|
Issue Date: October 28, 2001
Healing Harmonies
In recent weeks, music has helped reignite America's spirit. Now scientists say melodies may offer more power to mend than we ever imagined.
By Tim Wendel
International opera star Denyce Graves comforted a grieving nation when she sang during the Sept. 14 prayer service at Washington's National Cathedral.
|
As Denyce Graves stepped forward to sing "America the Beautiful" at the National Cathedral in Washington, just days after the attacks in Manhattan and at the Pentagon, she remembered something she had discovered at another church when she was 4 years old. On that morning at The Garden of Prayer, a Pentecostal church just across town, she actually felt the music. The sounds of the choir rippled through her. She was inspired, uplifted, momentarily changed.
Now, as an international opera star performing at a time of crisis before an audience that included five U.S. presidents, and millions more people watching on TV, it was a feeling she could create again. The majesty of Graves' mezzo-soprano voice filled the great hall, and, for a few moments, what had befallen the nation and what lay ahead faded away.
"Music brings a stability to humanity in an uncivilized time," Graves says. "It's soothing, comforting and reminds us that there's still beauty in the world. Even if music lifts the spirits of the people for only a little while, it's worth it."
When the images became too difficult to watch, many of us turned to music to stir our souls, to heal us from unimaginable wrong, to inspire us to open our hearts. In the days following Graves' uplifting performance, a who's who of musicians performed on network television in an unprecedented show of unity to raise money for victims and their families. Thousands of strangers held hands at Yankee Stadium as the Harlem Boys and Girls Choir performed "We Shall Overcome" and Bette Midler sang "Wind Beneath My Wings." The sounds of music seem to summon a new sense of patriotism and purpose for a nation in shock.
Go to top
Researching the links between melody and the mind
But, surprisingly, acknowledgement of music's profound capacity to move us comes not only from politician and preacher, but also from the unexpected recesses of today's high-tech research laboratories.> As the nation's new rhapsody in red, white and blue plays ever more ardently, scientists are developing research that shows physiological links between melody and the mind, a connection far greater than we ever imagined.
"We're discovering music is really a complex human behavior," explains Fred Moreno of the New York Academy of Sciences, which published the new Biological Foundations of Music, a collection of scientific papers demonstrating, it says, "the dynamism and richness of this emerging discipline" of music and neuroscience.
New studies indicate that listening to and playing music actually can alter how our brains, and thus our bodies, function. Scientists use the sound of music to do everything from battling cancer and mining the memories of Alzheimer's patients to relieving severe pain and boosting kids' test scores. Doctors believe music therapy in hospitals and nursing homes not only makes people feel better, but also makes them heal faster. (It's a budding field: From 1998 to '99, the job market for music therapists jumped 30%.) Across the nation, a growing number of nursing homes have hired music therapists to help geriatric patients maintain motor coordination and socialization skills. Among the beneficiaries: Some stroke and Parkinson's patients have recovered more rapidly with musical accompaniment during physical therapy.
"We're only beginning to understand the value of music," says Deforia Lane, a music therapist at Cleveland's University Hospital. "We're tapping into the fundamental ways our brain interprets [it] and drinks it in."
Researchers say nothing enthralls the brain more than music. Lawrence Parsons at the University of Texas Health Center at San Antonio found that music activates the cerebellum, not just the right side of the cerebral cortex, which already was known to interpret music. His findings run contrary to the long-standing belief that the cerebellum controls only motor skills.
"Music is processed in more regions of the brain than we ever imagined," says Josef Rauschecker, a Georgetown University researcher who studies the auditory processes of the brain. "Music is a great example of how different parts of the brain can act together." It's worth studying, he says, because music can have a profound, even physical, effect on the brain. In studies, musicians trained at a young age show a greater area of brain activity when listening to music than do non-musicians. They also may show a more left-brained or analytical response to music. "Musicians devote more brain power to listening to music and may have better abilities in other areas as well," Rauschecker says.
Perhaps most graphic of all is the recent discovery by Gottfried Schlaug at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston that music actually may affect brain size. When he compared the brain scans of 30 musicians with those of a group of 30 non-musicians, he found that the corpus callosum, the thick cable of neurons connecting the brain's right and left hemispheres, was larger among the musicians. The trend is even more pronounced for musicians who took up an instrument at an early age.
"Music has been called just 'auditory cheesecake,' " having little to do with important matters such as how our brains grow and function, says Michael Thaut, director of the Center for Biomedical Research at Colorado State University. "Nothing could be farther from the truth. Music is hard-wired into the brain. We're only now realizing how important it is to us."
Go to top
Music therapy helps medical patients, brain trauma, Alzheimer's disease
Doctors are just starting to apply the new revelations about music's impact on the brain to treating patients. Thaut composes and plays original compositions with a specific beat to help victims of stroke, cerebral palsy and Parkinson's disease recover body functions. He and his colleagues observe patients in physical therapy, then compose music tailored to their movements. Speed, symmetry and muscle activity improve faster when the sounds are synchronized to individuals' gait patterns. In a recent study, Thaut's team detailed how patients who worked to music took bigger, more balanced strides than those whose therapy had no accompaniment.
