Music should be central to a school’s curriculum claims a recently released British study called “Music Psychology in Education.” Researcher Professor Susan Hallam, from the Institute of Education at the University of London, says her study shows learning to make music has a clear impact on intelligence, social skills, and development.

Specifically, Hallam’s study finds that music helps concentration, aids relaxation, and can positively influence mood and emotions. Furthermore, singing helps development and learning to play an instrument aids physical coordination. “And when children play music together, it teaches them about co-operation and working as a group,” Hallam says. But she warns parents not to force their children to practice because this pressure can lead even the most talented youngsters to give up.

Professional musician Mick Lawson, who played alongside David Bowie, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Arlo Guthrie, has set up a unique course to help people overcome mental health problems through music. Participants spend 12 weeks with Lawson, composing songs and recording a CD at the 24-track studio in his home.

Participants have experienced a range of serious problems, including nervous breakdowns and schizophrenia. Those taking the course, called “A Day in the Life in Tribute to John Lennon,” do all the work themselves, from composing the songs to designing the cover for a CD.

“After meeting the people involved, I realized that there was so much talent, but many of them had lost all their confidence,” said Lawson. “I’ve got a recording studio at home, so I thought I could put it to good use. Music is the greatest therapy there is. I get the musicians to talk about their problems and get ideas going.”

It may not be the easiest instrument to find at your local music store, but if you snore or suffer from obstructive sleep apnea syndrome, you may want to ask the sales rep if they have any didgeridoos in stock. That’s because a study published recently in the British Medical Journal claims that regularly playing this indigenous Australian woodwind instrument helps control these two sleep disorders.

Reports of didgeridoo players experiencing reduced snoring after practicing led experts in Switzerland to test the theory that training of the upper airways by didgeridoo playing can improve snoring and sleep apnea, both of which are caused by the collapse of airwaves while sleeping.

Twenty-five patients with moderate sleep apnea and who complained about snoring were randomly allocated to an intervention group (didgeridoo lessons and daily practice at home for four months) or a control group (which remained on a waiting list for lessons).

Compared with the control group, daytime sleepiness and apnea scores improved significantly in the didgeridoo group. Partners of patients in the didgeridoo group also reported much less sleep disturbance.

MENC: The National Association for Music Education held its 22nd annual World’s Largest Concert on March 9. The concert, created by MENC to focus attention on music in American schools, was broadcast to an estimated 6 million actively participating students, teachers, and community members around the world.

The concert, part of Music In Our Schools Month, was hosted by the Oak Ridge Boys and featured Choristers of The St. Louis Children’s Choirs and the Missouri State University Symphony Orchestra, from Springfield, Missouri. The theme of this year’s concert was “Music: The Heart in Education.” This year participants also helped raise money for Feed the Children, an international nonprofit relief organization.

For more information:
Go to www.menc.org

Alegent Health and musician and music therapy researcher Chip Davis have launched a $1.5 million research project to explore the potential effects of a new technique called “ambient therapy” on patient health, recovery experience, and quality of life. The project is the first to research a specialized ambient therapy system and its potential effect on patient wellness.

The research, which will involve 245 spine surgery patients, will take place at Alegent Health’s Immanuel Medical Center in Omaha, Nebraska. While Alegent Health is the principal investigator and Chip Davis’ Ambience Medical the principal partner, also involved in the study are Michigan State University, the Nebraska Spine Center, University of Miami School of Medicine, Northwest Anesthesia, and Boys Town National Research Hospital.

Ambient therapy combines specially-recorded sounds of nature with distinctive music content in an effort to provide patients with a “perceptual reality”—an environment designed to be soothing and comforting—that researchers hope can counteract feelings of pain, anxiety, and isolation. Unique to ambient therapy is its audio system: a portable console and accompanying surround sound system that applies groundbreaking concepts of psychoacoustics.

Alexis Vanden Bos has breast cancer, and she knows making music is good for her. She can feel it, she says. “It’s like, wow, I can just have fun, and bam, bam, bam—I just really knock away at it.”

