“It’s not our natural tendency to thrust ourselves into a crowd of 20,000 people, but for a Muse concert or a Radiohead concert we’ll do it,” Levitin says. “There’s this unifying force that comes from the music, and we don’t get that from other things.”
With that being said, put on some headphones, blast that favorite song of yours and what happens? Your fingers start to tap, your head starts to bob to the beat, you sing along to the lyrics. And soon enough you’ll find yourself on your feet busting a move. Fun, isn’t it?
But try to think outside of the box for a minute here. Listening to music is not only entertaining, but it can also help distract us from painful or stressful situations, make our lifestyles healthier, or perhaps just give us the right push to up our performance while studying or working out.
Music in short is therapeutic but we’ll get to that later on, let’s first try to understand why music makes us feel the way we do.
How music affects our brain
Only recently has science begun to figure out why music makes us feel better, if not to say healthier. Researchers from McGill University in Montreal have discovered that listening to music heightens positive emotion through the reward centers of our brain, stimulating hits of dopamine, a neurotransmitter, which makes us feel good, or even elated. This is why you get those “chills”.
Listening to music also lights up other areas of the brain. In fact, almost no brain center is left untouched. This purely suggests that there are many effects and potential uses for music.
Examples of the uses of music include helping patients with post-surgery recovery and improving the outcomes of Alzheimer’s.
“We’re using music to better understand brain function in general,” said Daniel Levitin, a prominent psychologist who researches the neuroscience of music at McGill University.
In one of his studies, patients who were about to undergo surgery were randomly assigned to either listening to music or taking anxiolytics (drugs that reduce anxiety) to control their anxiety .
After a while, Levitin and his colleagues follwed patients and asked them to rate their anxiety status, and also took measurements of the levels of the stress hormone cortisol.
The results: when the two groups’ statements and cortsol levels were compared, patients who had listened to music had less anxiety than people who took the drugs.
Levitin cautioned that this is only one study, and more research needs to be done to confirm the results, but it points toward a powerful use for music.
“The promise here is that music is arguably less expensive than drugs, it’s easier on the body and it doesn’t have side effects,” Levitin said.
Levitin and his colleagues also highlighted evidence that music is associated with increased levels of immunoglobin A (IgA) in the saliva.
IgA is an antibody that provides protection against germs in the surface mucosa and is part of the specefic immune response.
Higher counts of B and T cells (immune cells that fight off bacterial and viral infections) were also noted after analyzing the saliva.
Music therapy
Certain music can take us back to those good old times, that one time you had your summer beach party, your prom dance, your first kiss and your first flight away from home.
Music in general has this magical thing about it where it takes us somewhere else entirely. And apparently it can take some patients away from their pain too. The question is how, right? Well, let’s find out.
Music therapy is the answer, which is a technique of complementary medicine that uses music to improve and maintain the physical, psychological, and social well-being of individuals.
It involves a broad range of activities, such as listening to music, singing, and playing a musical instrument. When people find it difficult to express themselves verbally, they may display a greater degree of interest and engagement in music therapy than they would in a more traditional form of therapy.
The good thing is that no background in music is required for you to benefit from this approach.
It is prescribed in a skilled manner by trained therapists and is often used in hospitals, rehabilitation centers, schools, correctional facilities, and nursing homes.
How it started out
Back in the days, traveling music groups used to play for hospitalized veterans during and after both World Wars, doctors and clinicians began to realize the powerful effects of music on the healing processes and requested that professional musicians be hired by the hospitals.
This created a need for specialized training in the appropriate way to deliver music as a therapeutic method.
With time, colleges and universities began to include music therapy as part of their curriculum, beginning with Michigan State University in 1944.
In 1950, the first major professional organization for music therapists was formed, and it became known as the National Association for Music Therapy (NAMT).
And then in 1998, the American Music Therapy Association (AMTA) was formed out of a merger between the NAMT and the American Association for Music Therapy.
The AMTA focuses on increasing awareness of and access to music therapy services while promoting the advancement of education, training, and research in the field of music therapy.
What happens in music therapy?
Both active (making music, whether by singing, chanting, playing musical instruments…) and receptive (listening and responding to music, such as through dancing or the analysis of lyrics) techniques are used as a starting points for the discussion of feelings, values, and goals.
Moreover, it can be conducted with individuals or in groups, and the music may be chosen by the therapist or by the person in therapy.
A music therapist will generally ensure the type and mode of the chosen form of music, as well as the timing of the music intervention, are appropriate for meeting the needs and goals of every individual in therapy.
