Music may have healing potential not just the soul, but the mind and body, and a new large scale study is set to find out how its powers can be used.
Patient care increasingly involves music, which is used primarily to soothe those in pain or distress, but different kinds of music might be able to help heal the brain as well.
Examining the brains of rappers has shed light on creativity, while other work has revealed that our experience of music involves a uniquely complex combination of brain areas.
For victims of stroke or neurological disorders, music can sometimes remain even when language ability and memory are damaged.
Now, the challenge for doctors is to harness music to do more than comfort the sick, so the National Institutes of Health is bringing together musicians, music therapists and neuroscientists to tap into the brain’s circuitry and figure out how.
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