Researchers Tap Brain to Find Out How Music Heals

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Like a friendly Pied Piper, the violinist keeps up a toe-tapping beat as dancers weave through busy hospital hallways and into the chemotherapy unit, patients looking up in surprised delight. Upstairs, a cellist plays an Irish folk tune for a patient in intensive care.

Music increasingly is becoming a part of patient care, although it's still pretty unusual to see roving performers captivating entire wards, as they did at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital one recent fall morning.

"It takes them away for just a few minutes to some other place where they don't have to think about what's going on," said cellist Martha Vance after playing for a patient isolated to avoid spreading infection.

The challenge: harnessing music to do more than comfort the sick. Now, moving beyond programs like Georgetown's, the National Institutes of Health is bringing together musicians, music therapists and neuroscientists to tap into the brain's circuitry and figure out how.

"The brain is able to compensate for other deficits sometimes by using music to communicate," said NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins, a geneticist who also plays a mean guitar.

To turn that ability into a successful therapy, "it would be a really good thing to know which parts of the brain are still intact to be called into action — to know the circuits well enough to know the backup plan," Collins added.

Scientists aren't starting from scratch. Learning to play an instrument, for example, sharpens how the brain processes sound and can improve children's reading and other school skills. Stroke survivors who can't speak sometimes can sing, and music therapy can help them retrain brain pathways to communicate. Similarly, Parkinson's patients sometimes walk better to the right beat.