The Brain Experiences Cathedral Bells

This past Sunday, December 23rd, I was visiting my middle daughter in Washington, D.C. and attended the Sunday morning service at one of my favorite churches in the world, the Washington National Cathedral. It was quite a magnificent spiritual experience with glorious Christmas music and an interior and exterior that are nothing short of miraculous. At the end of the service I went up to the 7th floor tower to see the view and heard the pealing bells. It was a powerful experience that went straight to my brain and to my heart!

Keeping Your Brain Young with Music

This past week-end I went to a delightful Christmas Program at my mother's assisted living community in Spartanburg, S.C. It was a double celebration because not only was it a Christmas dinner for all residents and their families but it was also my mother's 82nd birthday! In preparation for this, my mother organized a little chorus of her peers and friends there and they sang familiar carols and Christmas songs. To my amazement, my mother conducted the chorus, even though she is legally blind from macular degeneration!
I have no doubt that those who participate in music-making activites keep their brains active and young and the research in this field backs that belief up! Soooo, keep singing and playing all the music you love! Happy Holidays!
Dr. Alice Cash is offering a very special price to her blog readers on her brand-new Christmas CD. Click here to read all about it and order it NOW!

Christmas CD for YOU!

Want to tickle your brain? You know that music is always good for your brain. Add to that all of the warm, loving memories of your Christmases from childhood, and the result is a big "brainhug." Listening to your favorite childhood music is the very best way to get a "brain hug."

As a result, I've just made a Christmas CD for you and I really hope you'll give one to yourself and all your family. Click below to get all the details!! And Merry Christmas!!

Click here to get Alice's Brand-New Christmas CD

Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain

You may have heard about the fantastic new book from Dr. Oliver Sacks, "Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain." Dr. Sacks has been on national TV shows for the past several weeks and this book promises to be another best-seller for him. I haven't read it yet but I'm getting ready to order it from Amazon. If you want to order it from Amazon, please go to http://www.drcashprefers.com/Music/amazon.htm and then put in the name of Dr. Sacks book.

Dr. Sacks was one of my first heroes when I stepped into the field of music and medicine. He had just testified in Congress about the power of music in many musical specialties. If you do to to my site listed above (http://www.drcashprefers.com/Music/amazon.htm) you'll also see some fascinating videos of him talking about music with several conditions such as amnesia, Parkinson's and "brainworms." Enjoy!

Can Music Help a Brain Injury?

Have you heard of Acquired Brain Injury? (ABI) It's the leading killer and cause of disability in children and young adults. More than two million head injuries occur each year. Statistics show that the highest rate of injury occurs in young men between the ages of 15 and 24. ABI is an impairment of brain functioning that is physically or psychologically verifiable. Frequent causes of ABI are brain lesions caused by traumas such as auto accidents, falls, assaults and violence or sports injuries.

Can music make a difference?

The answer is a resounding yes! Persons with a brain injury can benefit from music as a modality to promote vocalization, rhythmic movements, orientation, relaxation, self-expression, and as a way to enhance overall self- esteem. Because music is processed by the entire brain, the structure of music helps to re-organize the structure of the brain. Listening to highly organized music such as that of Mozart often helps brain injured patients to organize their thoughts, activities and even their emotions.

Alice visits with her "Musical Brain" mentor

Today I had the pleasure of spending some time with my dear music medicine mentor, Dr. Arthur Harvey! I am vacationing in Sarasota and Dr. Harvey has now moved here from Hawaii! We had some scintillating conversation this a.m. about music and surgery and he gave me some great ideas for music to use during surgery. He also filled me in on some important resources that I had not yet mined and will be doing so this evening and beyond.

Dr. Arthur Harvey is one fantastic, awesome, and yet very humble individual and I hope we can have these inspiring visits for years to come! Thanks for helping me to step into this field Arthur!

Lecture at Clemson University Introduces Healing Music Concepts

Last Thursday night, September 13, 2007 will live in my memory for many decades to come. On that night in Clemson, S.C. at Clemson University, I presented the Inaugural William H. Hunter, M.D. Endowed Lecture. This newly endowed lecture will be presented as part of the Calhoun Lecture Series and I believe will always be on a medical topic. I feel so honored to have been asked to deliver this lecture because the subject of Music as Medicine is still, unfortunately, somewhat controversial. Despite the fact the we have documented evidence from throughout history that music has been used for heaing purposes, in our scientific and empirical data age, many people still see music therapy and music healing as "soft science" and something to be quite skeptical about.

