The Fusion of Music and Medicine Moves Human Hearts As Art and Science

Bando H, Yoshioka A, Bando M and Nishikiori Y

Published on: 2025-02-22

Abstract

Three areas exist for our life and society for years. They are science, medicine, and medical practice involving humans, art therapy and music therapy. By fusing these, we can move people's hearts. Music can be useful for treatment for patients with hemispatial neglect, autism spectrum disorders (ASD), and others. Neuroscience study of music-based interventions (MBIs) has attracted attention. Music has powerful ability for experiencing and expressing our emotions. Live pleasant or unpleasant piano music showed large response to amygdala neurofeedback by the applicants. Recently, novel book “Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us” became bestseller, due to people’s interest.

Keywords

Art therapy; Music therapy; Music-based interventions (MBIs); Amygdala neurofeedback; Hemispatial neglect

Commentary

Looking back at the history, there have been three areas related to our life and society: i) science and medicine, ii) medical practice involving humans, and iii) art therapy and music therapy [1]. By fusing these, we can move people's hearts. When individuals are involved, the impact will extend to organizations and local communities. In this article, some perspectives will be discussed concerning the "chemical reaction" that occurs when music and medicine intersect [2] (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Relationships among Science, Medicine, Art, Music, Art Therapy and Music Therapy.

The authors' research group has been involved in music therapy and art therapy [3]. There are clinical settings for music therapy sessions, and workshop/lecture activities are also included [4]. It has long been known that the appropriate application of music can "heal the mind." The subjects can be categorized into healthy people or diseased people. In the case of primary care, they include primary health care and primary medical care. Similarly, healthy people receive healthy music therapy with broad perspective, and diseased patients receive genuine music therapy with narrow meanings and necessity of evaluation after the treatment.

For example, patients with sequelae of cerebral vascular accident (CVA, or stroke) may be found to have "hemispatial neglect"[5]. Such patient cannot pay attention to the space on the left half of the body. During the rehabilitation, it would be important to give the patient usual direct attention to the left side [6]. Consequently, an effective training method can be presented. Using a keyboard instrument such as piano, playing the tone scale from high to lower direction. In the sequence of notes for Do Si La So Fa Mi Re Do, the patient will be naturally conscious for looking the left side of the body.

Furthermore, some children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have difficulty noticing people who are talking to them nearby [7]. In such cases, there is a method of getting the child's attention by hitting a drum or other percussion instrument [8]. This method makes the use of the instinctive human reaction of reflexively looking in the direction of a loud noise. An impressive medical case has been reported, who was bipolar disorder patient. When he takes the necessary medication, he may experience certain phenomenon in which he recognizes the pitch of music as a semitone lower than the natural tone level [9]. The cause of this seems to be probably a mismatch between the recognition of sound (tone, pitch) in the inner ear and the mapping of sound in the cerebrum, where the normal function work has been conducted so far [10]. If the patient is involved in music profession who has perfect pitch, this may be an unbearable symptom for continuing the musical profession.

In what situations would a scientific approach be useful in the field of music therapy or art therapy? [11] If a musician wants someone to deeply understand his music, he would ask people around him or look for some related evidence. In such cases or situations, the actual usefulness of science would be recognized. In other words, when judging the beauty elements of the art, each individual would feel emotions such as pleasant or unpleasant [12]. Furthermore, the individual would show a reaction that is the result of integrating a wide range of brain functions such as memory, experience, and understanding. It is expected that research into such mechanisms will progress in the fields of neuroscience and psychology.

As the field of art, lots of researches have continued various research on how vision affects the brain function [13]. Meanwhile, researches on how music affects the brain have only just begun, and will be required for many years to complete. Academic journals such as Nature Human Behavior will be useful. Music and science may be two separate fields, but in reality they are different. Music and science have much in common factors, such as the search for truth and proof, and the ability to analyze humans and nature. Musicians generally have excellent abilities in a wide range of activities, and it is expected that more people will study these areas of understanding, and then novel findings will be revealed.

For recent research, neuroscience study of music-based interventions (MBIs) has been fascinating as challenging field [14]. Music has broad components of any human society, and MBIs may include various activity and research areas. They have developed to performing music, listening to music, music-based movement, receiving music therapy, and undergoing music training and education. It will highlight the fundamental challenges of MBI strategies associated with emphases on various research. They include human brain imaging, stimulation technologies, behavior measurements, motion capturing tools, computational approaches and animal models. Comparative investigations by experimental animal research also brought uncovering brain circuit activities related with rhythm perception. On the other hand, brain stimulation, human imaging, and video technologies have helped analyses of neural circuit, which can clarify various efficacy of MBIs on motor, reward, affective, cognitive function, and so on.

Music has powerful ability for experiencing and expressing our emotions. It is also affective neuroscience research using music, and brain mechanisms were investigated for processing auditory emotions [15]. Large differences exist between recorded music and live musical performances, where intense musical emotions were most expressed. Especially, live pleasant or unpleasant piano music showed large response to amygdala neurofeedback by the applicants. These phenomena showed acoustically much different compared with recorded music, which was accompanied by remarkably higher and consistent amygdala activity. From mentioned above, only live music could show positive and strong coupling situation between of brain activity and musical performance, in which listeners received simultaneously dynamic entrainment processes.

For clarifying the charm about the power of the arts and aesthetic experiences, the book “Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us” was published [16]. After just 6 days, the book had become a New York Times bestseller. It seemed to be so successful because people in the world have been hungry for such ways to thrive, heal and flourish. Science has been catching up providing a novel possibility for cutting-edge research into actual practice.

In summary, several perspectives were described about the fusion among science, medicine, art therapy, and music therapy. Recent novel commentary will be expected to inform the power of the combination of these factors in the future.

Conflict of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Funding: There was no funding received for this paper.

Global Journal of Arts and Social Sciences

The Fusion of Music and Medicine Moves Human Hearts As Art and Science

Abstract

Keywords

Commentary

References