For example: a therapist might play a piece of music for children with autism who have limited social skills and ask them to imagine the emotional state of the person who created the music or the person who is playing it. Doing so can help a person with autism develop or strengthen the ability to consider other people’s emotions.
Some of the techniques that are commonly used:
1. Sing-along:
Music therapy sessions for groups or individuals may include singing together in a way that’s less formal than a choir.
Participants could sing preferred and highly familiar songs by memory, or learn a new song. This encourages participation in a fun, music-making process and can be used to meet various goals and objectives, including teaching breathing exercises.
2. Musical Hangman:
The therapist draws a thematic picture on a board, and asks patients to guess the missing word before the picture loses its details (for example, try and guess the word before the snowman melts away).
Then, choose a thematic word and find songs that start with each letter of that word. The aim is to listen to the songs and try and guess the target word.
For example, the word ‘happy’ may have the song “Hello” by Adele, the word ‘light” may have the song ” Let it Be” by The Beatles.
3. Blackout song-writing:
In this session, the therapist provides the person in therapy with the lyrics to 4 or 5 different choices of songs which represent recovery such as overcoming barriers, or struggles. Then, patients are encouraged to take some time to read the lyrics of the song and then select words from the lyrics to make up their own song.
The idea is to ‘blackout’ the lyrics which the patient does not want in the song and leave him with the words he has chosen to form a new song. It’s really cool to see how original lyrics can be re-written into entirely new poetry to express themselves.
4. Vibroacoustic therapy:
This is a receptive form of music therapy. It involves music being played through speakers which are built into a chair, mattress or bed (which the patient lies in). Then, he directly experiences the vibrations that are brought about by the music.
Music therapy songs
According to Rachel Rambach (2011), the following are twelve songs that every music therapist should know:
- ‘American Pie’
- ‘Amazing Grace’
- ‘Blue Suede Shoes’
- ‘Blue Skies’
- ‘Don’t Worry, Be Happy’
- ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’
- ‘Lean on me’
- ‘Ob-la-di’
- ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’
- ‘Take Me to The Ballgame’
- ‘This Little Light of Mine’
- ‘You Are My Sunshine’
Take into consideration that music therapy is an evidence-based health profession with a strong research foundation.
It not only requires knowledge in psychology, medicine, and music, but also for its therapists to have a bachelor’s degree or higher in music therapy from one of AMTA’s 72 approved colleges and universities, including 1200 hours of clinical training.
The benefits of music therapy
Reliving pain
For patients who are deeply agitated or in severe pain, music can provide tremendous help by distracting the patient from his/her pain.
It can work as a powerful tool that puts them in a different frame of mind and help them relax or simply just fall asleep.
In a recent study, patients undergoing spine surgery were instructed to listen to self-selected music on the evening before their surgery and until the second day after their surgery.
When pain levels were measured post op, the group had significantly less pain than the other group who didn’t listen to music.
Helping with depression
Music therapy may help some patients fight depression, according to a report published in 2008. Researchers gathered up data from five previously published studies; in four of them, participants who received music therapy were more likely to see a decrease in depression symptoms compared to those who did not receive music therapy.
According to the report’s authors, patients appeared to experience outstanding benefits when therapists used theory-based music therapy techniques, such as painting to music and improvised singing.
Reducing stress
Research has shown that listening to music even without lyrics or loud instrumentation, can calm people down during highly stressful or painful events and help people who are ill take their minds off hospital rituals.
When they’re listening to music, they can be somewhere else; and it can take their minds off the procedures and tests they have to go through.
Music can prevent anxiety-induced increases in heart rate and systolic blood pressure, it can decrease cortisol levels, and all biological markers of stress. and It can also ease stress in pregnancy.
Improve results of physical medicine and rehabilitation
Music therapy can be used for facilitating movement and overall physical rehabilitation. it can be used to motivate patients to cope with treatment. It also provides emotional support for them and their families.
Reducing symptoms of psychiatric disorders such asschizophrenia
Music therapy can be used to help children with autism to improve their communication skills. Furthermore, it can help premature infants improve their sleep habits and increase their weight gain.
Finally, music therapy can be used to help individuals with Parkinson’s disease to improve motor function.
Conclusion
All in all, music therapy does help in improving motor function, social skills, emotions, coordination, self-expression and personal growth. However, it is not recommended as a stand-alone treatment for serious medical and psychiatric issues.
While music may help to alleviate some of the symptoms of these conditions, other forms of treatment such as pharmacological, physical, and/or psychological therapies may also be necessary.