Music Can Heal The Brain

January 17, 2010 in Mind, YH's Blog by admin

Around the time Dr. Oliver Sacks found an experimental drug could wake up Bronx patients frozen by brain disease, he noticed something else: music helped them move when even top-shelf medicine could not.

Those patients, portrayed in the Oscar-nominated film “Awakenings,” were “absolutely unable to take a step or initiate any movement or speech unless there was music,” Sacks said. Music “could give them the power to move and the flow while it lasted,” he said.

Some of the brain-injured people Sacks met in his four decades at Beth Abraham hospital populate his newest book, “Musicophilia.” He’ll sign copies there Tuesday to raise money for its music therapy program.

“There tends to be a certain amount of hype about music therapy, but there also tends to be neglect and dismissal of it,” Sacks, 74, told the Daily News. “I try to present a rational view in the middle.”

Brain-imaging technology is giving increasing credence to the treatment, which is used in disorders ranging from Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s to autism.

In the senile, music can help recall lost memories; in the speech-impaired, it can bring back words, the neurologist writes. Immobile patients may get up and dance or sing.

Music may serve a role in medicine because it’s processed in multiple centers of the brain, Sacks said. Despite damage to one area, music survives in others – and may even be awakened in previously nonmusical people who suffer brain damage.

In one particularly bizarre case, when nonmusical, upstate surgeon Tony Cicoria survived a lightning strike, he developed an insatiable desire to master the piano – and did. He recently performed his “Lightning Sonata” in Westport, Conn.

“It’s very intriguing and surprising because one thinks of all sorts of talents, if they’re going to present, as inclinations developing early in life,” Sacks said.

“Ultimately, there must be many latent powers in the brain that remain undeveloped and possibly actively suppressed,” he said. “Under some conditions, there’ll be a reorganization and these can be released.”

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/health/2007/10/29/2007-10-29_oliver_sacks_music_can_heal_the_brain.html#ixzz0cqZDbe6G

YH: I tend to agree with the experiments as I always find musics can boost my spirit to accomplish things, like these two long lost tunes that gave me so much energy to do my exercises- Brisk walking, Tai Chi and Inner smile meditation- this morning. ( I love youtube and my 3GS!!:))

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