Attention issues may be helped by music therapy

Children with ADD, ADHD, and attention issues might be able to be helped by music therapy.

Focus can be a real struggle for people with learning disabilities like ADHD and ADD, but music is being found to be a powerful tool to train minds.

Middle school student Thomas Beckman has the developmental disability Down syndrome and uses music to help him focus.

He takes adapted music lessons at Rhythm & Rehab in Durham, where he gets to play his favorite instrument -- the drums -- as a form of neurologic music therapy.

"Music therapy is using music to accomplish non-musical goals," said Paula Scicluna, the founder and executive director of Rhythm & Rehab. "So, using music to improve speech skills, language, sensory motor skills, cognitive skills, social emotional skills."

At the beginning of his lesson, Thomas banged the drums loudly, looked around at his surroundings and was not focused. He was very distracted.

Encouraging him to keep in time, Scicluna patted the drums saying, "Together, together, together. Can you do it together?"

Thomas ignored instruction.

However, as the session progressed -- in a matter of minutes -- something clicked and his focus increased.

He and Scicluna then moved to the keyboard, and as they attempted to play a duet, he was more in tune to the rhythm and "making music." He intently glanced up at his song sheet and glanced down making sure he hit each key precisely.

"I don't expect him to leave here playing Chopin," said Donna Beckmann, Thomas' mother.

She said the benefits of playing music, such as hand-eye coordination, helps him in his everyday life.

"Whether he's writing something, whether he's helping in the kitchen and cutting up vegetables, it's all connected, she said.

Scicluna pointed out that the quality of Thomas' playing is not what matters, but rather he "continued to play and that he stayed with the activity until I told him to stop."

She said music helps organize the brain, and repetition is key.

"Once you add that rhythm and you add that structure, it helps actually organize the firing of the neurons. Focus, attention [and] impulse control -- all those behaviors that you see children with ADHD and ADD struggle with," Scicluna said. "That's how music therapy is helpful to those children."

So, while some may view Thomas' drumming as noise, he hears music.

"He gets a lot of feedback from heavy movements. So for him to be banging on the drums, that does something for him," his mother said. "The type of focus that this trains him in is to focus when he needs to. The therapy gives him tools to reach his goals."

Beckmann said the structure grounds him, and his instructors have high expectations.

"They know the potential. They know what these individuals are able to do, and they don't settle for less," she said. "That's why you see the phenomenal things my son can do."

Thomas was so focused, he continued to play the keyboard.

"To see him so focused and visually tracking and using the right fingers on the right keys," Scicluna said. "For those of us that don't have to really think about all of those skills independently, you think of all those skills that have to come together in order for that to happen, it's incredible."

Beckmann said, "It's working on so many different pieces of what he needs. I see a more whole child because of music therapy. It's music, it's fun."

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Epilepsy drug may help adults learn pitch

Results from a study shows that an epilepsy drug can help adults learn the rare skill of having perfect pitch.

Perfect pitch, also called absolute pitch, is the ability to accurately name any pitch you hear. People with perfect pitch can sing any note of the chromatic scale without hearing reference pitches first.

Until recently, perfect pitch was thought to be an innate ability that very few children possessed. The American Psychological Association estimates that only one in 10,000 Americans have the gift.

But according to a research report published last week, scientists have discovered that Valproate, a drug used to treat epilepsy, can help adults develop perfect pitch.

Research had shown that the drug enabled adult mice to learn habits that were previously only possible for mice to learn during youth.

Harvard researcher Takao Hensch and an international team of scientists, then, decided to give Valproate to a group of adult men who had no prior musical training. They asked the group to complete an online ear-training course that lasted for two weeks.

At the end of the trial, those who took Valproate were significantly better at identifying pitches than those taking a placebo.

Hensch, who is a professor of molecular and cellular biology at Harvard, recently discussed the research team's findings with Linda Wertheimer of NPR. "It's a mood-stabilizing drug, but we found that it also restores the plasticity of the brain to a juvenile state," Hensch said.

In other words, the drug seems to restore the ability to learn certain tasks that were once thought impossible to learn outside of childhood.

Of course, the implications of such a drug are enormous. It could help adults learn a new language and speak that language without an accent, abilities which are thought to peak in early childhood.

For a long time, perfect pitch was thought to be a result of nature, not nurture.

In the NPR interview, Hensch acknowledges that there is a genetic component. But he and many other researchers believe that perfect pitch can be acquired, through early musical training before age seven.

Other researchers disagree, saying that the ability to develop perfect pitch is genetic and can't be taught.

However, there is one point on which researchers tend to agree: It is impossible for adults to develop perfect pitch.

Many musicians regard perfect pitch as the holy grail, the ultimate musical gift. Mozart had perfect pitch, and many experts think Beethoven had it also.

The ability to instantly identify whether any pitch is sharp or flat can help string players play in tune. The ability to sing any pitch can help singers navigate densely chromatic music.

And perfect pitch can help any musician sight-read a difficult score. A drug that could aid adults in developing this ability would probably prove extremely popular among musicians.

