College Fight Music

How many times have you turned to music to educate you even further in happy times, or sought the comfort of music when melancholy strikes?

Music affects us all. But only in recent times have scientists sought to explain and quantify the way music impacts us at an emotional level. Research on the links between melody and mind indicates that listening to and playing music actually can alter how our brains and therefore our bodies, function.

It seems that the healing power of music on body and mind, is only beginning to understand, even if music therapy is not new. For many years therapists have advocated the use of music in both listening and learning to reduce anxiety and stress, relieving pain. And music has also been recommended as an aid for positive change in mood and emotional states.

Michael DeBakey, who in 1966 became the first surgeon to successfully implant an artificial heart, is on record saying: "Creating and performing music promotes self-expression and gives personal satisfaction while giving pleasure to others. In medicine, increasing published reports demonstrate that music has a healing effect on patients. "

Doctors now believe using music therapy in hospitals and nursing homes not only makes people feel better but also makes them heal faster. And across the country, medical experts have begun to apply the new revelations about the impact of music on the brain to treat patients.

In one study, researcher Michael Thaut and his team detailed how victims of stroke, cerebral palsy and Parkinson's disease who worked in the music took over, progress is more balanced than those whose treatment n ' had no support.

Other researchers have found the sound of drums may influence how bodies work. Quoted in a 2001 article in USA Today, Suzanne Hasner, Chair of the music therapy department at Berklee College of Music in Boston, says even those suffering from dementia or head injuries retain musical ability.

The article reported the results of an experiment in which researchers at the center of well-being body-mind in Meadville, Pennsylvania, followed 111 patients with cancer who played drums for 30 minutes per day. They found the strengthening of the immune and increased levels of fighting against cancer cells in most patients.

"Deep in our long-term memory is repeated this music," Hasner said. "It is processed in the emotional part of the brain, the amygdala. That's where you remember the music played at your wedding, the music of your first love, that first dance. These things can still remember, even among people with progressive diseases. It may be a window, a way to reach them. "

The American Music Therapy Organization claims music therapy may allow for "emotional intimacy with families and caregivers, relaxation for the whole family, and significant time together in a positive and creative."

Scientists have made progress in its exploration in which the music should have this effect. In 2001, Dr. Anne Blood and Robert Zatorre of McGill University in Montreal, used positron emission tomography or PET, to determine whether particular structures of the brain were stimulated by music.

In their study, Blood and Zatorre asked 10 musicians, five men and five women, to choose stirring music. The subjects were then given PET listening to four types of audio stimuli - the selected music, other music, noise or the general silence. Each sequence was repeated three times in random order.

Sang said that the subjects heard the music that gave them "chills", PET detected activities in parts of the brain that are stimulated by food and sex.

Just why humans developed such a biologically based appreciation of music is not yet clear. The appreciation of food and the drive for sex evolved to help the survival of the species.