Other researchers have found the sound of drums may influence how bodies work. Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart believes a simple drumbeat can stir long-forgotten memories in those suffering from Alzheimer's. He visits retirement centers, handing out drums and leading residents in impromptu concerts.
Hart's theory may sound far-fetched, but Suzanne Hanser, chairwoman of the music therapy department at Berklee College of Music in Boston, says even those with dementia or head injuries retain musical ability. "Deep in our long-term memory is this rehearsed music," Hanser says. "It is processed in the emotional part of the brain, the amygdala. Here's where you remember the music played at your wedding, the music of your first love, that first dance. Such things can still be remembered even in people with progressive diseases. It can be a window, a way to reach them."
A new study of people with Alzheimer's disease found that music helped them sleep better. When the patients played drums or sang along with songs, their serum melatonin levels -- which influence how well we sleep -- skyrocketed by more than 200%. "Through music, they slept better, interacted better with others," says Mahendra Kumar of the University of Miami, one of the researchers. "For the first time, we've been able to measure music's impact."
Earlier this year, researchers from the Mind-Body Wellness Center in Meadville, Pa., reported the results of an experiment in which 111 cancer patients played drums for 30 minutes a day. They found strengthened immune systems and increased levels of cancer-fighting cells in many of the patients.
Certainly, research on music's ability to fight cancer or any disease is only beginning. Until now, it's music's impact on developing brains -- i.e., in children -- that has attracted the most attention -- and controversy.
In the mid-1990s, news of the so-called Mozart Effect, in which a small group of college students did better on certain tests after listening to a Mozart sonata, had mothers playing classical music to their babies in the womb. Since then, researchers have learned more about the music-as-brain-food theory, confirming its potential but disputing the benefits of simply tuning in to the classics.
"The early studies were about passive music-listening," says Joe Lamond, executive director of the American Music Conference, a non-profit organization that promotes music education. "The newer studies have focused on music-making -- learning to play an instrument, playing in a band. That's where we've seen measurable impact on math, science, reading scores." A joint study by the University of Wisconsin and the University of California, Irvine, found that 3- and 4-year-olds who were taught to play the piano scored 34% higher on the abstract reasoning skills used in science and math than did children who got computer instruction.
And just this month, the American Academy of Pediatrics published a study showing music may help children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Kids tried to match various musical tones by tapping their hands and feet. The exercises improved their concentration and control of aggression.
For Peter Walsh, the physical payoff of a tune is quite clear. In the days after his abdominal surgery at Cleveland's University Hospital, Walsh, an Episcopalian priest, found that his planned methods of coping with the pain -- prayer and contemplation -- weren't effective. Instead, he credits music therapist Lane with helping him through. "Music became my bridge out of the land of despair," he says.
"I see a lot of people in my office with a lot of problems. Some of them need to have surgery. I send them to Deforia. I tell them that she and her music will be able to bring them to a place of relaxation, a place of peace."
It seems now more than ever the healing power of music, over body and spirit, is being put to the test.
"Whether or not people choose to recognize the power of music, it remains a spiritual experience, a healing experience," says opera star Graves. "It can save us."
Science is just now beginning to understand how.
Tim Wendel last wrote for USA WEEKEND Magazine about extreme sports. His most recent book is a novel, Castro's Curveball.
-- Frappa Stout contributed to this story.
Go to top
"God Bless America", now more than ever
by Linda Emmet
When members of Congress sang "God Bless America" spontaneously on the Capitol steps on Sept. 11, I was amazed, but it somehow seemed very appropriate. It is often the song people turn to in times of crisis. I'm so happy for the song -- and for my father, Irving Berlin, who wrote it.
I was 6 when Kate Smith first sang "God Bless America" on her radio show in 1938. But what I remember most is my father singing it in the summer of 1940 at a Girl Scout camp in the Catskills -- his voice was very true -- and I suddenly saw him as a patriotic American.
"God Bless America" evokes a sense of unity and calm: "Stand beside her and guide her through the night with a light from above." What happened on Sept. 11 could metaphorically be the night; the light could be our continuing to move on.
Americans often say they don't feel connected to things. But these events have connected us. And I know my father would be proud that, to this day, his song still stirs and bonds us. If the world doesn't suddenly blow itself up, I think people 100 or 200 years from now will still be singing it.
Linda Emmet is co-editor with Robert Kimball of "The Complete Lyrics of Irving Berlin" (Alfred A. Knopf, $65), out this month.
Go to top
Photograph by James Hicks for USA WEEKEND (Graves w/harps); Kay Charnusch for USA WEEKEND (Graves & Dr. Rauschecker)
|
A look inside the musical brain
Dr. Rauschecker monitored Graves' brain activity at Georgetown University's MRI center. See her MRIs and how her brain reacted to three musical selections.
|
