The Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra (ISO) has teamed up with Clarian Health Partners to make people’s hospital visits a little easier. They collaborated on “Art in Healing,” an hour long CD that includes specially selected songs designed to soothe the patients. The CD features recordings from artists such as Franz Schubert and Robert Schumann and it’s available on all hospital televisions. The Clarian staff hopes to prove that the CD works, so they have played the CD for 20 minutes before and after different procedures. These included procedures for those in smoking cessation classes, high-risk mothers in labor, ICU patients, and seniors in community outreach programs. They hope to have definitive results on the study next year. Other hospitals around the country have taken an interest in having their patients participate in similar programs. There is also a good chance that the ISO will eventually record a special CD to sell to all patients as a relaxation tool.

New research by the Alzheimer’s Society and Professor of Age Related Diseases at King’s College in London suggests that singing can help people with dementia. As a result, a new program called Singing for the Brain was established to help those dealing with neurological disorders. The program was founded by Chreanne Montgomery-Smith, who believes that singing can actually elevate people’s minds to a level where they can more easily remember things. The program consists of weekly group sessions for patients with chronic illnesses such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases and those who have suffered strokes.

Music conductors may just have an edge where the senses are concerned. New research by Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center seems to back the claim that the special music training that conductors undergo actually enhances the way their senses work together and enable them to quickly identify who played a wrong note, for example. A study involving 20 conductors and 20 musically untrained subjects required them to sit in a dark room and locate targets such as a briefly flashed light it a short beeping sound. The targets were presented in random order and some were combinations of lights and sound. Researchers measured the speed and precision of their responses. The study concluded that while both groups performed equally well in locating all of the visual targets, the conductors were much better at locating the auditory targets, as well as the targets that combined the two senses. “Our research suggests that conductors are better able to combine and use auditory and visual cue than the musically untrained,” concludes Dr. Donald Hodgesand, Covington Distinguished Professor of Music Education at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Anyone who has ever been annoyed by music that they can’t turn off—whether it comes from a loud house party next door or as a jingle from the video your pre-schooler insists on watching over and over—may be fearful of research documented in Neurology. Certain individuals can actually experience musical hallucinations and hear music in their heads that isn’t actually being played. Only 11 cases of this odd phenomena have ever been documented. While rare, the musical hallucinations have been the result of damage to the dorsal ponds, a part of the brain that can be affected by strokes, tumors, or other neurological disorders. Some cases are the result of sensory deprivation. In most cases, the music is something the patient is familiar with; sometimes it is a folk song or a Mozart symphony. The hallucinations did not result in long-term hearing loss and eventually stop.

Infants have the ability to recognize more than just their mother’s voice once they leave the womb. Babies have the ability to remember music they heard in utero more than a year after birth, reports the BBC. In the study, mothers chose a single piece of music and played it for their baby in the three-month period before the child’s birth. Eleven of the children were tested a year later and each showed a preference for the music selections they were introduced to in the womb. The child’s preference was determined by how long the child looked toward the source of music. The discovery that infants can remember music a year after birth is astonishing, given that many experts believed that babies could only remember things from the previous month or two.

Music making contributes to a stronger memory and now, new research has shown scientists exactly where our musical memories are stored in the brain—call it your own personal jukebox! It turns out that music is stored in the part of the brain that handles instructions for the ears, called the auditory cortex. To make their discovery, Dartmouth College researchers asked subjects to listen to music that they were familiar with, and found out that they automatically call on memory to fill the gaps if the music cuts out. When subjects listened to favorite songs, the researchers muted certain sections and discovered that the auditory cortex remained active, as though the music hadn’t stopped playing.

Alegent Health and musician and music therapy researcher Chip Davis have launched a unique $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. 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 psychoacoustic.

Harvard scientists have discovered how we can hear a pin drop, the opening riff of “Pretty Woman,” or Saint-Saëns’ Organ Symphony. It’s the same molecule that enables us to feel cold or to savor flavors such as mustard and cinnamon. Research into how our ears work could help in the development of new treatments for deafness. The ear is a marvel of sound engineering. When sound enters the eardrum it vibrates, setting off equivalent waves in fluid within the cochlea. The cochlea is tiled with cells, each with around 100 hairs arranged like organ pipes: tall ones at the back and short at the front. A molecule called TRPA1 generates an electrical signal each time the hairs move back and forth. This signal then travels to auditory receptors in the brain.

Something very interesting happens to the brain of a musician when it switches from learning and practicing to memory and performance. A British study, reported in Neuropsychologia, examines what happens in the brain when pianists practice scales and when they perform from memory. Performing from memory, it finds, is an elaborate and complex skill involving areas of the brain devoted to motor, perceptual, cognitive, and emotive operations. A positron emission tomography (PET) scan was used to examine the brains of blindfolded pianists performing a J.S. Bach concerto as well as runs through major scales with both hands. Scientists noted some areas of the brain, such as the primary motor cortex, lit up during the performance of both the concerto and the scales. They also saw areas of the brain dedicated to either practicing scales or memorized performance. Most interestingly, though, the researchers observed that quite a few areas of the brain were deactivated when it came time for performance. The study concludes that certain parts of the brain, alert for practice, are switched off to give a performer deeper attention and focus.

New medical research is offering more evidence that music has real therapeutic properties. Researchers from Italy’s University of Pavia and Oxford University in England studied breathing and circulation in 24 young men and women, before and while they listened to short excerpts of music. Half of them were highly-trained musicians while the other half were nonmusicians. Faster music with more complex rhythms resulted in faster breathing and circulation. Slower and more meditative music had the opposite affect. Pauses inserted randomly into the sequences also created a sense of relaxation for the subjects. The effects of the study were most evident in the musicians. The team conducting the study concluded that selecting music based on its rhythmic structure, as well as alternating fast and slower rhythms and pauses, could be useful as therapy for those with cardiovascular disease.

Have you ever wondered why tastes for music, even among spouses or close friends, can differ so widely? According to research conducted at Opole University in Poland, what music you prefer depends on a narrow set of personality traits. Researchers conducted a study that took as subjects a group of 145 students, male and female, chosen at random from different Polish universities. Personality traits were determined using a standard personality test, and musical preferences were determined by way of a specially developed questionnaire. On the basis of the questionnaire, a list of songs chosen by the participants was compiled. The pieces were then analyzed to separate out basic musical elements and cross-checked against the personality tests. Analysis showed that some personality traits—liveliness, social boldness, vigilance, openness to change, and extraversion—have an important influence on taste. The musical elements that appeared most important when it comes to what songs were chosen were those that caused stimulation or that regulated the need for stimulation. These elements were the songs’ tempo, meter, the degree of syncopation, the number of melodic themes, and, important for college students, volume.