Several studies have shown that listening to music can help alleviate chronic pain and reduce the need for pain medication. Other research has documented that music can help lower blood pressure, heart rate and anxiety in heart-disease patients.
Music therapy has been shown to help people who have lost speech skills due to stroke or other brain injury to recover their ability to speak. But neuroscientists also report that music can help people with motor-skill deficits from stroke or diseases like Parkinson’s regain balance and co-ordinated movement.
One brain region that imaging studies have shown is central to our reaction to music is the medial prefrontal cortex, an area just behind the eyes that’s central to processing memories and emotions and assigning meaning to them. Dr Petr Janata of the University of California, Davis, did an experiment with a group of young adults a few years ago that imaged their brains as they listened to bits of songs from childhood. Activation of the medial prefrontal cortex was strongest if a song brought up a specific memory or emotion.
Janata also notes that this region of the brain is one of the last areas to deteriorate in people with Alzheimer’s. This may explain why many Alzheimer’s patients can remember and sing along to tunes from their youth long after most other memories are lost.
Queensland Sunday Mail
28 February 2010
pg 62