This lecture was sponsored by AnMed Health Foundation in Anderson, S.C. and this wonderful group is already fully supportive of the use of music in hospitals and are providing music therapy and music healing. It was so wonderful to see many old friends there and friends of my parents and many, many people purchased books, CD's and tapes. Thank you sooooooooo much to everyone who made this possible!

The Brain, Biking, and Improvisation

Today was Labor Day and I deicided to do the Mayor's Bike and Hike Event down by the Ohio River. It was a beautiful day and riding the 10-12 miles downtown and along the river was just a gorgeous trip.
When I got home, I was ready to sit down at the piano and start working on my new Christas CD music. I was amazed at how easy the arranging of my music was today and I totally attribute it to the endorphins, dopamine and adrenaline that I stirred up by riding my bike up and down the rolling hills and valleys earlier today. What do you think?

Understanding brain waves and tuning your brain

They say that the brain is the last unexplored frontier, but over the last decade or two, much research has been conducted that documents how sound and vibration impact the brain in a very positive way.

The following was found on today's "The Daily Turn-on." Enjoy!

Did you know you can actually charge up your central nervous system through music? Alfred Tomatis, French physician and specialist in otolaryngology (ear, nose, throat specialist) has been studying the functions of the human ear for over forty-five years. Tomatis discovered that with a frequency as high as 8000 hz, such as Gregorian chants, humans are able to "charge" the central nervous system and the cortex of the brain. Through years of research he has found that sound is not actually produced through the mouth but rather through the vibratory frequency that travels through the bones of the body. Every bone, tissue and fiber of our bodies operates through its own unique resonant frequency which combined make up each individual person's unique vibratory signature, or aura. Disease occurs when an individual's own natural vibratory state is out of resonance or is in disharmony. Fortunately, just as the body can get out of harmony, it is possible to put it back in harmony with its natural resonance through sound therapy. Sound therapy involves externally creating sound and projecting it into the diseased area to reintroduce the correct harmonic pattern. So where does this whole chanting thing come into play? We can actually change our body's natural rhythmic vibrations through a process called entrainment which introducws a more powerful rhythmic vibration to a weaker vibration until the more powerful vibration changes the less powerful vibration and their rhythms become synchronized together. And this can be accomplished through chanting. A a matter of fact, our brain waves, heart beat and respiratory patterns can all be shifted through the practice of entrainment. Sound therapy is a healing modality that uses sound to shift our vibratory frequency to bring the body back to a place of harmony. The key to accomplishing this is understanding the basic categories of brain waves:
Beta Waves vibrate at a frequency of 14 to 20 Hz and are the frequency of our normal waking state of mind.
Alpha Waves vibrate at a frequency of 8 to 13 Hz and are typically the frequency of our daydreaming or meditative state of mind.
Theta Waves vibrate at a frequency of 4 to 7 Hz are the frequency of a deep sleeping state, as well as the frequency found in shamanic activity.
Delta Waves vibrate at a frequency of .5 to3 Hz and are the frequency thats occurs in deep sleep, as well as profound levels of meditation and healing. By utilizing our sense of sound, we are literally able to shift our consciousness and create healing in our body. But, be aware that the opposite is true. We can also utilize our sense of sound to negatively shift our consciousness and create disease.

