Music is indeed a splendid solution to human problems.
It makes one to dance anyhow he wishes, cheers one up when down, and permits one to drown out whenever he needs to. Having mentioned all these, it is good to know that music, sound and song still have their scientific advantages too. The documentary- “Alive Inside” expresses in detail the positive reaction of a dementia patient when given iPods that are loaded with their old type of favourite songs. Music of such does help to revive them to live. When listening to such old-time favourite music, a lot of the documentary’s patients may sing along, have the brief discussion with others, and even provide answers to questions about their life.
“Music imprints itself in the brain deeper than any human experience,” says Oliver Sacks, a neurologist who appears in the movie. “Music evokes emotion, and emotion brings with it…memory.”
The documentary follows present studies revealing that music do improve the memories of dementia patients, as well as helps them to develop new memories.
Below are some other things which music has been known to “solve”:
1. Low Birth Weight:
Babies born prematurely often require an extended stay in hospitals for intensive care so to help them acquire more strength, weight and vigour in a way. To facilitate these types of processes and more, many hospitals result to music. Before now, a team of researchers in Canada discovered that playing music to preemies reduce their level of pains as it encourages better feeding habits, which in turn aides gain in weight. Moreso, hospitals do utilise instruments of music to mimic the sound of a mother’s womb and heartbeat to lull premature babies into sleep. Researchers also claim that playing calm Mozart to premature infants significantly reduce the amount of expended energy, and this makes them acquire more weight.
Really, this even “makes you wonder whether neonatal intensive care units should consider music exposure as standard practice for at-risk infants,” as said by Dr. Nestor Lopez-Duran at child-psych.org.
2. Droopy Plants:
Now if music could help babies to grow, little wonder if it can perform the same magic in plants? Well, Dorothy Retallack says yes to this with the book she wrote in 1973 called “The Sound of Music and Plants”. A book which really talked extensively on music effects on the growth of plants. Retallack played rock music to one particular plant group, as well as an easy-listening music to another similar group of plants. This then submitted that the easy-listening plants grow uniformly in size, were full, and green, and they were even leaning towards the source of music, but the rock music plants on their part grew taller, were droopy, and with faded leaves, leaning away from sound source.
3. The Damaging Effects of Brain Damage:
Out of the 1.5 million Americans that sustain brain damage yearly, about 90 thousand of them will be left with a speech disability or long-term movement. As a solution, researchers use music to stimulate the areas of the brain that control these two functions.
The beats in a musical play help serve as stepping cure for the brain. Neurological damage Patients due to either Parkinson’s disease or stroke can possibly “regain a sense of balance and a symmetrical stride” if given a rhythm to dance or walk to.
In the same manner, rhythm and pitch help patients to sing the words they can’t verbally produce. Autistic children lacking the ability to speak have been studied, and study discovers music therapy to be helpful in the articulation of their words. This treatment even helped few among them utter their first words.
Michael De Georgia, director of the Center for Music and Medicine at Case Western Reserve University’s University Hospitals Case Medical Center in Cleveland said- “We are just starting to understand how powerful music can be. We don’t know what the limits are.”
4. Teen Loitering:
The fact that teenagers don’t like classical music is one fact that is already well known in places like the public libraries, train stations, and malls. They so much dislike it to the extent that “it sends them scurrying away like frightened mice,”-LA Times. The theory here is: anytime the brain hears a disliked thing, it suppress “the pleasure chemical.” And as teenagers’ moods falls, making them go elsewhere searching something to bring it up again.
5. Hearing Loss:
Though some claimed that music cannot cure hearing loss, I am greatly optimistic it can help in preventing it. 74 lifelong musicians out of 163 adults involved in a study had participants take a series of hearing tests. The permanent musicians were able to process sound better than the non-musicians, just as the gap widens with respect to age. Linda Searling explained at the Washington Post that “A 70-year-old musician understood speech in a noisy environment as does a 50-year-old non-musician”.
Image Source : www.cchaid.com
6. A Broken Heart:
When we say music can help recover from a broken heart, we are not referring to the type caused resulting from rejection, rather due to heart attacks. It helps patients in recovering from heart surgery and attacks by slowing the rate of heart beat, reducing blood pressure as well as anxiety. It is advised that patients endeavour to listen to “joyful” music that makes them feel good always, as a preventive measure. Even research confirms listening to music that evoke joyful sense causes an increase in blood flow, expanding blood vessels at the same time and encouraging a sound vascular health.
7. Poor Sports Performance:
A UK study in 2005 discovered that listening to music at sports training periods often boost athletic performance up to 20%. A percentage that is roughly equal the boost some athletes derived from some “illegal acts”. For an optimum result in any intense training, it is advised that athletes try music with a fast tempo while slower one is suitable for non-intense periods.
8. Grumpy Teens:
Tobias Greitemeyer, a researcher in 2008 aimed at studying how musical lyrics impacted the behaviour of teens. Tobias started off by introducing a group of teenagers to “socially conscious” music with good message, the likes of “Heal the World” by Michael Jackson, while another group listened to music with “neutral” message. Tobias then “mistakenly” knocked over a cup of pencils! The group of teens listening to the positive music did not just rushed to help faster, and they picked up five times as much pencils as the other teen group.
9. Illiteracy:
A study in 2009 which compared 2-second grade groups from similar demographics suggested that learning music boosts ability to read. The key difference between these two groups was that while one learned skills like sight-reading, music notation, etc., the control group failed in these aspects. And when both were tested on literacy before and after their school year, the control group’s scores improved just slightly from their starting year, while the ones with the music education had significantly higher scores, and was very noticeable on vocabularies.
10. Sluggish Alcohol Sales:
Simply pumping some German tunes through your store as a wine store owner that is suffering from an overstock of German vino will magically help your business! A study in 1999 confirmed this that German tunes boosted German wine sales, just as French wine sales is boosted by playing French songs. Even the sampled customers confirmed that they were very much concerned with what music that is being played.
11. Wine Snobbery:
A group of researchers claimed that certain music types “enhance” the manner wine tastes by up to 60%. A study once carried out showed that, wine drinkers rated white wine as being 40% more refreshing when accompanied by refreshing and zingy music like- “Just Can’t Get Enough” by Nouvelle Vague. The red wine taste was altered 60% by heavy, strong and powerful music like “Carmina Burana” by Orff. Makers of cheap wine may now want to consider the option of printing recommended listening on their wine bottle, having explained this point. Funny?
Jonah Lehrer said at Wired that “the tongue is easy to dupe.”.
