Music’s wondrous healing power
Music has fascinated, captivated and intrigued humans for as long as they have been around. From the oldest finds relevant to humans and their activity, especially social activity, it is thought that sound making with the body or with tools has always accompanied human life. In our present day, as in recent history, all cultures are known to have rituals that feature some kind of sound making, known to most readers of these lines as music.
Sound making is part of how we humans communicate with each other and with the world around us. Essentially, all forms of sound or music making are, in reality, much more complex than what they are commonly thought to be. But one kind of complexity is coming increasingly under the spotlight: How music affects us internally.
The relatively recent involvement of neuroscience, especially neuroimaging, has opened up new possibilities in understanding how and why certain sounds affect us in the ways they do. But the process of bringing together previously divergent forms of scientific inquiry is not a seamless one.
Perhaps the field of knowledge that has for the longest time been most closely attuned to how music affects people and changes them is music therapy.
Recent research in neuroscience has found credible evidence of the effectiveness of music therapy interventions in dementia or Alzheimer’s disease, depression and autism. Music therapy works in ways that are not yet completely understood, but its effectiveness in treating diseases that influence memory has been shown to be of such a quality that it allows patients to maintain cognitive and learning abilities even while the disease is affecting language.
On human emotion, the power of music is hardly debatable. Recent scientific research has shown that, through the emotional effect music has on humans, it can be an effective intervention for depression. Music therapy has also been shown to be effective for prematurely born babies in French hospitals; and, through rhythm and movement, it has shown effectiveness in helping autistic children with attention difficulties and behavioral problems.
Whether we call it music, chant, recitation or something else, this thing that moves between us through sound waves and which we normally perceive through our ears, brains, emotions and bodies, is nothing short of a wonder. For some, music is what they reach for when they are sad, for others it is what they crank up when they are happy or angry, or what they withdraw to in moments of quiet meditation, desperate supplication or private prayer. In some parts of the world, chief among them being the Middle East, making music is closely associated with its emotional power.
Music, this gift which humans can share in spoken and unspoken ways, has the ability to help in the healing of our minds and bodies. Musicians and therapists have known this for a long time. Now science is finding a new window into its secrets.