MECHANISM OF HEALING THROUGH
MUSIC IN THE BRAIN AND ITS RELEVANCE
TO PHYSICAL AND EMOTIONAL WELLBEING
Key Words : Music Therapy mechanism, Music and mind,Substantia nigra, Neuroplasicity, Dopamine, Post traumatic stress disorder. Written by Prof B.Sai Kiran Kumar
Consultant neurofeedback trainer BCIA USA, Sharath Manjunath Psychologist and certified Neurofeedback trainer Presidency college, Bangalore
Dopamine
The application of music for therapeutic purpose was
administered by Greek philosophers, Aristotle and Plato in
the early days, especially for those patients who had intense
amount of post traumatic stress disorder associated with war.
Depression and anxiety were among the popular mental health
ailments of the earlier centuries for which music was considered
as a non-pharmacological intervention. This phenomenon was
later adapted in the 1700s to help the elderly and retired war
veterans.
Therapeutic process involving music is mainly used to
improve the brain’s neuroplasticity. Dopamine is the primary
neurotransmitter involved in neuroplasticity and dopaminergic
neurons in the reward network of the brain including ventral
tegmental area and nucleus accumbens. Hearing pleasurable or
enjoyable music can activate these reward networks.
Understanding the influence of music in regulating the healing
process on the brain enables us to create definitive protocols in
practical applications for music therapy.
A predominant factor of music is that it interacts all the parts
of the brain that are involved in listening, reading, moving,
experiencing of memories and emotional context.
Music based intervention in neurological and psychological
disorders have been one of the promising non pharmacological
therapeutic processes in recent times. It is used to cure many
neuro degenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and
Huntington’s.
Recent neuroimaging studies on music and emotion show that
music can modulate activity in brain structures that are known
to be crucially involved in emotions, such as the amygdala,
hypothalamus, hippocampus, insula, cingulate cortex and
orbitofrontal cortex.
Subject selected music indicates highly pleasurable experience
of chills. It was accompanied by changes in heart rate and
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Nerve cell ineraction through music
Nerve network acivation when music is played
respiration. Therefore, the increase in chills resulted in
fluctuation of cerebral blood flow in the regions involved
in reward and motivation, emotion, and arousal, including
midbrain, amygdala, frontal cortex, and prefrontal cortex.
Modulating dopamine, increasing neural activity and reducing
noise help in promoting neuroplasticity and music therapy is
the only way to achieve it. So music activity helps to increase
the release of dopamine which in turn activates dopaminergic
related reward networks.
The physical relevance of therapy through music is
predominantly noticed in the regulation of the heart rate in
relieving the stress levels which can reduce the amount of
inflammation in the body. This also proactively enables the
lungs to have complete breathing cycle regulation through the
neural control in providing optimum amount of cerebral blood
flow with increased supply of oxygen promoting cognition and
effective nerve network process.
Many studies have proven the deeper coherence and association
between music and its significant role in helping the human
mind and body to recover faster from any physical or emotional
affliction.
1. R.J. Zatorre, “Musical pleasure and reward: Mechanisms
and dysfunction,” Ann N Y Acad Sci, 1337:202-11, 2015.
2. S. Koelsch, “Brain correlates of music-evoked emotions,” Nat
Rev Neurosci, 15:170-80, 2014.
3. A.J. Blood, R.J. Zatorre, “Intensely pleasurable responses
to music correlate with activity in brain regions implicated in
reward and emotion,” PNAS, 98:11818-23, 2001.
4. V. Menon, D.J. Levitin, “The rewards of music listening:
Response and physiological connectivity of the mesolimbic
system,” NeuroImage, 28:175-84, 2005.