Sound Therapy Capstone: 10

Let's not forget about music therapy:

I have noticed that the practice of sound therapy is not so well known to the public.  Often times when I explain to people that I am interested in how sound affects the brain they say, "oh, you must be studying music therapy".  It seems like it is difficult for some to understand that music is made of organized sound, and that sound is simply vibration.  While the rest of this blog focused on how sound, in the rawest form, affects the brain, I wanted to finish off these capstone posts by sharing a short article on music therapy I found.  The article, titled "Music as medicine", features contributions from several figures in the music therapy movement, such as Daniel J. Levitin, who wrote the book "This Is Your Brain On Music".  In the article Levitin states,"we've found compelling evidence that musical interventions can play a health-care role in settings ranging from operating rooms to family clinics".  One thing in particular the article mentions is how much more effective it is to expose patients to live music, as oppose to pre-recorded music.  A study was done by researchers at the Louis Armstrong Center for Music and Medicine with 272 premature babies.When the babies were sung a lullaby by their parents it was recorded that their heart rates dropped down significantly.  While most people use music as a way to relax, I thought it was awesome, and reassuring, that the effects of music are being recognized by the western medical world.

Music as medicine: http://www.apa.org/monitor/2013/11/music.aspx

In addition to the article, one of the biggest inspirations for my capstone was seeing the documentary "Alive Inside" this past August.  In the documentary a man goes around to several people suffering from major mental illness, such as dementia and alzheimer's and plays them some of their favorite music. Within seconds the individuals begin to function in ways that many thought were lost due to the illness. Included in the documentary is neurologist Dr. Oliver Sacks, who has been a major advocate for the healing power of music and sound.

Watch a clip from "Alive Inside" below:







Outsider response to Session 5 audio:

The final track I exposed the patient to was one that for me, was the most intense out of the five new pieces of audio created for the capstone.  I was pretty sure that I had worn him out from the previous four and hoped he had enough left in him to give me a proper response for this last one.  After he finished listening he told me that during playback he felt drowsy and nervous.  He must have had a sense of claustrophobia as well because he mentioned that he felt like he was stuck in a cage.  The strange part was that he told me after the audio stopped he was in a state of calm.  I'm not so sure if he truly felt calm and instead feel that he must have just been been drained from the whole experience.  I was kind of startled after I listened to the track myself.  Finishing off the patient's first binaural beat experience with that was certainly a decent indicator for figuring out if he had been affected overall.

In the future I think it would be a good idea to do a interview with the patient before the listening session about their current anxiety levels and what sort of sounds are more favorable, or irritating than others.  Having some sort of assessment like that beforehand would help me learn how to pick and choose, or sequence the audio tracks before the session.  However, since the goal for this capstone was to see how an outsider would react to each of the tracks I created, this was acceptable.