Why we enjoy music has always been something of an intangible. It soothes us, excites us, helps us to concentrate, or generally takes us to another ‘place’ for a little while. Anecdotally, doctors and other healthcare professionals have known that music exerts a beneficial effect for a long time, but in recent years evidence has started to accumulate on making these benefits more tangible, and bringing them into the fold of medical research.
It is increasingly being shown that listening to the right music can help promote good health, manage disease symptoms, and trigger the release of neurotransmitters and hormones. There is even evidence to suggest that it can influence structural changes in the brain.
Johns Hopkins Medicine in the US has its own Centre for Music and Medicine, which explores the effects of music and rhythm-based therapies on conditions like Parkinson’s disease, stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, and a range of other disorders.
On a physical level, the Centre studies the neurological and musculoskeletal impact of repetitive performance and practice, in an effort to identify habits that make dancers and musicians vulnerable to occupational injuries.
The researchers use functional and structural MRIs to better understand the role of music as a therapeutic tool, as well as neuroimaging to better understand the process of perception and creation of music. Computational methods and neuroimaging are also used to further the application of motor learning concepts to design training programmes for musicians and “others with high-precision sensorimotor demands”.
Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and stroke sufferers have the opportunity to partake in music- and dance-based therapy, as well as rhythmic pattern and rhythmic auditory stimulation therapy. This uses focused sounds to stimulate the brain and improve walking and balance in these patients.
Rhythm-based therapies are also used in patients with Huntington’s disease in the form of group drumming, and group guitar lessons are used for patients with Parkinson’s disease to improve their hand dexterity, quality-of-life, and overall function.
The Centre is trying to bring music therapy into the realm of clinical research and has conducted a number of published studies, if you are interested in digging deeper. These relate to music therapy for Alzheimer’s dementia; neurologic music therapy combined with EEG-tDCS for upper motor extremity performance in patients with atypical Parkinsonian disorders; the effects of recorded music on clinical and EEG seizure activity; music-based interventions for movement disorders; personally meaningful music for dementia patients; personally meaningful music for Caesarean section; music for pain management; and a whole lot more.
They also introduce via research a concept called ‘Parkinsonics’ – a 30-week randomised controlled trial (RCT) of weekly group singing versus a support group for quality-of-life, as well as motor, voice, and mood outcomes.
But if you’re going to prescribe music for a patient, make sure you pick the right tunes. A separate study from 2023 in Scientific Reports shows that listening to music you don’t like has a detrimental effect.
“Listening to one’s most disliked music results in evoked responses typical of the sympathetic (fight-or-flight) system, thus being related to distress, which has been reported by participants when describing their reactions to their disliked music,” the authors wrote.
“The current findings align with prior research indicating a relation between increasing levels of felt unpleasantness and heightened physiological arousal.” When it comes to music you hate, the poison is definitely in the dose.
In this writer’s humble opinion, all this research and interest in music therapy points the way to a time when music will be considered a standard adjunct to conventional treatment. It’s one more step towards the holistic Nirvana of treating the whole patient, body, mind, and soul.
As the saying goes, ‘further research is required’ in the form of RCTs.
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