When a 60-year-old speaking coach Rande Davis Gedaliah was diagnosed with Parkinson's in 2003, she experienced
problems with her balance, leg spasms, difficulty walking and severe fall in
the shower. But something incredible happened when she turned on her radio: She
can move her legs with no problems, her balance has improved drastically, and
Rande can do all the activities that she wants to do like dancing.
The big question is, "How did she do that?" The answer
is music. She listens to music depending on her mood. If she wants to move
faster, she will pump up her walkman with "Born in the U.S.A." by
Bruce Springsteen. If she wants a slower pace, she will listen to "We Are
the Champions" by Queen.
A lot of medical experts are saying that music therapy has been
around for decades and being used as a way to treat neurodegenerative diseases
like Alzheimer's, Huntington's and Parkinson's. It can also relieve anxiety and
depression. Brain stimulants are good,but there are times that people with
neurodegenerative diseases are advised to avoid stimulants like caffeine, or
Nootropics. That is why they need another way to stimulate their brain. This is
where music therapy comes into play.
Today, because of advancement in brain imaging and neuroscience,
doctors can now see what is happening in the brain as people listen to music or
when they play a musical instrument, and why music therapy works. It has been
justified for the past few years that music therapy helps restore expressive
language loss in aphasia patients that undergone brain injury from stroke.
Aside from improving speech and movement, music can trigger the
release of brain chemicals that can alter moods as well as trigger lost
emotions and memories. Stroke and Parkinson's patients can benefit more on
music therapy compared to other neurological illnesses because the human brain
is naturally accustomed to responding to high-rhythmic music.
(To know more about Parkinson’s disease, visit https://www.webmd.com/parkinsons-disease/parkinsons-disease-overview.)
Our nervous system is unique to mammals because humans
automatically foot-taps whenever they hear the music. In patients with
Parkinson's, that has difficulty initiating body movements or bradykinesia, and
it is thought that music can trigger the neurons to translate the music into
organized body movement. Some patients develop something like a mechanism for
auditory timing.
People with moving problems can immediately release from their
"frozen mode" and starts walking. Or if the patient has problems with
their balance, they can coordinate their steps with the rhythm of the music.
Slow rhythm can relax the muscle's jerky motion of Parkinson's patients.
(To know more about degenerative diseases, visit https://www.docdoc.com.sg/info/condition/degenerative-disease.)
Playing good music requires coordinated muscle movements and
develops an ear for timing. It can also bring stunning results. Some workshops
can help neurodegenerative disease patients improve their actions as well as
their brain functions.
The workshops use traditional musical instruments like drums,
guitars, or xylophones. The patients participate in group activities like
playing percussion pieces, as a form of music therapy for patients with
physical and cognitive disabilities. It includes Parkinson's, Alzheimer's,
Huntington's, and other neurodegenerative diseases.
The workshops teach patients to play along with traditional
beats using musical instruments like bongos, drums, congas, ukulele, guitar, or
xylophones. Patients report that the control of their physical movements has
improved tremendously after they joined music therapies. Their motions become
more fluid compared before, and they don't shake as much as they used to.
Their tremors also seem to calm down during the session.
Research shows that music therapy with Parkinson's patients have improved their
motor control after they participated in group music therapy sessions than
compared to patients that underwent the usual physical therapy sessions. But
after the course was discontinued, the benefits were no longer obvious, and it
means that music therapy session should be continued if patients want to get
the best result possible.
Most experts recommend that patients should do both traditional
and group music therapy to increase the effectiveness of the sessions. Patients
can also make music libraries for MP3s or CD players that they can use while
they are doing other things in their daily lives.
(To Know more about traditional therapy for neurodegenerative
diseases, click here.)
Because the area of the brain that is responsible for speech
network overlaps with the area of the brain that process music, neurologists
found a method called melodic intonation remedy. It is instrumental at
retraining the patients how to speak by creating new neuronal pathways or
transferring a new one.
Even after the patient suffers a stroke that damages the left
side of the brain (the left side is responsible for people's speech), some
patients can still sing properly. With repetition, therapists can start
removing music and allow the patients to speak the lyrics of the song and
substitutes regular sentences or phrases in their place.
As the patient tries to recall the words that have the same
meaning to the lyrics, the patient's word retrieval, as well as their speech,
can dramatically improve. Music therapy appears to activate the areas of the
brain (specifically the right side) suggesting that the region need to pick up
the slack since the left side is damaged.
It is pretty amazing to see the image of the brain during the
sessions; no one would expect to see how the human brain of an adult patient
compensates whenever one part is damaged. Not every patient will respond to
music therapy, and it may also take several therapy sessions before the patient
can see any positive effect.
(Want to know more about music therapy? Click here.)
Neurologists have found that simple anxiety and stress reduction
methods like muscle relaxation exercise as well as facial massage can maximize
the impact of music therapy session for patients that suffer neurodegenerative
diseases as well as people who suffer from stroke, and other muscular
disabilities.
