Project Summary

[Well gentlemen (and Ms Ania, of course), this wonderful project is finally coming to a close and I thank you all so much for your support. I am in the process of producing a booklet for everyone involved. The booklet will contain printed pages of the Blog posts, photos, and all the produced materials. Included on the back covers will be an attached CD that will have the final summary (shown below) and both of the Power Points. I hope you enjoy them, they should be ready within three weeks. Again, thank you all so much, and especially Dr. Anand.]

A Preliminary Study Toward a New Approach to the Neurology of Music for Therapeutic Purposes

By

W. Gerard Poole, Ph.D.

For the

Center for Energetic Concepts Development

Dr. Davinder Anand, Director

and

 Dr. Michael G. Pecht

Director of CALCE Center for Life Cycle Engineering

In Conjunction with the

Association for the Exploration of Music, Culture, and Science

And in consultation with

William Taft Stuart, Ph.D.

Professor of Anthropology, UMD at College Park

This preliminary investigation is about Music Therapy and Brain Plasticity. It asks a basic question: Can there be a real, significant, fruitful relationship between the two? This preliminary survey of the field suggests strongly that there could be, and that the relationship between the two might potentially revolutionize the field of music therapy. This survey also strongly suggests that the fields of Ethnomusicology and Ritual Studies can introduce compelling insights that will be useful to the field of music therapy and to the phenomenon of brain plasticity.

The report involves three general subjects; (1) relevant developments within the fields of brain research (brain plasticity),(2) observations and analysis of specific music therapy applications, and (3) relevant theories of music and evolution that suggest a new approach that the field of music therapy might take.

Firstly, the paper discusses the general observation that the most important group of facts to emerge over the last decade in regards to brain research and music and neurology has to do with the concept of brain plasticity. Two critical facts have emerged: first, that the brain is capable of restructuring itself, and secondly, that this process continues throughout the life of an individual (although it does diminish to some extent past late childhood).

Secondly, this report covers some of the major emergent facts that are relevant to the relationship between music and brain plasticity. Two of the most important are: (1) that musical processes (applied sound structures) can stimulate brain plasticity (generating new cells) and (2) that music can also stimulate the innate powers of the brain to restructure itself (increase connections between existing cells). Furthermore, music practice can increase brain volume, predominantly within the corpus colossus (that part of the midbrain through which the left and right hemispheres coordinate with each other). These emergent facts have been shown to be virtually conclusive though clinical studies that span roughly from the mid-nineties to the present. Nonetheless the facts are subject to interpretation as this report reveals.

A brief summary of specific theoretical models that link music, the emotional spectrum, and evolution, are considered in order to provide a foundational theory for how current music therapies might be reformulated toward new direction. The chief authors considered are; Nils Wallin (music, the emotional spectrum, brain capacity, and human consciousness); Antonio Damasio (the neurology of the emotions and consciousness); Steven Mithen (music, the corpus colossus brain mass, and cross-modular thinking processes); Steven Levitin (the neurology of music and human social evolution); Robert Jourdain (music and ecstasy) Robert Zatorre, and Isabel Peretz (neurology of music, and cognition), J. Sloboda et al, (music and emotion); and W. Gerard Poole (the Internalized Musical Form; relationships between musical form, emotional mode, and ritual proliferation; music and ritual in relation to the ecstatic experience).

It is proposed, based on the work of the above authors, that proto-musical, and proto-ritual behaviors played critical roles in the evolution of brain mass (new cell growth), brain capacity (more complex interconnections between cells), and brain cross-modular processing (more complex interactions between different parts of the brain), among late-hominids and early humans. The aim of a music therapy then is to utilize innate fundamental relationships between structured musical behaviors, the generation of structured sounds, and the resultant neurological processes, to stimulate neurological changes within the brain and the central nervous system.  In a sense then, the proposed therapy would stimulate the neurological processes of the brain’s own evolutionary path. The difference being that rather than stimulating the brain toward generating new capacities, the brain would be stimulated to regenerate capacities it already possessed.

Critical to the issue of stimulating brain plasticity are relationships between music, the emotions, endorphins, dopamine, the issue of inhibition and dormancy versus cell awakening, etc. The fact that music (or structured sound) can stimulate plasticity through stem cell growth is the immediate issue. However, music can also suppress brain activity, which is also critical.

 Examples of current nostalgic, or mood enhancement music therapy, as well as emotion and memory based therapies are examined. These techniques tend to rely primarily on the referential aspects of music, those qualities that it shares with language. However, this study finds that changes from one state of mind, or one emotional state to another, by using music to stimulate references, can only facilitate other therapeutic techniques, and while it is also acknowledged that the link between emotions and memory can be useful in the course of a therapy, in the long run these kinds of music therapies cannot repair brain damage or even effectively treat lesser ailments.

A central theoretical issue addressed by this paper is the proposition that there is a basic misunderstanding of what is occurring within the Broca area of the brain when processing music and language. It is proposed that music harmony has nothing to do with linguistic syntax. This issue represents a fundamental misunderstanding about the nature of musical processes that is still prevalent among music therapists and music neurologists.

Three experiments are proposed that would contribute toward a concrete delineation between nostalgic, or referential musical practices that characterize the current state of music therapy, and a new applied structured music therapy that could potentially work directly on the brain: music structure, performance structure, brain structure