MGordon_MD
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Mar 10, 2009, 11:20 AM
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By Dr. Michael Gordon
I am not very athletic although I do love cycling when the weather permits. During the winter I exercise every morning at a nearby health club, with some of the time on a stationary bicycle. The main reason I prefer the stationary bicycle rather than the other “machines” is because I can read while stationary cycling while listening to classical music. That reading is my treat of the day - the health club cycling is my excuse for reading.
Recently I finished two wonderful books, Daniel Levitan’s This is Your Brain on Music and Oliver Sacks’ most recent tome, Musicophilia. The two complementary books have enhanced my understanding and appreciation of music both personally and professionally in its potential impact on many of the conditions associated with aging. I have over the years been a supporter of the various music programs provided at Baycrest Centre in Toronto, to our clients and have learned a great deal from our very dedicated and creative music therapists.
What the two books have done for me was coalesce what I have known informally and from clinical observations into a more cohesive understanding of music. It has helped me comprehend the underlying theoretical and observed workings of music and what are the physiological, neurological and psychological processes that govern the appreciation of and in many cases need for music. The books helped me understand how music can be so effective in the totality of care for many of our elderly and disabled, cognitively impaired and dependent clients.
While Levitan gives a robust and engaging understanding of the scientific underpinnings of how and why music seems to be so important, Sacks uses his vast clinical experience of medical anecdotes to illustrate the impact of music on many conditions he has been asked to consult on as a neurologist. I have had a particular interest in dementia and other neurological and mental health disorders affecting elders and Sacks focuses on how music interacts with individuals so afflicted.
In his chapter on Parkinson’s disease and Music Therapy, Sacks describes his own experience with the use of music therapy in his Parkinson’s patients whose disease followed the influenza brain infection that followed the First World War which became the basis of his book and movie by the same name, “Awakenings”. He eloquently describes the beneficial effects of music on the movements of many of his patients which I have also witnessed in my own practice and concludes as follows:
“It is music that the parkinsonian needs, for only music, which is rigorous yet spacious, sinuous and alive, can evoke responses that are equally so. And he needs not only the metrical structure of rhythm and the free movement of melody – its contours and trajectories, its ups and downs, its tensions and relaxations - but the “will” and intentionality of music, to allow him to regain the freedom of his kinetic melody”.
Sacks also describes the benefits of music in those suffering from dementia. As echoed by Amy Clements Cortes, the senior music therapist at the Baycrest, “music serves as a means of communication for those where the function of language has become challenging or lost . . . music is processed by many different parts of the brain rather than in just one centre, as in language . . . It is one of life’s earliest experiences and in late adulthood musical memories remain as some of the most deeply rooted . . . it is important to target music . . . as this music is often successful in helping clients retrieve memories they would otherwise not be able to access”. Music is part of our individual and collective souls . . . so play on.
This article originally appeared in the Canadian Jewish News.
Dr. Michael Gordon is Medical Program Director, Palliative Care Baycrest Geriatric Health Care System in Toronto, Canada and Professor of Medicine, at the University of Toronto. He is co-author with Bart Mindszenthy of Parenting Your Parents.
Parenting Your Parents is available in bookstores and online at: Indigo-Chapters, Amazon and Barnes & Noble. It is available in a US edition: Parenting Your Parents: Support Strategies for Meeting the Challenge of Aging in America.
For bulk orders email info@dundurn.com. Call: 416-214-5544 or Fax: 416-214-5556
Dr. Gordon is the author of the upcoming Brooklyn Beginnings: A Geriatrician's Odyssey, published by I-Universe.
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(This post was edited by MGordon_MD on Mar 12, 2009, 7:52 AM)
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