Music is Being Used Increasingly for Medicinal Purposes

Music is Being Used Increasingly for Medicinal Purposes
Linda Moore
2/9/2014
Updated:
4/24/2016

Lyrics Feast released their latest infographic which pictorially depicts five of the known health benefits that have been proven through the scientific method. Medical researchers are only beginning to understand the physical and physiological health benefits listening to music provides. Medicinal music is being used increasingly for a wide range of medicinal purposes.

According to the Lyric Feast infographic antidepressant drugs and listening to certain types of music have been shown to affect the same regions of the brain in recent neurological studies. The same chemical reactions that stimulate emotional response in our brain are triggered by both music and drugs used to treat depression.

Similar studies have shown that people who have suffered left hemisphere brain damage and have lost the ability to speak, were able to sing the same words or phrases and communicate by way of the right hemisphere. Melodic intonation therapy is the name of the rehabilitation process that was developed from these studies and medical practitioners are only beginning to discover the types of symptoms the therapy will be able to treat.

Medicinal music is also making its way into preventive health care. Listening to a good melody has been shown in recent studies to boost immune response by relieving stress. The feelings of stress are caused by the release of cortisol in the brain. Research has proven that listening to music has the effect of reducing the release of cortisol, lowering the levels of cortisol in the brain and terminating the negative effect on the immune system.

In a similar study, five minutes of Mozart was played to people suffering from seizures. The piano music was shown to reduce seizure-causing activity in the brain. A direct correlation was found between listening to the piano and the reduction of the seizure-causing activity in the brain of the subjects.

Dementia, stroke and Parkinson’s disease victims were also the subjects of a similar study, which found the memory loss the subjects were experiencing could be reversed in some circumstance through music. Some doctors are now prescribing music therapy as a result of the study. 

I am a freelance writer and enjoy reporting on a variety of topics.
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