Research in music therapy supports its effectiveness in many areas including overall physical rehabilitation and facilitating movement, increasing people’s motivation to become engaged in their treatment, providing emotional support for clients and their families, and providing an outlet for expression of feelings.īarbara Crowe, past president of the National Association for Music Therapy, explains, “Music therapy can make the difference between withdrawal and awareness, between isolation and interaction, between chronic pain and comfort, between demoralization and dignity.” Music therapy also provides avenues for communication that can be helpful to those who find it difficult to express themselves in words. Patients who have undergone bone-marrow transplants report less pain and nausea if they take part in music therapy, which may also actually speed up the time it takes for the new marrow to start producing blood cells, say scientists from the University of Rochester Medical Center.

Currently, researchers are exploring how melodies can help regulate the heart and boost hormones. Children and adolescents with behavioral problems and autism have also been shown to benefit significantly from music therapy. Music has a positive influence on individuals suffering from dementia by addressing physical, emotional, cognitive, and social deficits characteristic of patients with diseases such as Alzheimer’s. A growing number of studies show the promise of various music interventions in alleviating pain and treating neurological, psychological, and developmental disorders.

Music and Memory is one of many organizations working to improve people’s lives through the therapeutic properties of music. When an interviewer asks Henry, “What does music do to you?” Henry responds without missing a beat, “It gives me the feeling of love… I figure right now the world needs to come into music.”

Music evokes emotion and emotion can bring with it memory.” Furthermore, Sacks explains, “music brings back the feeling of life when nothing else can.” “Music imprints itself on the brain deeper than any other human experience. Oliver Sacks, a neurologist and author of Musicophilia, who is featured in the documentary. “The philosopher Kant once called music the ‘quickening art.’ And Henry is being quickened, he’s being brought to life,” says Dr. Almost instantly, we see Henry swaying from side to side and singing, his eyes wide open.

In the above clip, Henry is barely responsive before one of his caretakers puts headphones on him and starts up one of his favorite tunes. Alive Inside follows the “awakening” that occurs when people suffering from memory loss and Alzheimer’s are given music they have a strong emotional connection to, often music they grew up with.

Sacks music