Music Mends Minds

Researchers have been confirming the beneficial effects of music therapy and exploring it as a viable alternative treatment in delaying the symptoms of neurodegenerative dementias. Music has been shown to synchronize the mind and playing a musical instrument is likened to a full-body work out for the brain, integrating motor, heightened sensory and auditory function, emotion, and other higher-order processes of the brain. In addition, it seems to affect lower, more primitive areas of the brain as well. The effect? Music seems to be retained in the brain differently from other sorts of cognition such as memory and language and can be accessed as a form of communication when other avenues are lost.