Does music have healing powers?

Music is an important source of entertainment, learning and well-being in our lives, as well as a
powerful stimulus for our brains. With the advent of new neuroimaging techniques such as
functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (functional MRI), we are beginning to understand
what happens in a normal brain when we listen to, interpret, think and feel music, and how
the structure and function can be modified. of the brain with musical training and experience.

In a normal brain, there is a vast network of areas involved with auditory perception, language
processing, attention and working memory, episodic and semantic memory, motor function,
emotion, and reward circuitry associated with processing the music we hear. This extensive
network includes areas bilaterally as temporal, frontal, parietal, cerebellar, limbic, and
paralimbic regions, respectively.

Through time and history, both medicine and music have contributed to the development of
the human being. Both influence the body, emotions and behavior, and are, therefore, likely to
be used for the purpose of improving the human condition and their union gives rise to a
professional discipline that has been called music therapy, that is, music therapy. through
music.

For the North American music therapist Kenneth Bruscia, “music therapy is a constructive
process in which the therapist helps the patient to improve, maintain or restore a state of well-
being, using musical experiences and the relationships that develop through them as a
dynamic force for change.

During the last decade, great interest has arisen in using music as a therapeutic tool in
neurological rehabilitation, and new methods based on music have been developed to
improve motor, cognitive, language, emotional and social deficits in people affected by various
conditions. at different stages of life. Thus, for example, music therapy has been used in
children and adolescents suffering from autism and dyslexia, as well as in adults and older
adults affected by stroke, Parkinson's disease, dementia and epilepsy.

In this review we analyze the current information on the use of music as a complementary
therapy, possible mechanisms of action and the spectrum of some medical conditions in which
it can have a favorable application.

Therefore, it will be shown how music over time has helped many
known characters.
The word music comes from the Greek and means "Art of the Muses". Since ancient times
there is information on how music can modify human behavior. If we review the legend of
Orpheus and Eurydice, for example, we see that Orpheus, a character in Greek mythology, son
of Apollo and the muse Calliope, inherits from them the gift of music and poetry. When he
played his lyre, men impressed with his music gathered to hear him and pacify his soul. In this
way he fell in love with the beautiful Eurydice and managed to put the terrible Cerberus to
sleep, when he went down to the underworld to try to resurrect her. Another example can be
found in the Bible in 1 Samuel, where he tells us about King Saul, who was tormented by an
evil spirit and the only thing that made him feel at peace was the music of the harp. Also when
Felipe V de Borbón (1683-1746), called the Cheerful, king of Spain from November 15, 1700
until his death, first monarch of the Bourbon dynasty (his reign of 45 years and 21 days is the
longest in the Hispanic monarchy), suffered from severe depression. To try to cure him, the
king's wife hires Farinelli, a nickname by which Carlo Broschi (1705-1782) was known, an
Italian castrato singer, one of the most famous of the 18th century, Farinelli sang to the King
for weeks and managed to improve him from his severe depression.

Johan Sebastian Bach composed the beautiful Goldberg Variations in 1741 at the request of
the harpsichordist Johann Gottlieb Goldberg, so that the nobleman (whose servant he was),
Herman Karl von Keyserlingk, would fall asleep and with positive results.

Oliver Sacks, a prominent neurologist and recently deceased writer, has been one of the great
promoters of the application of music in neurological conditions such as Parkinson's and
dementias, promoting the creation of music therapy units in hospitals in the United States.
Sacks described in his book "Awakenings" how post-encephalitic parkinsonian patients
exposed to music, managed to have unthinkable movement capacity due to their base
damage.

history of music therapy

Music therapy as a specialty emerged in the mid-20th century, in countries such as England
and the United States. At the VIII World Congress held in Hamburg, Germany, in 1996, the
World Federation of Music Therapy defined it as follows: «Music therapy is the use of music
and/or its elements by a qualified music therapist with a patient or group, in a process created
to facilitate and promote communication, learning, movement, expression, organization and
other relevant therapeutic objectives, in order to satisfy physical, emotional, mental, social and
cognitive needs. Music therapy aims to develop potentials and/or restore the functions of the
individual in such a way that he or she can achieve a better intra and/or interpersonal
integration and, consequently, a better quality of life through prevention, rehabilitation and
treatment.

In general terms, there are five prevalent orientations in the field of music therapy. Although
there are differences between these approaches, it is important to note that all of them are
based on rational premises where it is possible to find the origin of some hypotheses that
support the concepts of therapy, disease and music, their affinity to certain traditions within
the philosophy of science and the fundamental hypothesis about the concept of being human.

First, there is music therapy based on the biomedical model, where the human being is
considered as an organism, music becomes an acoustic phenomenon, and its influence
becomes a matter of how frequency and amplitude affect our autonomic reactions. From this
approach, music is considered as a non-verbal language and the human being is often treated
as an isolated unit where music could serve the purpose of activating and channeling impulses
and instincts.

Music therapy based on learning theory uses music as a reinforcing element and deals with its
function as an independent variable that acts on dependent variables, in learning objectives
and behavioral modification. His conception of the human being harmonizes with the positivist
ideal of science and also defines him as an organism.

Music therapy based on humanistic-existential psychology, which emphasizes the linguistic or

communicational character of music, in its lively and improvised quality, also assumes that
music contains or represents emotions that are communicated or transmitted to the listener.
Within this orientation, greater importance is given to music as a symbol and to the creation of
a polysemic message through it. From this orientation, musical improvisation is interpreted as
a form of proto-communication that lays the foundations for communication and interaction in
general; in the music therapy context, it implies the learning of a musical code, a way of
exercising "seeing from the perspective of the other" and a possibility of moving between
different levels of experience. For this theory, music is treated as a form of social interaction
that precedes the verbal mode of communication and the human being is defined as a social
entity that experiences, improvises and acts.

Finally, it is important to highlight the work of the Center for Biomedical Research in Music at
Colorado State University in the United States, where the contribution of its directors Dr.
Michael H. That, PhD and Dr. Gerald C. McIntosh, MD and collaborators.

This Center is made up of three areas: The Neurological Music Therapy Training Academy, the
Neuroscience Research Laboratories and the Neurological Music Therapy Clinics, which consist
of groups of physical therapists and neurological music therapists focused on serving the local
community with some type of deficit. motor and/or mobility product of a stroke or other
neurological disease such as Parkinson's.

CBRM research has facilitated the development of Neurological Music Therapy as a new
treatment system that is defined as the therapeutic application of music in cognitive, sensory
and motor dysfunctions due to neurological diseases.