But Hensch warns that scientists are only beginning to understand how Valproate affects the brain's ability to learn new things. And the drug is known to have side effects.

So, it may be a long time before Valproate is available to consumers for this purpose. And those who take such a medication may find that perfect pitch has its downside.

Those who have it might not enjoy listening to an orchestra that tunes to a concert "A" that is a little sharp or flat, as some orchestras do. And hearing the out-of-tune pitches of electric appliances, train whistles and other background noises in our environment could become annoying for a whole new reason.

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Study: Music therapy beneficial for preemies

A study shows that music and lullabies have extremely beneficial effects on preemie's sleep and eating. Positive effects are also seen in the parents of preemies.

A new study finds that singing lullabies or playing womb-like music helps soothe pre-term babies and their parents, improving the infants' sleeping and eating patterns and increasing opportunities for parent-child bonding.

The findings, published online in the journal Pediatrics on Monday, refute earlier studies that suggest all sound is overstimulating to premature babies, showing instead that soft music, closely matched to a preemie's vital signs, can have clear benefits.

"Music therapy is on the horizon," study author Joanne Loewy, director of the Louis Armstrong Department of Music Therapy at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York told The Huffington Post. "It's part of integrative medicine -- programs talking about culture, about the effects of [things like] mood and religion in health care."

Loewy and her colleagues tested the effects of live music therapy on 272 premature newborns 32 weeks or older in multiple Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICUs). They examined three types of music: a lullaby, selected and sung by the baby's parents; an "ocean disc," a round instrument filled with small metal balls that mimics the "whooshing" of the womb; and a gato box, a small, rectangular instrument used to simulate a heartbeat. The instruments were played live, by trained musical therapists who matched their performance to the babies' breathing.

Overall, music helped improve the infants' vital signs, sleep patterns and feeding. "Gentle stimulation, applied by any of these three interventions, [brought] about significant changes in the babies' responses," Loewy said.

Dr. Catherine Love, a neonatologist at Miami Children's Hospital who reviewed the new study but did not work on it, said she is particularly excited by the idea that lullabies and music can help parents, too.

The study showed that singing lullabies to their infants helped enhance bonding and decreased some of the stress that parents feel when caring for a baby in the NICU.

"In our [NICU], the whole family is important," Love said. "Parents are put in this awkward situation where they don't get to be with their babies every day. We want to help establish the relationship. For us, that's equally important."

In general, Love said, the doctors and nurses who work in the NICU try to stay as quiet as possible, and the only sounds babies hear are beeping machines.

"We always look at more generalized sound level [in the NICU] and the effect of the human voice," she said, calling the study an exciting first step in a new area. "This looks more in detail at exactly what sounds work and how exactly they impact different behaviors of babies."

According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates one of every nine babies born in the U.S. each year is born premature, before 37 weeks.

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Music as a Therapy for Insomnia

New research looks at how music can be used as therapy to treat insomnia instead of other substances and therapies commonly used such as medication.

If you are among the 50 percent of Americans who suffer from insomnia, then you have probably tried everything -- from warm milk to melatonin pills or prescription medications to induce sleep -- with varying degrees of success and side effects. But what if sleep could be achieved not by a substance, but through 'balancing' brain activity?

Researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center have conducted a pilot clinical study to determine whether a non-invasive approach, that uses musical tones to balance brain activity, can 'reset' the brain and effectively reduce insomnia.

The study, was published online in October, advance of print, in the journal Brain and Behavior. It was funded by a $26,696 grant from Brain State Technologies, LLC, Scottsdale, Ariz., the company that owns the technology used in the study.

Charles H. Tegeler, M.D., professor of neurology at Wake Forest Baptist and principal investigator of the study explained how the technology works. "The human brain is made up of the left and right hemispheres that work together as parallel processors. When a person undergoes trauma or a major stressor, their autonomic survival responses kick in and the brain can become unbalanced. If those imbalances persist, symptoms such as insomnia can result. Our study looked at a new technology that is intended to facilitate greater balance and harmony in brain frequencies, which may result in improved symptoms."

The new technology is called HIRREM, high-resolution, relational, resonance-based, electroencephalic mirroring or, as it's commercially known, Brainwave Optimization™. The non-invasive procedure uses a system that is designed to reflect the brain's frequencies back to itself using musical tones. Resonance between the musical tones and the electrical energy in a person's brain can bring balance to the two hemispheres of the brain.

Study results were based on a change in the Insomnia Severity Index (ISI) which measures the severity of sleep disruption using a zero-to-28 point scale; the median ISI for study participants was between 18.7 and 18.9, which is considered moderate-to-severe insomnia. Researchers found that the HIRREM group had a 10.3 point drop in ISI, improved insomnia symptoms and, clinically moved into a category of 'no insomnia' or 'sub-threshold insomnia'. The control subjects, who continued their existing insomnia treatment without HIRREM, showed no change in ISI. However, when the crossover control group received HIRREM therapy, the results were indistinguishable from those of the original HIRREM group.