Music-Brain Research going on in Boston

I love to go to Boston because I have family there and they are part of the music world there as well as the medical world. On a recent trip to Boston, I heard about a fascinating stuady and was going on with the conductor of the Boston pops and his audience:

"Mozart and Dr. Seuss provided the inspiration Saturday as researchers measured the emotional responses of a Boston Symphony Orchestra performance. Boston Pops conductor Keith Lockhart, five members of the orchestra, and 50 audience members were the guinea pigs — wired with sensors as researchers stationed at two banks of computers backstage collected data about heart rates, muscle movement, and other physiological responses.
"Science has come an awful long way in the last 250 years," Boston Pops conductor Keith Lockhart told a Symphony Hall audience of about 2,000 parents and young children during a family concert.
The concert consisted of four Mozart pieces, including the Overture to The Marriage of Figaro— celebrating the 250th anniversary of the composer's birth — followed by two Seuss interpretations, including Green Eggs and Ham.
Among researchers' questions: Do orchestra and audience members have strong physiological responses, as they suspect, to the conductor's thrusts and dramatic head tosses? Is there much difference between responses at a live show compared to watching on television, as a control group will do later?
"We want a window into the brain," said research director Daniel J. Levitin, a cognitive neuroscientist at McGill University in Montreal. "We want to understand more about how the brain works."

More on the brain, bicycling and singing the blues

At the moment, my youngest daughter is in town, visiting me from Santa Fe, where she is getting more and more into bike racing. I'm trying to ride with her a little bit while she's home but as I've mentioned in previous posts, I havn't ridden in almost 25 years and I'm about 40 lbs. heavier! Not only that, but "they've" changed the whole gear shifting mechanism in the last 25 years and twice yesterday I managed to make the chain jump off of the gears because I wasn't shifting right! Drat! I was really singing the blues on that one. In addition, Louisville is hosting the "Senior Games" right now and so as I was limping through the park yesterday, walking my disabled bike, folks in their 60's, 70's, and even 80', were zooming past me on their flashy bikes looking at me like "what's wrong with that lady and her bike?" One very kind couple from St. Louis stopped and drove me and my bike up to the maintenance tent and helped me get my chain put back on. I'm sure today will be better! Maybe if I could compose a song to help me shift properly as I ride through Cherokee Park...what do you think??

Musicians set the tone for healing

The many applications of music for healing: hospice settings, coma, stroke and rehab of all kinds. Enjoy this fabulous story:

Anna Jenkins wears a solemn expression while she gracefully plucks the strings on her harp. The notes fill the room and coat it with an aura of peace.
Next to her, in a hospital bed, a patient is dying.
Jenkins is one of a handful of music therapists who volunteer at St. Francis Hospital in Federal Way.
“I usually am serious because I’m playing for people that are very sick,” Jenkins said.
The notes are dream-like and seem to float from the harp, following no recognizable melody. To play a song a person recognized would hold them in reality, Jenkins said. An unfamiliar song helps people let go.
“They can just listen to that and drift off,” she said. “Music helps people to let go and if they’re actively dying, their hearing is the last thing that stays with them.”
Jenkins doesn’t only play for those who are dying. She also plays to relax those who are critically or chronically ill. She plays for children and the elderly as well as patients just coming out of a difficult surgery. Music helps heal, Jenkins said.
She recalled a story from two years ago. She was playing the harp at a comatose patient’s bedside while the family gathered around singing hymns. The man suddenly awoke from a coma.
It could have coincidentally been his time to wake up, but Jenkins likes to think otherwise.
“I couldn’t help but wonder if the love from all his family there somehow reached him,” she said.
For those who are dying, Jenkins spends a considerable amount of the afternoon playing her harp at their bedside. A story in the Bible mentions angels playing the harp at a person’s death.
“There are rare occasions where it’s a little scary for people,” Jenkins said. “They say ‘Oh no, I’m not ready for that.’”
Although Jenkins insists she is not an angel, she said there is often a spiritual presence in the room when she plays.
“I’ve had people comment that they’ve been touched by the spirit. I don’t want to imply that it’s me, but it’s something that happens in the room at the time,” she said.
Soothing music reduces a patient’s blood pressure, relieves anxiety and affects the heart rate, said Renee Krisko, a chaplain at St. Francis. Krisco assigns Jenkins and other music therapists to patients who would most benefit from the music.
“I believe there are medical healing effects to this,” she said.
Jenkins said she’s watched a person’s heart rate go down on the monitor while she’s playing. She was trained in music therapy as part of the Music for Healing and Transition program.
Although most people will never have the opportunity to hear Jenkins play the harp, all visitors to St. Francis could meet Bonnie Knight-Graves.
Graves volunteers to play the piano in the lobby and in the mental health ward at St. Francis several days each week.
“It’s serving the public, actually,” Graves said of her work. “It’s setting the tone for people coming into the hospital.”
Music is healing because it relieves a patient’s anxiety, Graves said.
“It frees the mind of stress and gives them a more relaxed approach to life so they can heal themselves,” she said. “The body can heal itself if it’s not loaded down with stress.”

