Mozart Effect and Music Therapy
Although it is only in recent times that scientists have started to document the effects of music, the qualities of music were understood even in earliest times. Evidence suggests that dance and song preceded speech, which means that music is the original language of humans. Researcher's have found that about two-thirds of the inner ear's cilia resonate only at the higher frequencies that are commonly found in music (3,000 - 20,000 Hz). This seems to indicate that primitive humans communicated primarily through song or tone. The ancient Greek philosopher Pythagoras, best known for his work in mathematics, thought the whole universe was comprised of sounds and numbers. There has long been an awareness that music affects us, even if the reasons are not clear. Around 900 B.C., David played the harp "to cure Saul's derangement" (Gonzalez-Crussi). One os the world's oldest medical documents, the Ebers Papyrus (circa 1500 B.C.), prescribed incantations that Egyptian physicians chanted to heal the sick. This is perhaps the first recorded use of music for therapy. The positive influence of music may have also saved Beethoven's life in the early eighteenth century. In a letter he wrote, "I would have ended my
Gonzalez-Crussi, Frank. "Hearing Pleasures." Health March 1989: 65. Nonverbal communication between and autistic child playing the drums and a therapist on the piano can serve to bring a child out of isolation, the Journal of the American Medical Association reported. Clive E. Robbins, Ph.D., says "it's a way of reaching into the child's mind." He compared the musical interaction to verbal communication. "As we speak, we improvise, you ask a question, I respond. So it is with music. It can be used as flexibly as we use speech to reach children with language problems. It bypasses those difficulties. Neurologic research is discovering that the brain comes into synthetic activity in response to music. Some say the brain is fundamentally programmed so that the organic connections are symphonic rather than mechanistic." The entrainment effect offers one other explanation for the physiological effects of music. Entrainment is the bodies ability to synchronize its rhythms with the rhythms of vibrating bodies around it. For example, babies in neonatal care units have been known to synchronize their natural rhythms with those generated by nearby computer monitors, matching their heart rate to the monitor's beeping. Studies on adults have also been able to duplicate this effect with music. When volunteers were subjected to stress, their heart rates rose as expected. However, when they listened to a simulated slow heart beat, their tension levels decreased and their heart rates slowed. It is possible to change a person's heart rate with music that is written in a specific tempo. When patients with a racing heart listen to music with about 50 to 60 beats per minute, their heart rate usually slows down to synchronize with the slower rhythm of the music. Campbell, Don. The Mozart Effect. New York: Avon Books, 1997.
Some common words found in the essay are:
Edwin Atlee, Pachelbel's Canon, Philip Glass, Jenny Swiss, Castleman Sedative, Hz Deep, Sigmund Freud, Music Therapy, Ebers Papyrus, Gerard Depardieu, music therapy, reprinted information access, access company, heart rate, reprinted information, information access, information access company, mozart effect, stress hormones, effects music, blood pressure, heart rates, levels stress hormones, listening music own, changes air pressure,
Approximate Word count = 3255
Approximate Pages = 13 (250 words per page double spaced)
|