Having just finished her chemotherapy and radiation treatments, Vanden Bos says she is in pain constantly, but, “when I’m playing the instruments, I don’t feel like I’m in pain.”

Dr. Anthony Back, an oncologist at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington, says pain alleviation is just one benefit to cancer patients of music making therapy. It also can lessen nausea and vomiting from chemo and help the healing process after treatments. Furthermore, a recent study shows making music therapy reduced anxiety by 27% and moodiness by 37% in cancer patients. “Clearly, there’s a special part of the brain that responds to music and that can take that in even if you’re quite impaired in other ways,” Back says.

Music therapists are trained to counsel patients and find them the right music to play. Sha’ari Garfinkel, a music therapist at the Swedish Medical Center in Seattle, says “The sound that’s going to be most effective is something that is pleasing to the person that they like that’s meaningful for them.” While some patients prefer just to listen to music, others get most benefit from making music.

Simon O’Dwyer knows how to play his replica of a Bronze Age horn found in County Offaly, Ireland. He just doesn’t know why he should be playing it. The musician and researcher, who in 2005 published the book Prehistoric Music of Ireland, has reconstructed many ancient instruments, but he says we can only guess at the reasons why ancient cultures made music.

The deep tones of another of Ireland’s prehistoric instruments, known as the Loughnashade trumpa, may have healing qualities, says O’Dwyer. However, “there’s a huge gap of time between when these were created and our present day,” explains Nicholas Carolan, director of the Irish Traditional Music Archive. “Their whole [social] context has disappeared. We don’t know how they played them or what they played on them.

Exercise won’t hold off all the effects of aging, but it can improve your chances of continuing to enjoy an independent lifestyle. Although the aerobic capacity of elderly subjects in a new study published by the American Heart Association was lower than expected, those who exercised regularly came out on top.

For the study, researchers analyzed treadmill tests from 435 men and 375 women ages 21 to 87 taking part in the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging. During their 20s and 30s, the volunteers’ aerobic capacity declined at a rate of 3% to 6% per decade. Those older than 70 faced a decline of more than 20% per decade, researchers found.

Still, those who reported on a questionnaire that they exercised had a higher aerobic capacity than those who didn’t. “There is a decline in aerobic capacity with aging, but older people should work to improve theircapacity because it will increase their independence,” said Dr. Nieca Goldberg, a cardiologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. People with low aerobic capacity can become incapacitated, she explained, unable to climb stairs or walk to the store.

Hoping to provide concrete proof that music is a tool for medical rehabilitation, Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario, Canada, has hired Finnish-born music therapist Heidi Ahonen-Eerikainen to head the new Laurier Centre for Music Therapy Research. The Laurier Centre, Canada’s first music therapy research facility, will launch a two-pronged research program aimed at assessing music’s neuropsychological and psychotherapeutic benefits, Ahonen-Eerikainen says.

Although cloaked in the jargon of the discipline, these two benefits have simple definitions. The neuropsychological component will ascertain the effect music has on hormones, blood pressure, and brain activity in coma patients and those with dementia. Already there is anecdotal evidence that music is therapeutic in such instances and serves as a kind of language for people who cannot communicate verbally, Ahonen-Eerikainen says. The psychotherapy component will ascertain whether music can allow patients to express difficult feelings or describe traumatic experiences, in much the same way as play therapy is now used to help children.

For more information:
Go to http://www.soundeffects.wlu.ca/

Two activities that have been used for centuries to focus the mind are now seen as beneficial for sufferers of a specific psychological disorder: post-traumatic stress disorder.

Making music and knitting are ways to keep the mind from obsessing over stressful memories and images, suggested psychologist Dr. Emily Holmes, in a recent presentation to the British Psychological Society.

She described an experiment she performed on volunteers in which they had to tap a complex pattern on a keyboard while they viewed disturbing images. She noted that when the brain is occupied with a complex task, such as playing a keyboard, doing a puzzle, knitting, or making music, it is less likely to absorb images it finds unpleasant.