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| Harpist and IC affiliate Anna O’Connell performed examples of therapeutic harp music during the Community-Based Learning Spotlight Event hosted by the Office of Civic Engagement and the Center for Faculty Excellence on April 4 in McHenry Lounge in the Whalen Center for Music. The event reintroduced the Music as Medicine Project and highlighted students’ work with the initiative. |
The Music as Medicine Project — a collaboration between the School of Music, the Gerontology Institute, the Department of Recreation and Leisure Studies, the Office of Civic Engagement and the Center for Faculty Excellence — highlights the therapeutic power of music and the importance of service-learning. The initiative emerged from conversations between the Gerontology Institute and the School of Music during the fall semester.
According to the national organization Music & Memory, the brain and music are tightly linked. Music is often associated with certain episodic memories and acts as a recall cue for memory. For older adults and those struggling with diseases of memory impairment, such as dementia or Alzheimer’s disease, music can act as a powerful memory aid and bring comfort and healing to affected individuals.
The science behind this link has been verified over the years, and the practice of the therapeutic benefits of music dates back to just after World War I and World War II, when practitioners used music to heal and engage veterans.
According to the American Music Therapy Association, music can help increase or maintain patients’ physical, mental and emotional functioning. Music stimulates the senses and cognition and can be used to heal people across many spectrums, including those with Alzheimer’s and dementia.
Renowned neurologist Oliver Sacks conducted notable research dealing with music and memory. In a video discussing his book “Musicophilia,” Sacks said despite severe memory impairment, virtually everyone’s memory responds to music, and music can be a reawakening for those who have lost their pasts and their identities.
“A common thing in Alzheimer’s is to lose one’s memory for events and really to lose one’s autobiography, to lose one’s personal memories, and they can’t be accessed directly,” Sacks said. “But personal memories are embedded in some extent in things like music. … People can regain a sense of identity, at least for a while.”
Sacks said this is because music, especially familiar music, can trigger memory and communication in the brain for those who have lost the ability to tap into their former selves.
“The parts of the brain which respond to music are very close to the parts of the brain concerned with memory and emotion and mood, so familiar songs will bring back memories,” Sacks said.
Patricia Spencer, assistant professor and faculty director of service-learning in the Office of Civic Engagement, said music can be an integral key to connecting with older individuals in a way that other therapies cannot.
“One of our last memories that we hold on to is our musical memory,” Spencer said. “Even as seniors start to lose some of their ability to communicate, if you can reconnect with musical memory, they sometimes will find language again, and they can talk about that music or where they were at the time they heard that music, why they love that song.”
The Music as Medicine Project works with this knowledge to substitute overmedication of patients in favor of music therapy.
The initiative emerged from conversations among the three academic departments about the work of Music & Memory. That idea has since blossomed into three classes in the separate disciplines, a student organization and several other service-learning programs.
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Source: The Ithacan
