Music and the Brain

Today the assistsant medical director of my hospital discovered I was the music therapist. He very much values music therapy and was sharing with me today about how he is collaborating with a professor in the conservatory of music at UMKC to teach a class with. Let me back up, our hospital is a teaching hospital and he is the Chair of the Department of Psychiatory at UMKC. So he trains lots of medical students. Well, he went on to say that next year he and this music faculty (a music composition professor, not music therapy) are going to have a class called Music and Medicine. He asked me if I would come and speak to the class. What?! For real?! Medical students, and me, talking about music and medicine? Scary.

Then I shared with him my thoughts on music and psychosis. (*See below, short explanation of what I e-mailed him upon his request). And he wants me to present at Grand Rounds. I told him I was just in the beginning stages of my ideas and really had not researched or learned much about it. He said I didn't have to worry, because it wouldn't be until next year anyway, because Grand Rounds is filled up through June. (Wait, just thought of this- I thought we were going to be privatized in July, so how can I do Grand Rounds in a year? Hmm, whatever).

So, I wonder what I will learn in a year. Is there anything out there to learn, or is this new stuff that hasn't even been researched? Either way, this is a great opportunity. Very scary, but still a great opportunity.

*In my 7 months here, I have run into a few patients that are excellent musicians and are high functioning enough to share that when they play the guitar their mind is free from racing thoughts and they feel calm. In a couple of lower functioning patients with psychosis, I am amazed at how delusional they are in a non-music setting, but how they engage in the music by singing and dancing, showing no response to internal stimuli. My challenge is wanting to figure out what is going on in the brain, and if/how I can facilitate live, therapeutic music interventions to reach functional outcomes. These are just my beginning thoughts, and I have hardly even begun to learn more and dig into the research and neurology of it