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What if music could help promote healing and resiliency? This is a question scientists are asking and hoping to answer for frontline healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic.This video was produced in collaboration with NOVA and is made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.

Could one prescription to help promote healing and resiliency be music?

Could one prescription to help promote healing and resiliency be music?

What if music could help promote healing and resiliency? This is a question scientist are asking and hoping to answer for frontline healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Scientists study the healing effects of music on the brain

Scientists Study the Healing Effects of Music on the Brain

Body & Brain

Scientists Study the Healing Effects of Music on the BrainPublished: August 20, 2021NARRATION: COVID case numbers are down, but the wounds of the pandemic—physical and mental—remain. Some scientists are asking, could one prescription to help promote healing and resiliency be music?CHRISTOPHE JACKSON: Music was the gift I always gave to myself. When COVID happened, music definitely became the greatest gift I ever had.NARRATION: Christophe Jackson studies the intersection of music and the brain—and his research springs from personal experience.CHRISTOPHE JACKSON: I started taking piano when I was a kid at four years old, so music has always been a part of me.I really had a proclivity for music and for science. I really loved both of them, but when you're a kid, no one tells you can't do them both. So when I was in school, I remember having to make that decision for going to college. And one thing that my music teacher at the time said is, he was like, "If it were impossible to fail, and you can wake up, what would you do? If you went to sleep and woke up, what would your life consists of?" I just said, "I would play music, do medicine and be a scientist."NARRATION: Jackson went on to earn three doctorates in biology, engineering, and music.CHRISTOPHE JACKSON: That whole dichotomy of arts and science, we're often afraid of asking different questions and asking deeper questions to ask where they overlap, because people, I think, sometimes they were afraid that the research would suggest that there wasn't one. It wasn't until we started looking at the neuroscience and started realizing, "No, it really does exist."NARRATION: At Tulane University, Jackson compared the brains of musicians and non-musicians. He looked at electrical activity in the brain after playing random music tones.CHRISTOPHE JACKSON: In the data that we saw musicians can make broader connections and the only thing that meant was, not that one had a bigger brain physically per se, but a lot of the neuronal connections, musicians could make them more easily. So that meant that they were actively using more of their cortexNARRATION: More scientists are investigating the connection between music and the brain – and music’s potential therapeutic effects. At the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, a group of researchers, doctors, artists, and therapists created the Colorado Resiliency Arts Lab, or CORAL, in 2018 to look at how creative arts could help healthcare professionals.MARC MOSS: We wanted to develop and then study a creative arts therapy program for healthcare professionals to try to give them an outlet or a way to express themselves and learn how to better cope with their psychological distress.And then COVID hit and it became even more of an important issue.CHRISTOPHE JACKSON: I couldn't see my parents or my family members for months, because I worked in the COVID unit.When I came home from neurosurgery on a trauma case was what did I do? I played piano. I recorded. I created more.NARRATION: In 2021, CORAL enrolled 150 subjects, separated into three cohorts, which could experience four different forms of creative arts therapy. Another portion of each cohort did not experience any form to act as the control group. By having all subjects fill out before and after surveys, the program can analyze the effects.TONY EDELBLUTE: This particular research project involves music therapy, art therapy, dance movement therapy, and there's writing instructors.I’m leading the music group. We kind of start out with the first third of the group is just getting to know individuals and kind of talk about that.I ask them to bring in a favorite song, a meaningful song. And we have, and we practice our skills of hearing that song and going, I think what you like about it is this. And we get the whole group responding and kind of getting a lot of language around why that song is preferred by that person. And it's very validating for the person and it really helps people get to know each other.Music is just a way another way to look at like, how do I feel emotionally? /// sometimes words almost get in the way.MARC MOSS: There's a need for this. In general, when you do a study, one of the big barriers you run into is trying to get people to sign up for the study. We have a waiting list. People want to be a part of this.NARRATION: The CORAL program hopes its preliminary study will have effects downstream from healthcare workers to patients and beyond.CHRISTOPHE JACKSON: There is something really special about music. We already know that. There's something incredibly special about it. Even if we try to break down the science of it, the deeper we go, the more we appreciate the complexity and the sophistication and the intricacies that make it something worthy of studyI always like to tell people there's a reason why people go to music events or live music, there's a reason why the happiness and the joy they get to go and experience this thing, because it often gives them a container for their life and their expressions. They didn't realize how much they missed it or appreciated it, until it was gone from them for a year and a half.So we need these things. It really is that simple.

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Scientists study the healing effects of music on the brain

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Support Provided By

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