser surgery is done to break down the vessel buildup, hoping that the vessels will start to form correctly.

By the end of the NICU stay, Theo had received three rounds of laser surgery in both eyes and was still having problems. As we were planning to bring him home, the eye doctor checked his eyes again and found a tear in the retina of the left eye which meant surgery while he was on a vent and the possibility of an increased stay in the NICU. As it turned out, Theo went through the surgery like a little trooper and came right off the vent. A couple of days later, he was finally home and then the playing field changed.

At this stage, we knew Theo was visually impaired but we had no way of knowing to what degree. Before leaving the NICU, we were given the Visually Impaired Preschool Services (VIPS) telephone number 1-888-636-8477 and web address http://www.vips.org. I was told these folks were the “GO TO” people for visually impaired kids from birth to age five. They were not lying! Most of the VIPS staff have kids or other family members that are visually impaired. They can help with just about any question you have pertaining to vision impairment and how to teach your child to be all that they can be. They were as much an asset to me as they were to Theo! They introduced us to music therapy at about the same time Theo started preschool. They did music therapy as a group session and he really enjoyed those times.

Home from the NICU, we started in Kentucky’s First Steps program. This is where Theo started therapy and where my husband and I begin to learn what teaching techniques work best with our son. We learned about his strengths and we learned early about his struggles. Those things still hold true today. He will always be stronger at getting from point A to point B than he’ll be with feeding and talking. After his second birthday a First Steps Occupational Therapist introduced us to the world of therapeutic listening therapy. We have used two different programs. The first and probably the one Theo prefers, because it is more kid friendly, is the Vital Sounds program through Vital Links (http://www.vitalinks.net). The other one we used while he was in preschool and had good response from was The Listening Program through Advanced Brain Technologies (http://www.thelisteningprogram.com). This is a CD program that a person listens to through specialized headphones. The music tends to be classical and is modified or modulated to work on things like spatial awareness, body awareness, attention and focus, sensitivities to sounds and textures, etc.

Theo is a much more focused and loveable child when he’s on a program. He moves better and generally feels better. He sleeps better and it is a more restful sleep. About four weeks of being off of a program, I can tell he is ready to go back on one. If you’ve ever had a cat in the house that sees something outside and it starts running from room to room like it’s possessed, then you can appreciate this little glimpse into Theo off of a program. Around 7 PM every night, Theo would start running from room to room laughing hysterically. Sometimes it would take hours to calm him down. I tried calming music, swinging, weighted pressure vests, holding him in a “big mommy hug” and nothing works like his listening program. He EXPECTS to do his listening. It’s as if he knows he needs it to keep him glued together. Now those of you who don’t like to stay on a schedule, beware. These programs are a minimum of eight weeks of commitment, listening twice a day for 20 minutes each time. The specialized headphones cost around $150. These programs must be organized through a therapist that has training in the program. Having said that, I would NOT go very long without one for Theo.

Once Theo aged out of First Steps, he moved into the preschool arena. What a constant challenge. We’ve had some very good experiences and some very bad ones. Theo really was not ready for the preschool world. He was truly terrified. Now, we met some great therapists and the teachers tried hard. Theo is a hard kiddo to teach at times. It takes a special way of teaching. We had basically four preschool teachers in the nearly three years he was there. His last teacher had the most experience dealing with kids like Theo. Now, I know you’re thinking, she keeps referring to him like he’s quite different from other visually impaired kids. Well, I say it like that because we found out part of the problems we were dealing with were in fact due to his lack of vision, but so much more of the problem was due to his being autistic. So we now have a double whammy to figure out and overcome.

Let me go back to our first full year of preschool. This is the year we got our first taste of one-on-one music therapy. Boy, did he love it and he started picking up the things that he needed. This is a good place to give a little info on music therapy. This therapy takes the information being taught in the classroom, the skills being taught in other therapies, molds it together and puts it to music with the child learning, “I can do this.”

Theo picked up new skills all the time. He learned how to take turns and how to follow directions. He started making new sounds and putting them to music. He was exposed to many kinds of musical instruments by the therapist. Some of these instruments he loved, some he hated, but the experience and exposure was priceless. It opened his world in ways that I could not have opened for him. He had two full years of music therapy through his preschool and there were times it was the only bright spot.

Preschool was hard on Theo at times. He tended to be over stimulated from being around the other kids and all their noise. Theo still struggles in a room full of people. Now, he had his good times and his bad times. Lorinda Jones is the Music Therapist that worked with Theo first. If you are interested in learning more about this therapy, she can refer you to someone in your area. Her email address is losnotes@alltel.net. Some school systems receive grants to help pay for music therapy through the school year. We put aside money from our tax refund to pay for Theo’s music therapy through the summer months.

Now, here are a few things you should know! Make sure your Music Therapist is trained in music therapy. They have to know how to make everything come together so the child can get the most therapeutic experience. It’s more than just playing music. It’s more than listening to music. It is bringing all of these worlds together in terms the child can understand. Every blind child I’ve ever met loves music and understands music and that is why it is such a great vehicle to teach the blind, multiple disabled child.

Once Theo aged out of the preschool program, he started attending the Kentucky School for the Blind (KSB). Here he has been introduced to music instruction. Theo does enjoy his violin lessons but he knows they are very different than his music therapy. Music instruction concentrates on one instrument and involves following the instructions from the instructor. Like I said, he does enjoy it but knows it’s not the same. Do I have an opinion on which one is better? NO! They all have their place. For a kiddo like Theo he thrives on all of them. Can he live with out them? Yes, but with out them he’s not all that he can be. The hardest thing for any parent of a child like Theo is in weighing out which is most important and how to make it all come together. With any luck, you will find yourself a great team of people to help you along the way. I know that we have been blessed. Theo is blessed for having learned from the listening programs. Overall, Theo is a happy boy!