Different types of music therapy techniques
Music therapy techniques
No two sessions are alike -- therapists have their own specialty and their own talent, while patients have their own issues, their own goals, their own innate response to music. According to the Canadian Association for Music Therapy, a variety of techniques can draw out specific results.
- Singing improves communication, speech, language, articulation and
breath control.
- Playing instruments improves gross and fine motor skills, such as dexterity, balance, coordination and strength.
- Active listening helps develop cognitive skills such as storing memories and improves attention span.
- Composing enhances the expression of feelings, ideas and experiences.
- Moving and dancing facilitates agility, balance, strength, relaxation, coordination and joint mobility.
- Improvising promotes nonverbal expression (shoo-be-do-ahh!) of emotion, ideas and experiences.
- Guided imagery promotes reflection and interaction between music and memories.Music is ingrained in our brains
We are all hardwired to process music, no matter what our physical or cognitive state. "For the thousands and thousands of people I have seen over 30 years, something will connect: an instrument, a type of music, some sort of engagement," says Dr. Johanne Brodeur, music therapy director at the Victoria Conservatory of Music. She turns to neurologist Paul MacLean's hypothesis of the tri-layered triune brain for explanation.
Think of the brain as having three separate-yet-interactive layers: the top layer, the neocortex, deals with language, logic, planning and other higher cognitive functions; the middle layer, the limbic system, deals with emotions; and the bottom layer, the reptilian complex, deals with our most primitive survival functions, such as digestion, reproduction and breathing.
So what does all the scientific jargon mean in terms of music? Even if the sophisticated neocortex and emotional limbic system have been damaged, as long as the reptilian layer is intact, it may be able to react to music, explains Brodeur. "You respond to it because rhythm and sound illicit a primitive reaction," she says. And at this basic level, "You can engage someone just to engage them."
Music over mind
There is not just one musical centre in the brain; functional brain imaging shows that some 20 areas respond to music, and that music works in both the left and right hemispheres (perception of rhythm, pattern and lyrics on the left, for example; processing melody, pitch, patterns and style, and identifying musical chords on the right). So even though a stroke survivor might have lost her ability to speak (a left brain function), she may be able to sing phrases like "Hello, how are you" to facilitate speech recovery.
"The right hemisphere, which in normal circumstances has only the most rudimentary linguistic capacities, can be turned into a reasonably efficient linguistic organ with less than three months of training," writes Dr. Oliver Sacks, a renowned neurologist, in his book Musicophilia (Knopf, 2007). "Music is the key to this transformation."
Click to continue for Dr. Sacks' story on how music therapy healed him as a patient, too...
Page 2 of 5
No two sessions are alike -- therapists have their own specialty and their own talent, while patients have their own issues, their own goals, their own innate response to music. According to the Canadian Association for Music Therapy, a variety of techniques can draw out specific results.
- Singing improves communication, speech, language, articulation and
breath control.
- Playing instruments improves gross and fine motor skills, such as dexterity, balance, coordination and strength.
- Active listening helps develop cognitive skills such as storing memories and improves attention span.
- Composing enhances the expression of feelings, ideas and experiences.
- Moving and dancing facilitates agility, balance, strength, relaxation, coordination and joint mobility.
- Improvising promotes nonverbal expression (shoo-be-do-ahh!) of emotion, ideas and experiences.
- Guided imagery promotes reflection and interaction between music and memories.Music is ingrained in our brains
We are all hardwired to process music, no matter what our physical or cognitive state. "For the thousands and thousands of people I have seen over 30 years, something will connect: an instrument, a type of music, some sort of engagement," says Dr. Johanne Brodeur, music therapy director at the Victoria Conservatory of Music. She turns to neurologist Paul MacLean's hypothesis of the tri-layered triune brain for explanation.
Think of the brain as having three separate-yet-interactive layers: the top layer, the neocortex, deals with language, logic, planning and other higher cognitive functions; the middle layer, the limbic system, deals with emotions; and the bottom layer, the reptilian complex, deals with our most primitive survival functions, such as digestion, reproduction and breathing.
So what does all the scientific jargon mean in terms of music? Even if the sophisticated neocortex and emotional limbic system have been damaged, as long as the reptilian layer is intact, it may be able to react to music, explains Brodeur. "You respond to it because rhythm and sound illicit a primitive reaction," she says. And at this basic level, "You can engage someone just to engage them."
Music over mind
There is not just one musical centre in the brain; functional brain imaging shows that some 20 areas respond to music, and that music works in both the left and right hemispheres (perception of rhythm, pattern and lyrics on the left, for example; processing melody, pitch, patterns and style, and identifying musical chords on the right). So even though a stroke survivor might have lost her ability to speak (a left brain function), she may be able to sing phrases like "Hello, how are you" to facilitate speech recovery.
"The right hemisphere, which in normal circumstances has only the most rudimentary linguistic capacities, can be turned into a reasonably efficient linguistic organ with less than three months of training," writes Dr. Oliver Sacks, a renowned neurologist, in his book Musicophilia (Knopf, 2007). "Music is the key to this transformation."
Click to continue for Dr. Sacks' story on how music therapy healed him as a patient, too...
Page 2 of 5
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