Health & Harmony Research Suggests Music Has the Power to Heal The Kansas City Star - November 4, 2001 Stephen Anderson has autism and Down syndrome. He knows 15 words at most, words understood best by those who live with him and know him well. He loves music and calls it "la-la-la." At the community toy library, his favorites to borrow were always the ones that made sounds when he banged them - cymbals, bells, tambourines. This affinity was evident before he even met music therapist Steve Barrett two years ago. But it was Barrett and a drum, said Stephen's mom, Betty Anderson, that made a therapeutic difference. One day Barrett showed up for a session at 8-year-old Stephen's house with a bass drum, a big one like in a marching band. Stephen and Barrett pounded on the drum, talked into it and scratched the drum skin to get as many sounds as they could from the drum. Barrett placed Stephen's tiny hand on the place on the drum he wanted him to pound, and Stephen obliged, a sign of social interaction that was new. "I have videos of Stephen interacting with Steve, and that didn't happen with some of the other people we've had," said Stephen's mom. If you listen hard enough, you can hear the sound of music hard at work like this across Kansas City. In local nursing homes, music soothes the agitated Alzheimer's patient. In mental health centers, it helps open emotional floodgates. And it ushers the hospice patient through the final moments of life and like a lifeline pulls the suicidal mother out of despair. Used by professionals, this is called music therapy. But laypeople, too, use music as tonic, all too evident in the aftermath of Sept. 11, as songs that prime our patriotic juices climb music charts. the last few days the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences - the Grammy folks - gave $200,000 to the American Music Therapy Association to send music therapists to New York to help people deal with the emotional fallout. And music for all New evidence pointing to music's power emerges all the time. Look no further than the Kansas State School for the Blind in Kansas City, Kan., where music helps students learn essentials like left from right, up from down, and how to distinguish sounds. Studies reported this year in Scientific American, Science and other journals presented a new school of thought on the music-mind connection. Contrary to what some researchers in the past have believed - that there exists some kind of "music center" in the brain - this new research suggests quite the opposite. There may be, in fact, unexpected areas of the brain involved in interpreting, writing, feeling, even performing, music. Some of the most promising findings in music therapy research are discoveries of how music can help people regain limb movement, said Michael Thaut, one of the country's leading researchers in neurological rehabilitation. Thaut believes that new research using music therapy with Parkinson's disease and stroke patients will prove music is useful in retraining a person's attention and memory, too. "The last 10 years have brought a completely new, different view on music therapy," said Thaut, professor of music and neuroscience at Colorado State University. The research is so new that it's still filtering down to music therapists in the field, Thaut said. But heightened interest in music as medicine is clearly evident in the Kansas City area. One clue is the growing number of continuing education courses with names like "Musical Metaphors" and "The Healing Power of Music" offered to local nurses. Since last year both Liberty Hospital and Providence Place, a nursing home in Kansas City, Kan., have installed vibro-acoustic chairs for their patients. The recliner chairs play music through built-in speakers. As it plays, a massaging wave undulating to the beat of the song rolls up the patient's body. At Providence Place, the chair can put an agitated patient to sleep in minutes. The staff has been so happy with the results that a separate room for the chair has been added to a remodeling project. "I would probably say this is happening now because the public is demanding more personalized care," said Lisa Vail, clinical manager of the surgical oncology unit and outpatient oncology clinic at Liberty Hospital. "They are saying we aren't just a bad gall bladder or back pain. We are a unique, multidimensional being, and different things help us deal with different situations. For some people, tai chi might be a way to relax. For others, it's journaling. For others, it's music. "But there's also a growing arena of medical research that supports the use of music ... for all people." Making brain waves "Here's a song you will never hear in the dentist's office," Connie Wollenhaupt said before plucking the strings of her concert grand harp. Like shards of glass scattering across the floor, sharp, tinkling, high notes rang out in the small conference room at an Olathe hotel. The sound was anything but heavenly, which is exactly what the professional harpist wanted to demonstrate for the dozen local nurses gathered before her. They spent the day with her recently in a class called "Let the Music of the Angels Soothe Your Patients' Souls." As she played, Wollenhaupt, a registered nurse studying for a degree in music therapy, gave a lesson in how music can affect the body's blood pressure and heart rate. "Every sound registers in the brain's core and produces a physiological response," she said, noting that concert promoters know that unruly crowds can be controlled with slow-tempoed music. High-pitched notes, like those in the piece she'd just played, register in the head and neck. Which is why that song is not on any dentist's playlist. "People don't like the dentist's drill because of the high frequency, not because it hurts," Wollenhaupt said. Percussive sounds such as the beats that drive rock and rap do anything but calm the body. To show them, Wollenhaupt clapped her hands, startling more than one nurse in the room. "The sound of a hand clapping triggers fight or flight," she said. "The heart beat goes up, blood pressure goes up." Music can even "train" the mind, she said. Watch waiters and waitresses in a restaurant. If the restaurant's music has a fast beat, the waiters will invariably walk to the beat. "It's almost physically impossible to not