Born with a 'music module'?

This is an excerpt from a fascinating interview:


JEFFREY BROWN: Music, of course, comes in many forms and appears to have been part of every age and every known culture. There's a continuing debate among scientists as to music's exact role in human evolution.
But Levitin believes that the brain itself has evolved to make sense of music and that we're each born wired for music, just as we are for language.
DANIEL LEVITIN: If you're born listening to Chinese opera, your brain is going to become wired to the rules of that musical form. If you're born listening to Pakistani music, Indian music, Indian ragas, your brain will become wired to those. Our brain is plastic, and malleable, and able to wire itself up to whatever language we hear, to learn those rules.
Similarly, I would argue that we all are born with a music module. We're born with the wiring to accommodate any music that we hear, and we learn those rules effortlessly just by listening.
JEFFREY BROWN: Levitin says there's an area of the brain, in the prefrontal cortex, specifically dedicated to comparing what we hear with our expectations of learned patterns of music. That's the reason we can be surprised, pained or delighted when those expectations are tampered with, something great musicians know to exploit.
DANIEL LEVITIN: When you listen to Stevie Wonder drumming on "Superstition," for example, he's playing in time, and you're forming predictions about what's going to happen next. The additional nuance that he brings to it is that he changes the beats ever so slightly, throughout the whole song, "Superstition," never the same.
So he's going a little bit different. He varies the pressure on the high-hat cymbal, so it's a little bit louder, a little bit softer. The beauty of it is that the cerebellum is trying to figure out, "OK, where is the next beat going to come? What's it going to be?" And he's surprising the cerebellum at every turn, so that your brain...
JEFFREY BROWN: We don't talk to too many scientists who are doing Stevie Wonder drum solos for us, I've got to tell you that.

Music, the Brain, and Exercise

"It's no secret that exercise improves mood, but new research suggests that working out to music may give exercisers a cognitive boost.Listening to music while exercising helped to increase scores on a verbal fluency test among cardiac rehabilitation patients." Thus says a study from 2004 as cited in Science Daily. "This is the first study to look at the combined effects of music and short-term exercise on mental performance," said Charles Emery, the study's lead author and a professor of psychology at Ohio State University.

Do you listen to music while you exercise? It seems to me that most everyone at the gym has their ipod on or headphones of some kind or another. Now we have another motivation to listen to our favorite music while exercising. What kind of music do you listen to when exercising?

Neurochemicals at work in Carnegie Hall

I've spent the past week in NYC doing two major musical activities. On Tuesday night I heard my youngest sister conduct her orchestra in Carnegie Hall. It was a true peak experience and the positive neurochemicals such as serotonin and dopamine were surely flowing in abundance! My mother and another sister were there and we were just thrilled to see her conduct just likee pros! It was sooo awesome!

On Thursday morning, I spoke at Lutheran Medical Center in Brooklyn. My topic was "The Importance of Music with Pregnancy, Preemies, and Newborns." The presentation was well-received and I thoroughly enjoyed giving it to the doctors and nurses there! We talked about the effect of music on the devleoping infant's brain and how very important it is to have high quality music for a pregnant Mom!

Questions anyone?

Another bike-riding brain-music experience

It appears that Spring has sprung here in Louisville, KY and today I decided to get my new bike out again and go for a ride. I was riding with a friend so I wasn't expecting any problems but after we had been out for 30 minutes or so, we encountered a pretty good little hill. The shifters on this bike are different from my old bike so I was trying to climb this hill in a gear that was way too big. I used my old technique of singing to my "one little two little three little indians" and that again worked amazingly well. It took my mind off the struggle of pushing the pedals down so I could make it up the hill and a few minutes later, I figured out my new shifters!

