Music As A Medical Tool?

[Phoenix]

Not exactly surprising but and interesting topic nonetheless:

From Massachusetts General to the Mayo Clinic, patients are hearing the first strains of a harmonious movement — the infusion and inclusion of music in the treatment of ailments, from brain disorders to cancer. This goes beyond the psychological smile favorite songs can induce.

Doctors are increasingly studying — and employing — the physiological dance music does with the body’s neurons and blood-carrying cells.

“We’re in the infancy,” said Dr. Ali Rezai, director of the Center for Neurological Restoration at Ohio’s Cleveland Clinic. During a surgery called deep brain stimulation — performed while patients with Parkinson’s disease are awake — Rezai and his team play classical compositions and measure the brain’s response to those notes. “We know music can calm, influence creativity, can energize. That’s great. But music’s role in recovering from disease is being ever more appreciated.”

“Research has already shown that if you play a piece — like Mozart — at a certain slow beat, the listener will adapt their heart beat to the beat of the music.” (Dr. Claudius Conrad)

The anatomical route musical notes take through the body is indeed a busy highway celebrated in many songs, from head to heart. Based on interviews with neurologists and cardiologists, the journey from an instrument string to your heart strings goes something like this:

Sound waves travel through the air into the ears and buzz the eardrums and bones in the middle ears. To decode the vibration, your brain transforms that mechanical energy into electrical energy, sending the signal to its cerebral cortex — a hub for thought, perception and memory. Within that control tower, the auditory cortex forwards the message on to brain centers that direct emotion, arousal, anxiety, pleasure and creativity. And there’s another stop upstairs: that electrical cue hits the hypothalamus which controls heart rate and respiration, plus your stomach and skin nerves, explaining why a melody may give you butterflies or goose bumps. Of course, all this communication happens far faster than a single drum beat.

Before jetting through the blood stream, the signals are converted again — to hormones. At the University of Munich, Conrad was able to show that critically ill patients required fewer sedative drugs when they listened to one hour of Mozart piano sonatas. As expected, the patients’ blood pressures and heart rates eased with the music.

But what surprised Conrad is that the patients also showed a 50 percent spike in pituitary growth hormone, which is known to stimulate healing. Today, at Massachusetts General Hospital, Conrad asks his patients (or their families) in the surgical intensive care unit what music they’d like to hear; if neither is can provide an answer, he often plays Mozart.

Music as medicine: Docs use tunes as treatment - TODAY Health


What kind of music makes you feel better?

Do you play certain types of music or specific bands in order to feel a certain way/knowingly change your emotions?

 

[dilloduck]

Not exactly surprising but and interesting topic nonetheless:

From Massachusetts General to the Mayo Clinic, patients are hearing the first strains of a harmonious movement — the infusion and inclusion of music in the treatment of ailments, from brain disorders to cancer. This goes beyond the psychological smile favorite songs can induce.

Doctors are increasingly studying — and employing — the physiological dance music does with the body’s neurons and blood-carrying cells.

“We’re in the infancy,” said Dr. Ali Rezai, director of the Center for Neurological Restoration at Ohio’s Cleveland Clinic. During a surgery called deep brain stimulation — performed while patients with Parkinson’s disease are awake — Rezai and his team play classical compositions and measure the brain’s response to those notes. “We know music can calm, influence creativity, can energize. That’s great. But music’s role in recovering from disease is being ever more appreciated.”

“Research has already shown that if you play a piece — like Mozart — at a certain slow beat, the listener will adapt their heart beat to the beat of the music.” (Dr. Claudius Conrad)

The anatomical route musical notes take through the body is indeed a busy highway celebrated in many songs, from head to heart. Based on interviews with neurologists and cardiologists, the journey from an instrument string to your heart strings goes something like this:

Sound waves travel through the air into the ears and buzz the eardrums and bones in the middle ears. To decode the vibration, your brain transforms that mechanical energy into electrical energy, sending the signal to its cerebral cortex — a hub for thought, perception and memory. Within that control tower, the auditory cortex forwards the message on to brain centers that direct emotion, arousal, anxiety, pleasure and creativity. And there’s another stop upstairs: that electrical cue hits the hypothalamus which controls heart rate and respiration, plus your stomach and skin nerves, explaining why a melody may give you butterflies or goose bumps. Of course, all this communication happens far faster than a single drum beat.

Before jetting through the blood stream, the signals are converted again — to hormones. At the University of Munich, Conrad was able to show that critically ill patients required fewer sedative drugs when they listened to one hour of Mozart piano sonatas. As expected, the patients’ blood pressures and heart rates eased with the music.

But what surprised Conrad is that the patients also showed a 50 percent spike in pituitary growth hormone, which is known to stimulate healing. Today, at Massachusetts General Hospital, Conrad asks his patients (or their families) in the surgical intensive care unit what music they’d like to hear; if neither is can provide an answer, he often plays Mozart.

Music as medicine: Docs use tunes as treatment - TODAY Health


What kind of music makes you feel better?

Do you play certain types of music or specific bands in order to feel a certain way/knowingly change your emotions?

definately---the brain is simply a miracle to be discovered and that's where we should be spending billions in research as opposed to studying the mating habits of the tse tse fly.

 

[Phoenix]

definately---the brain is simply a miracle to be discovered and that's where we should be spending billions in research as opposed to studying the mating habits of the tse tse fly.

I totally agree, duck.

 

[dilloduck]

definately---the brain is simply a miracle to be discovered and that's where we should be spending billions in research as opposed to studying the mating habits of the tse tse fly.

I totally agree, duck.

but you know what ? people are scared shitless of it.

 

[Phoenix]

but you know what ? people are scared shitless of it.

What are they scared of, in your opinion?

 

[dilloduck]

but you know what ? people are scared shitless of it.

What are they scared of, in your opinion?

That someone will use the information to affect their reality.