do that." In a similar way, scientists like Michael Thaut are using rhythmic music to help Parkinson's disease and stroke patients retrain their ability to control their arms and legs. Their research has been furthered by the advent of machines like CAT scans and MRIs - magnetic resonance imaging - that allow scientists to watch the brain as people perform certain tasks. Traditionally, much has been built on this "somewhat vague notion that music creates good feelings, and the way we interpret those emotions helps to make therapy better," Thaut said. "That is sort of the historical notion of music therapy. "What biological research shows is that music actually engages the brain in very specific ways. And through specific learning and training exercises we can actually enhance functions in the brain." Understanding the biology behind music makes it more useful in medicine, educational settings and other areas where science suggests music can do more than simply entertain, researchers like Thaut believe. All the research grounds anecdotal reports of music's influence, said Robert Groene, director of music therapy at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. "We're coming back now with the Thauts ... and folks like that who are showing real connections to the brain and neurology, who are showing real reasons why music works." During a recent performance at Johnson County Nursing Center in Olathe, Mark and Kate Gordon sang old-time love songs and standards for a group of 18 seniors. Not music therapy in the clinical sense, but certainly music with a purpose. Miracle working Janalea Hoffman has believed for years that music "works." The local music therapist has made a name for herself in her field, traveling the country teaching health professionals hungry to know how to use music with their patients. She works with the public, too. Many know her by her music, composed with 50 to 60 beats per minute, a slow, steady beat designed to synchronize the listener's heart and breathing rate. On a clear, early fall evening recently, about a dozen women and men sat in chairs arranged in a circle in a wide-open room at Hoffman's New Rhythmic Medicine Center in southern Johnson County. Hoffman sat with her students in the circle. Everyone held a Native American cedar flute. In the span of a few minutes, Hoffman taught them how to cover the holes to get the sound right. Haunting, lyrical notes floated upward into the high-ceilinged room. This was Genevieve "Ginger" Farley's second flute class with Hoffman. The social worker plays her flute when she needs to unwind and relax at home. She has also been using music in the bereavement support groups she leads. "I think in the last five to 10 years we've found that we need alternatives to medicine, and music is a language that speaks to everyone," Farley said. Teens especially cannot express their feelings well, an obstacle because "if you can't feel it, you can't heal it," she believes. In group sessions with young people, she hands them a list of emotions and a drum from her private collection. Bang the drum to show us how you feel, she tells them. Steve Barrett, Stephen Anderson's former music therapist, uses music in his work at Rainbow Mental Health Facility in Kansas City, Kan. A professional drummer who recorded, toured and played with bands all over the country, he returned to his Kansas City hometown in 1994 to study music's therapeutic side. He recently produced a CD called "Smooth Cruise," a combination of spoken word and relaxing music aimed at curbing commuter road rage. Barrett has watched music save souls. One woman he worked with was so despondent over her son's suicide that she had tried to take her own life. He pulled out a Peter Gabriel song called "Don't Give Up" and played it for her. Through tears, talk and a second listen to the lyrics - "Don't give up, 'cause you have friends, don't give up, you're not beaten yet" - she gave up her suicidal thoughts. "The power of music therapy is that it taps into people's emotions," Barrett said. "The power is awesome. Miracles can happen." To reach Lisa Gutierrez, features reporter for The Star, call (816) 234-4987 or send e-mail to lgutierrez@kcstar.com . Music and the brain Researchers around the world have spent more than five decades studying how the brain processes music. They are finding that music, like language, stimulates many areas of the brain involved in other kinds of thinking. In the brain, divided into two hemispheres, the right hemisphere long has been considered the seat of music appreciation. But brain scans of people listening to music show that music perception is created by an interplay of activity in both sides of the brain. For instance, in Science magazine earlier this year, Mark Jude Tramo of the Harvard Medical School called attention to a small region of the brain critical in having perfect pitch - the ability to recognize by ear the perfect middle C note on the piano. But that area also plays an important role in language processing, Tramo said. Thus there is "no grossly identifiable brain structure that works solely during music cognition," he wrote. -Lisa Gutierrez/The Star To learn more The American Music Therapy Association in Silver Spring, Md., provides access to finding music therapists nationwide, current research and other information. (301) 589-3300. www.musictherapy.org . Local notes Music therapist Janalea Hoffman teaches seminars, composes music and offers music therapy sessions at the New Rhythmic Medicine Center in southern Johnson County. (913) 681-8098. www.rhythmicmedicine.com . Music therapist Steve Barrett will release "Smooth Cruise," a CD and cassette of music and spoken word he's created to help reduce road rage. Information on price and availability can be found within the next few days at www.stevebarrett-kc.com . Or call (816) 509- 8918. Mark and Kate Gordon, a husband-and-wife musical duo in Mission, run Note Worthy Outreach Inc., which offers their services to local nursing homes, hospitals, retirement communities and so forth. (913) 384-6718. Registered nurse and professional harp player Connie Wollenhaupt, who uses the harp in music therapy, recently released "Angel Song," her first CD of music recorded for relaxation and meditation. For information, call (913) 393-3441, or check www.angel-song.com .