The Brain Goes to Riverdance

Tonight I'm going to Riverdance and I can't wait! I love Riverdance and I can't exactly tell you why. There is a fascinating theory out there that we respond biologically and neurologically to music that is in our DNA. In other words, if we have a heavy Irish heritage, this beautiful Irish music is literally in our blood and in our genes. My immediate family is actually mostly English but that's pretty close. Of course the faster numbers are extremely rhythmic and have the whirling rhythms that make me want to jump up and join them. Since I am in the last row of the last balcony I will try to restrain myself! I'll let you know later how it goes!

Interesting research

I've reently discovered a great site called www.cognews.com. On this site there was a press release of some very interesting research on how the brain responds to music from other cultures. Let me share this with you, my readers: Subjects brains were observed through an fMRI while listening to music from different cultures. Results showed that brain activation was the same, regardless of cultural bias of the music; although, there were some differences in ability to remember certain kinds of music and brain activation varied based on musical training.
The researchers found similarities in brain activity when the musicians and untrained listeners were exposed to the Western classical and traditional Chinese musical excerpts. All subjects showed significant clusters of activation in the brain regions called the right transverse temporal gyrus and left superior temporal gyrus. However, some differences did emerge based on musical training. The musicians exhibited significantly greater activity in the right superior temporal gyrus when listening to both types of music. In addition, the musicians also showed significant brain activity in the right middle frontal gyrus when listening to Western music and in the left middle frontal gyrus when hearing the Chinese music. These findings support the idea that formal training influences patterns of brain activity in response to culturally familiar and unfamiliar music, according to the researchers.By contrast, brain activity was similar among all subjects when comparing English speech to Cantonese. There was significant brain activity in the left insula and lesser activity in the left superior temporal gyrus and middle temporal gyrus that was not present while listening to Cantonese.

The Infant Brain

Did you know that the infant brain can be affected before birth by playing classical music and singing to the unborn child? It's true. The brain is the only organ that can actually be positively affected during pregnancy. The other organs, lungs, stomachs, hearts, ovaries, etc., are pretty much on a genetically pre-determined path and there's little you can do in a positive way to affect the. Research indicates that when the developing fetus hears highly organized music or when the mother sings to him, more neural connections are created in the brain which creates a greater, more complex neural infrastructure. Once baby is born, you have to maintain that rich neural infrastructure with lots of interaction. If you're pregnant or thinking of becoming pregnant, start learning your songs and buying your CD's. Let me know if I can help!

Music, the Brain, and Memory

I have been studying the use of music with dementia and Alzheimer's patients for many years, but tonight I want to share with you some exciting information about music and memory for all of us! The following is from http://www.cerebromente.org.br/n15/mente/musica.html<

The power of music to affect memory is quite intriguing. Mozart's music and baroque music, with a 60 beats per minute beat pattern, activate the left and right brain. The simultaneous left and right brain action maximizes learning and retention of information. The information being studied activates the left brain while the music activates the right brain. Also, activities which engage both sides of the brain at the same time, such as playing an instrument or singing, causes the brain to be more capable of processing information.

Brain Comes Alive to Sound of Music

Brain Comes Alive to Sound of Music - Finding offers hope for variety of cures Los Angeles Times, November 11, 1998

The music that makes the foot tap, the fingers snap and the pulse quicken stirs the brain at is most fundamental levels, suggesting that scientists one day may be able to retun damaged minds by exploiting rhythm, harmony and melody, according to new research presented Sunday (November 1998).
Exploring the neurobiology of music, researchers discovered direct evidence that music stimulates specific regions of the brain responsible for memory, motor control, timing and language. For the first time, researchers also have located specific areas of mental activity linked to emotional responses to music. . . .
The latest findings, presented at a meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in Los Angeles, underscore how music--as an almost universal language of mood, emotion and desire--orchestrates a wide variety of neural systems to cast its evocative spell. "Undeniably, there is a biology of music," said Harvard University Medical School neurobiologist Mark Jude Tramo. "There is no question that there is specialization within the human brain for the processing of music. Music is biologically part of human life, just as music is aesthetically part of human life." . . .
Overall, music seems to involve the brain at almost every level. Even allowing for cultural differences in musical tastes, the researchers found evidence of music's remarkable power to affect neural activity no matter where they look in the brain, from primitive regions in all animals to more recently evolved regions thought to be distinctively human.