Mozart Effect Essays - Auditory System, Music Therapy, Cochlea

Mozart Effect Although it is only in recent times that scientists have started to document the effects of music, the qualities of music were understood even in earliest times. Evidence suggests that dance and song preceded speech, which means that music is the original language of humans. Researcher's have found that about two-thirds of the inner ear's cilia resonate only at the higher frequencies that are commonly found in music (3,000 - 20,000 Hz). This seems to indicate that primitive humans communicated primarily through song or tone. The ancient Greek philosopher Pythagoras, best known for his work in mathematics, thought the whole universe was comprised of sounds and numbers. There has long been an awareness that music affects us, even if the reasons are not clear. Around 900 B.C., David played the harp "to cure Saul's derangement" (Gonzalez-Crussi). One os the world's oldest medical documents, the Ebers Papyrus (circa 1500 B.C.), prescribed incantations that Egyptian physicians chanted to heal the sick. This is perhaps the first recorded use of music for therapy. The positive influence of music may have also saved Beethoven's life in the early eighteenth century. In a letter he wrote, "I would have ended my life-it was only my art that held me back" (Kamien). Every human civilization has developed some sort of musical idiom and has used it as a form of tranquilizer, as a lullaby. Great civilizations have developed without the wheel, without a written language, without money, but the use of soothing sounds seems to be a very basic component of human physiology. There are distinct differences between compositions of different societies, but in spite of this, they can convey the same moods, the same feelings, in all people. As Louis Pasteur's Germ Theory of Illness launched the era of scientific medicine, music largely faded from formal medical settings. Fortunately, it never completely disappeared. American medicine first started experimenting with the therapeutic use of music during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As early as 1804, Edwin Atlee, wrote an essay in which he hoped to show that music, "has a powerful influence upon the mind, and consequently on the body." Modern music therapy began to develop in the 1940's when psychotherapists used music to calm anxious patients, and music therapy programs were established in several university psychology departments. The relatively new field of neuro-musicology has been developed to experiment with music as a tool and to dissect and shape it to the needs of society. The auditory sense The visible portion of the ear consists of an external shell, with an aperture known as the meatus or auditory canal in the lower half. At the other end of this canal, about an inch inside the head is a small membrane of skin about 3/1000 of an inch thick. This piece of skin is stretched tightly over a framework of bone much like skin is stretched over a frame of wood to make a drum, and hence the name eardrum. Just behind the eardrum lies a chain of three small bones known as ossicles. The first ossicle is in contact with the eardrum, and the last presses against the oval window that leads to the cochlea. The ossicles serve to amplify the tiny changes in air pressure. The oval window passes the motion on to the fluid inside the cochlea. The neural tissue in the cochlea lies on the basilar membrane. The basilar membrane holds the auditory receptors, tiny hair cells called cilia. Waves in the fluid of the ear stimulate the hair cells to send signals to through the thalamus to the temporal lobes of the brain. Sound reaches the ear in the form of waves which have traveled through the surrounding air. When the waves reach the ear, they exert varying pressures on the ear-drum and it is sent into motion. This motion is eventually detected by nerves and sent to the brain (as described above). The ear-drum is a remarkably sensitive instrument, an air displacement of only a ten-billionth of an inch is enough to send a signal to the brain. This is far more sensitive than the best barometers that scientists have today. Although the ear is very sensitive to minute changes in air pressure, it is only when these pressure changes are repeated in rapid succession that the messages are passed to the brain. Music Therapy Heart Attacks The latest research demonstrates that music therapy has a variety of healing effects. A study was conducted on three separate coronary care units in hospitals. One group received only standard care,