Alzheimer's Disease Alzheimer's Disease Treatment

How Music Heals the Body as Well as the Soul

Summary & Participants

Music can not only make you feel good, it can also help heal and rehabilitate.

Medically Reviewed On: August 05, 2008

Webcast Transcript

ANNOUNCER: There’s little doubt that music can make us feel good.

Concetta Tomaino, DA, MT-BC, Institute for Music and Neurological Function: You can use music therapy to help healthy people stay healthy, increase motivation, decrease depression.

ANNOUNCER: But research shows music can rehabilitate too.

Marah Bobilin, MT-BC, Music Therapist: We’re using music to kind of help her increase her physical activity, and using the beat of the music to kind of help her with, a consistent walking pattern.

Concetta Tomaino, DA, MT-BC, Institute for Music and Neurological Function: People who have motor impairment - music, and, specifically, rhythm, can provide the template or a patterning that allows movement to synchronize with that music or that rhythm.

ANNOUNCER: Studies also show music may decrease pain in post operative patients - and even boost memory in those with dementia

Concetta Tomaino, DA, MT-BC, Institute for Music and Neurological Function: Music that’s familiar is able to grab the attention of somebody with dementia and engages them in the moment of that experience, so much so that the attention and the holding of that attention allows for other function to happen.

ANNOUNCER: Making music can also be an important part of rehabilitation.

David Ramsey, DA AMCT, Music Therapist: That’s where we start a lot of the times when we’re doing music speech rehabilitation, is with the singing. It organizes the speech, the vocal processing in a way that is fluid, that they cannot do outside of the music.

ANNOUNCER: For therapists like Marah, the reward is in the results.

Marah Bobilin, MT-BC, Music Therapist: To use it to bring someone to a higher level of functioning, closer to what they were able to do before the neurologic disorder is very rewarding. It’s beautiful. It’s a beautiful thing to see.

ANNOUNCER: Thanks for joining us on today’s Once Daily.