Contents
Music therapy: how to activate memory through music
Care
Music therapy can be helpful for patients with mobility problems, with speech difficulties or who suffer from stress and anxiety
It is difficult to date the birth of music, because it has always been there. Rhythms, songs and songs have accompanied man throughout the centuries. Greek mythology already had Apollo as the divine representative of music. The minstrels and troubadours used it to preserve history and bring knowledge to the most remote places. Music is a bond of union, reason for celebration, tool for the saddest moments. It was sung before going to battle, the wedding march is played, it is sung at funerals.
Music accompanies us at all times, lifts our spirits and reaffirms how sad we feel. Music unites diversity and helps us. And it is from this help that the music therapy, therapeutic discipline that uses music and its elements –harmony, melody and rhythm– to work cognitive, social, functional aspects of people’s health or psychomotor ones.
Music therapy, like music in general, can accompany us at any time in our lives. This is how Manuel Sequera, manager of Huella Sonora Musicoterapia explains: «You can applied throughout the life cycle, from pregnant women, which is a complement to the preparation for childbirth, to the last moments of people’s lives, for example in advanced diseases or palliative care ». For his part, Dr. David Ezpeleta, secretary of the board of directors of the Spanish Neurology Society (SEN), explains that although “in the last 20 years” it is when clinical trials have begun to demonstrate the value of music applied to the health field, this is used as an aid to therapies “since always”: “If we think about it, for example shamans are always accompanied by vocal or rhythmic elements.”
Helps neurological damage
This therapy model can have both a more focused application to the field of mobility and to the psychological one. It is, for example, a great complement to the recovery of people suffering from neurological diseases. This is how the doctor explains it, who lists a multitude of applications in which music therapy “always performed by a qualified professional in the field” can be beneficial. For example, a person who has suffered a stroke and has lost mobility on one side of the body and an alteration in language, can use this therapy as a complement to rehabilitate strength and dexterity when speaking. If what has been lost is strength, thanks to rhythmic exercises it can be promoted.
«It can also be applied to a patient who has a balance disorder, using music therapy techniques based on dance or dance. The same can be with patients with acquired brain damage, or multiple sclerosis, “he points out.
Manuel Sequera, who emphasizes the idea that these therapies should always be performed by a qualified professional –Spanish universities offer a master’s degree in music therapy training–, also explains that it is also indicated in cases like autism, in children with down syndrome or in geriatrics. The latter is one of the fields with the greatest application: in dementias, in active aging … “It is a therapy that is gaining more and more popularity and that is based on scientific evidence, clinical trials and bibliographic reviews,” he points out.
Remember through music
The application within geriatrics is one of the most widespread. One of its uses is with people suffering from dementia or Alzheimer’s. «It is an activity that activates many areas of the brain at the same time, and for example we can activate the hippocampus, activating reminiscence, and this is where the emotional memory is stored “, says the music therapist.
Through songs that are part of a person’s life we can activate language and episodic memory. A recent audiovisual example is the animated film “Coco”, in which in the final scene (sorry for the gut) we see how an extremely old grandmother, who has lost the ability to speak, manages to remember her father thanks to her grandson he sings “Remember Me”, one of the most important songs of his life. «There are people with dementia who cannot speak because their pathology does not allow them, but they can sing a whole song. This is what music therapy works, ”says Manuel Sequera.
But, the application of these techniques can also occur in the psychological field. The first thing the music therapist realizes is that it is important not to confuse these therapies with simply listening to music. He explains that “one thing is to put on your headphones and Spotify” and another thing is to go through a process prescribed by a professional. «If we feel like it, we can listen to music at a specific moment, because we want to avoid ourselves, not to get bored, because we want to reinforce a feeling … but it is important to know that it is not the same as music therapy. This is a process that takes place over time and with the help of a professional ”, he asserts.
Natural painkillers for well-being
In the case of its most psychological uses, music therapy is not only beneficial in patients who suffer from stress and anxiety, but it can also be applied in cases of personal development, since it can promote a state of relaxation. «Singing generates serotonin and endorphins, natural painkillers that are the well-being hormones at the physiological level“, Says Manuel Sequera, who points out that, after a traumatic process,” scientifically applied music can lower those levels of cortisol – the stress hormone – in the blood. ”
There are many scientific studies that have shown that music therapy is effective in reducing the level of stress and anxiety, as well as being helpful in cases such as those already mentioned: dementias, loss of psychomotor abilities or neurological damage. It can even be applied in palliative care. And it is that, although it is too grandiloquent to affirm that “Music works miracles, Milagros”, as Sister Bernarda constantly reminded the young novice Milagros in the film “The Call” (hence the pun), it is clear that, applied scientifically, it has almost innumerable benefits. If it is done with a therapist, who knows how to use all the musical and psychological parameters, music therapy will help us to achieve well-being if we suffer from anxiety or stress or to recover more easily if we have suffered neurological damage. “It has a multitude of applications”, concludes the music therapist.