This unblinded, wait-list control, crossover study enrolled 20 participants (14 women and 6 men). Ten people were randomized to receive HIRREM sessions, plus usual care; the remaining 10 were assigned to the wait-list control group. An initial assessment determined the symmetry, or balance, in amplitude and frequencies between the brain hemispheres and data collection included a subject's ISI and other measures including blood pressure and neurocognitive function tests.

Study participants randomized to HIRREM underwent eight to 12 sessions that each lasted between 60-90 minutes. The sessions involved reclining in a zero gravity chair and placing sensors over numerous locations on both sides of the scalp. A musical tone, determined by a mathematic algorithm and based on the dominant frequency in a floating middle range of the participant's EEG frequencies, was played back to the participant through ear buds. Resonance between musical tones and oscillating brain circuits is designed to allow the brain to auto-calibrate, moving towards better balance, with associated improvement in symptoms.

The limitations of the study include the small number of study participants and the absence of a sham-placebo control group which prevented blinding. This means it is possible that the changes observed with HIRREM, could be due to a placebo effect. In addition, because HIRREM therapy involves social interaction and relaxation, there may be other non-specific mechanisms for improvement, in addition to the tonal mirroring. Although the researchers believe that the degree of improvement and length of time it persisted (for four weeks after the last session) suggests real change through HIRREM, Tegeler is planning a larger clinical trial using a sham placebo, to confirm the HIRREM effect and further explore the technology.

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Playing Music Alters the Processing of Multiple Sensory Stimuli in the Brain

Piano practicing fine tunes the brain circuitries that temporally bind signals from our senses.

Over the years pianists develop a particularly acute sense of the temporal correlation between the movements of the piano keys and the sound of the notes played. However, they are no better than non-musicians at assessing the synchronicity of lip movements and speech. This was discovered by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in a comparative study on the simultaneous brain processing of stimuli from different senses by musicians and non-musicians. The researchers also used functional magnetic resonance imaging in their study to map the areas of the brain active during this process. According to their findings, in pianists, the perception of asynchronous music and hand movements triggers increased error signals in a circuit involving the cerebellum, premotor and associative areas of the brain, which is refined by piano practicing. The study shows that our sensorimotor experience influences the way in which the brain temporally links signals from different senses during perception.

In a world full of stimuli which affect all senses, the human brain constantly has to link the impressions we perceive in a way that makes sense. We learn through experience, for example, that the synchronous events that arise in a busy bar setting, such as the lip movements of a particular person and the sound of a certain voice, belong together. HweeLing Lee and research group leader Uta Noppeney from the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen study how the brain integrates stimuli from several senses and how the circuits in the brain change as a result of learning. In their latest study, they examined how well 18 amateur pianists were able to perceive the temporal coincidence between finger movements on the piano keys and a piece of piano music and between lip movements and spoken sentences as compared with 19 non-musicians. "For this study, we availed of the fact that the pianists specifically train in an activity, in which several sensory stimuli, that is visual and auditory information, movement and the striking of the piano keys, have to be connected," explains Uta Noppeney.

During the experiment, the finger or mouth movements were advanced or delayed in relation to the sounds heard at intervals of up to 360 milliseconds. The study participants were requested to specify when asked whether the events were synchronous or asynchronous. Using the same film and sound material and the same participants, the experiments were then repeated using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). In this case, the subjects remained passive and the machine recorded the areas of the brain that became active during the automatic perception of the synchronous and asynchronous signals.

The experiments revealed that the pianists were significantly more accurate than the non-musicians in assessing whether the finger movements on the piano and the sounds heard coincided temporally or not. "The window for the temporal integration of the stimuli in the pianists is clearly narrower than in non-musicians," says HweeLing Lee. However, the same differences were not observed in the experiments involving spoken sentences and lip movements -- both groups recorded similar performances here. In principle, asynchronicity in language and music activates the same areas in the brain. However, the fMRI scans showed that, in the experiment with the pianists, asynchronous music triggered a stronger signal in a circuit involving the left cerebellum, a premotor and associative region in the cerebral cortex than in the non-musicians.

Read more: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111124150241

Musical Aptitude Relates to Reading Ability

Auditory working memory and attention, for example the ability to hear and then remember instructions while completing a task, are a necessary part of musical ability. But musical ability is also related to verbal memory and literacy in childhood.

New research published in BioMed Central's open access journalBehavioral and Brain Functionsshows how auditory working memory and musical aptitude are intrinsically related to reading ability, and provides a biological basis for this link.

Researchers from the Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory at Northwestern University tested children on their ability to read and to recognize words. This was compared to the extent of their auditory working memory (remembering a sequence of numbers and then being able to quote them in reverse), and musical aptitude (both melody and rhythm). The electrical activity within the children's brains was also measured as auditory brainstem responses to rhythmic, or random, sounds based on speech.

The team lead by Dr Nina Kraus found that poor readers had reduced neural response (auditory brainstem activity) to rhythmic rather than random sounds compared to good readers. In fact the level of neural enhancement to acoustic regularities correlated with reading ability as well as musical aptitude. The musical ability test, specifically the rhythm aspect, was also related to reading ability. Similarly a good score on the auditory working memory related to better reading and to the rhythm aspect of musical ability.

Read more: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111016212019