by Janice Rodriguez
This month's topic is music. First, I was interested in how the brain processes music (the science), how that might affect the brain in a stroke (the theory), and finally, could music therapy help stroke survivors to regain skills (the practical). Well, it's a huge topic, and I have no music education or skills other than singing with the radio. (And I lost the singing part in my stroke!) So I found some websites about the topic - it's a little "taste" of the topic, not a "feast!" And, of course, as I always say, some of the information on the Internet is old, incomplete, and just wrong. So be skeptical and always check with your doctor or therapist.
The first website is a article that my cousin sent me, "Brain Health: Music and the Mind." It is a good introduction for the topic although it does not focus on stroke. Another site is an article written by Dr. Oliver Sacks, "When Music Heals." No science or theory; just anecdotes from Dr. Sacks' practice. Check out Dr. Sacks' website also - it is not on the topic but well designed and informative. Now to the science and theory.
There are many scientists and scholars who specialize in the neural functions and music. I found a journal article authored by several German neurologists about the brain dynamics of music perception. The article is sort of readable, so I will paraphrase the discussion and the conclusion of the study.
The main components of music are harmony/melody, rhythm, and language. The test was to measure the differences in the perception of music among several factors: music experience (musicians and non-musicians), mode of listening (attentive and background) and gender. The conclusions were: Non-musicians used the right brain for harmony, left brain for language, and both for rhythm. Women, particularly female non-musicians, used the right brain more than men. But musicians and attentive listeners used the left brain during harmony perception. Background listeners used the right brain. Thus, music perception is a complex process involving different brain structures dependent of many factors.
So remember, that was for "normal" subjects. The next journal article is about people who have brain damage (usually from a stroke) in the left or the right brain; the study was to see if this damage affects the listening of music. One of the words the journal article uses is amusia - the inability to interpret or appreciate musical sounds. Amusia might extend to impairments in music memory and recognition as well as in singing and the ability to tap in time to music. The statistics from the article: impairments in music processing were found in 62.5% of the patients with right brain damage and 75% of the patients with left brain damage. That supports the conclusion that the ability of listening music can be damaged in both the right and left brain because music processing is based on widely distributed neural networks controlled by individual aspects of musicality and music experience.
Can we as stroke survivors do something to help to regain our musical and other abilities? Probably - I have some websites that have interesting information about research (Center for Biomedical Research in Music), therapy (American Music Therapy Association, Inc.), and one product (Advanced Brain Technologies - this is NOT a recommendation!). All the websites mentioned are listed below. So if you are interested, browse these sites. Have fun and I will see you next month on a different topic.
1 Brain Health: Music and the Mind
http://www.intelihealth.com/IH/ihtIH/WSIHW000/9273/24261/349887.html?d=dmtContent
2 When Music Heals by Oliver Sacks
http://www.bobjanuary.com/hhh/oliver.htm
http://www.oliversacks.com/index.htm
3 The cerebral haemodynamics of music perception - A transcranial Doppler sonography study Evers, et al., Brain, Vol. 122, No. 1, 75-85, January 1999 http://brain.oupjournals.org/cgi/content/full/122/1/75?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&searchid=1073343963226_2221&stored_search=&FIRSTINDEX=50&minscore=5000&journalcode=brain#SEC4
4 Receptive amusia: evidence for cross-hemispheric neural networks underlying music processing strategies Maria Schuppert, et al. Brain, Vol. 123, No. 3, 546-559, March 2000
http://brain.oupjournals.org/cgi/content/full/123/3/546?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&andorexacttitle=and&andorexacttitleabs=and&andorexactfulltext=and&searchid=1073341352851_2117&stored_search=&FIRSTINDEX=0&sortspec=relevance&volume=123&firstpage=546&journalcode=brain
This address is too long to create a hyperlink. Please copy and paste into your browser.
Home page link: http://brain.oupjournals.org
5 Center for Biomedical Research in Music
http://www.colostate.edu/depts/cbrm/
6 American Music Therapy Association, Inc
7 Advanced Brain Technologies (ABT)
Copyright © February 2004
The Stroke Network, Inc.
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