Music has long been recognized as an effective form of therapy to provide an outlet for emotions. Still, the notion of using song, sound frequencies, and rhythm to treat physical ailments is a relatively new domain, says psychologist Daniel J. Levitin, Ph.D., who studies the neuroscience of music at McGill University in Montreal. One recent study is touting music’s benefits on mental and physical health. Another study found that music improves the body’s immune system function and reduces stress. Listening to music is also more effective than prescription drugs in reducing anxiety before surgery (Trends in Cognitive Sciences, April 2013).
“We’ve found compelling evidence that musical interventions can play a healthcare role in settings ranging from operating rooms to family clinics,” says Levitin, author of the book “This Is Your Brain on Music” (Plume/Penguin, 2007). The analysis also points to just how music influences health. The researchers found that listening to and playing music increase the body’s production of the antibody immunoglobulin A and natural killer cells — the cells that attack invading viruses and boost the immune system’s effectiveness. Music also reduces levels of the stress hormone cortisol.
“This is one reason why music is associated with relaxation,” Levitin says.
One recent study on the link between music and stress found that music can help soothe pediatric emergency room patients (JAMA Pediatrics, July 2013). In the trial with 42 children ages 3 to 11, University of Alberta researchers found that patients who listened to relaxing music while getting an IV inserted reported significantly less pain, and some demonstrated significantly less distress compared with patients who did not listen to music. In addition, more than two-thirds of the healthcare providers reported that the IVs were very easy to administer in the music-listening group — compared with 38 percent of providers treating the group that did not listen to music.
“There is growing scientific evidence showing that the brain responds to music in particular ways,” says Lisa Hartling, Ph.D., professor of pediatrics at the University of Alberta and lead author of the study. “Playing music for kids during painful medical procedures is a simple intervention that can make a big difference.”
Music can help adult patients, too. Researchers at Khoo Teck Puat Hospital in Singapore found that patients in palliative care who took part in live music therapy sessions reported relief from persistent pain (Progress in Palliative Care, July 2013). Music therapists worked closely with the patients to individually tailor the intervention, and patients took part in singing, instrument playing, lyric discussion, and even songwriting as they worked toward accepting an illness or weighed end-of-life issues.
“Active music engagement allowed the patients to reconnect with the healthy parts of themselves, even in the face of a debilitating condition or disease-related suffering,” says music therapist Melanie Kwan, co-author of the study and president of the Association for Music Therapy, Singapore. “When their acute pain symptoms were relieved, patients were finally able to rest.”
The Healing Power of Vibration
Music is at its core, and sound is rooted in vibration. Led by Lee Bartel, Ph.D., a music professor at the University of Toronto, several researchers are exploring whether sound vibrations absorbed through the body can help ease the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, fibromyalgia, and depression. One method of music therapy is called Vibroacoustic therapy, a therapy involving using low-frequency sound — similar to a low rumble — to produce vibrations applied directly to the body. During vibroacoustic treatment, the patient lies on a mat or bed or sits in a chair embedded with speakers that transmit vibrations at specific computer-generated frequencies that can be heard and felt, says Bartel. He likens the process to sitting on a subwoofer.
In 2009, researchers led by Lauren K. King of the Sun Life Financial Movement Disorders Research and Rehabilitation Centre at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, found that short-term use of vibroacoustic therapy with Parkinson’s disease patients led to improvements in symptoms, including less rigidity and better walking speed with more significant steps and reduced tremors (NeuroRehabilitation, December 2009). In that study, the scientists exposed 40 Parkinson’s disease patients to low-frequency 30-hertz vibration for one minute, followed by a one-minute break. They then alternated the two for a total of 10 minutes. The researchers are now planning a long-term study of the use of vibroacoustic therapy with Parkinson’s patients as part of a new partnership with the University of Toronto’s Music and Health Research Collaboratory, which brings together scientists from around the world are studying music’s effect on health.
The group also examines thalamocortical dysrhythmia — the disorientation of rhythmic brain activity involving the thalamus and the outer cortex that appears to play a role in several medical conditions, including Parkinson’s, fibromyalgia, and possibly even Alzheimer’s disease, says Bartel, who directs the collaboratory.
“Since the rhythmic pulses of music can drive and stabilize this disorientation, we believe that low-frequency sound might help with these conditions,” Bartel says. He leads a study using vibroacoustic therapy with patients with mild Alzheimer’s disease. The hope is that using the treatment to restore normal communication among brain regions may allow for greater memory retrieval, he says.
“We’ve already seen glimmers of hope in a case study with a patient who had just been diagnosed with the disorder,” Bartel says. “After stimulating her with 40-hertz sound for 30 minutes three times a week for four weeks, she could recall the names of her grandchildren more easily, and her husband reported good improvement in her condition.”
All of this work aims to develop “prescribable” music therapy and music as medicine protocols that serve specific neurologic functions and attend to deficits that may result from many of these neurologically based conditions. Rather than viewing music only as a cultural phenomenon, Bartel says, art should be seen as a vibratory stimulus that has cognitive and memory dimensions.
“Only when we look at it in this way do we start to see the interface to how the brain and body work together.”