MUSIC AND SCHIZOPHRENIA
SUMEYRA AYDIN
Human body is like a vivid and rhythmic instrument that music and loud sounds will excite.
This stimulation may be both physiological and psychological, and the degree of excitation
depends on the nature and severity of noise, exposure length, and the person being exposed to
it. Study, including multiple experiments undertaken at Surrey University, ties listening to the
sounds of wind , water, and birdsong to reduced tension. Treasure advises all of his clients to
filter the sounds into the office. “We use birdsong a great deal because it makes most people
feel secure.” he says. “It is also nature’s alarm clock — time to be awake and alert. For
working, birds are very good.”
Music can stimulate or express basic instincts, and also aid in letting them loose. It will help
to reinforce the ego, at the same time release and regulate the feelings, and give the listener or
the artist a sense of self. This can sublimate other desires, by way of strong esthetic and
spiritual experiences fulfill the need for perfection. As such music plays an important part in
our lives. Research suggests that music can stimulate the body’s natural feel good chemicals
(e.g. endorphins, oxytocin). It can help to energize our mood and provide us with an outlet for
our feelings to take control. Music in our lives may even help us to work through problems.
Some music may allow you to sit with a mood, explore it, understand it, but it doesn't make
you feel worse and some just the opposite.
This essay will be about music and its effects on schizophrenia. Before writing about
schizophrenia I would like to write some information about how music affects our brain and
cognition (cognitive performance), and about music therapy, because I think it will help to
understand the topic more.
Music’s Effect on Brain
Music has proved to have a powerful impact on the brain, scientifically. Recent research
shows that music can help in many aspects of the brain, including reducing pain, relieving
stress, memory and brain injury. “I think music in itself is healing. It’s an explosive
expression of humanity. It’s something we are all touched by. No matter what culture we’re
from, everyone loves music.”, says Billy Joe. Music has played a significant role in every
human culture, past as well as present. People around the world are responding universally to
the music. The interest in music's effects on the brain has led to a new research branch called
neuromusicology that explores how the nervous system reacts to the music. Studies that
connect music to memory recall have evolved since the beginning of the 20th century, when
the work first appeared. Neurologist Oliver Sacks said, “Music evokes emotion, and emotion
can bring with it memory. … It brings back the feeling of life when nothing else can.”
"Music and the brain" examines how music influences brain activity and human behavior,
through minimizing stress , pain, and depressive symptoms, as well as developing cognitive
and motor abilities, spatial-temporal memory, and neurogenesis, which is the capacity of the
brain to generate neurons. This can be seen on an MRI, where “lots of different parts of the
brain light up,” he says.
The Effects Of Music On Cognition
Many students listen to music to alleviate the emotional effects of stress and anxiety while
engaging in complex cognitive processing, such as studying for a test, completing homework
assignments, or reading and writing. Such behavior is so popular that the impact that music
plays on cognitive efficiency will be helpful for college students to know. The findings
demonstrated the idea of music improving cognitive performance in studies conducted to
learn about the effects of musical distraction on cognitive task performance (Cockerton,
Moore, & Norman, 1997).
Additionally, very few studies address the interaction between the intensity or volume of the
music played and its effect on cognitive processing. A lot of work on the connections between
music performance and non-musical abilities has centered on cognitive skills as these
correlations are important to cognitive science problems, including modularity. (Peretz
2012) , plasticity (Münte et al., 200 2) , and transfer (Hannon and Trainor, 200
,
7) .
Music Therapy
Music therapy is a health profession in which a music therapist uses music and its facets –
physical, emotional, mental, social, aesthetic, and spiritual, to help patients improve and
maintain their health. It is regarded as an expressive therapy. Through music therapy, the
executive performance, motor functions, mental and affective development, personality and
social skills, and patients' quality of life are scientifically established and enhanced. It is
believed that music experiences of free improvisation, singing, songwriting, listening to
music and discussing music achieve goals and goals for the treatment. The music therapy 's
effectiveness has been evidence-based and is known as both art and research. For several
hospitals, health clinics, schools, services for alcohol and drug treatment, mental hospitals,
and correctional institutions, music therapy is used.
Music therapy is generally defined as “a systematic process of intervention wherein the
therapist helps the client to promote health, using music experiences and the relationships that
develop through them as dynamic forces of change” (Bruscia 1998). It is also viewed as a
psychotherapeutic approach in the sense that by using musical interaction as a means of
speech, language, and development it explores inner- and interpsychic, as well as social
mechanisms. Music therapy models practised today are most commonly based on
psychoanalytic, humanistic, cognitive behavioural or developmental theory (Gold 2009;
Wigram 2002).
Music therapy has been shown to be an effective therapy strategy for stroke patients. Music
affects different portions of the brain. Part of this therapy is the ability of music to affect
emotions and social interactions. It has been proven that music therapy is associated with a
decrease in depression, improved mood, and a reduction in state anxiety. Music therapy can
have a positive effect on social and behavioral outcomes as well as encouraging trends with
respect to mood.
Music & Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a long-term mental disorder of a type involving a breakdown in the relation
between thought, emotion, and behaviour, leading to faulty perception, inappropriate actions
and feelings, withdrawal from reality and personal relationships into fantasy and delusion,
and a sense of mental fragmentation.
Approximately 60% to 80% of people with schizophrenia psychiatric disorders report sensory
disturbances in this population that have been associated with elevated rates of anxiety (75%)
and extreme depression (60%). Furthermore, auditory hallucinations are associated with an
increased risk of harming oneself or others, and they have a negative impact on all aspects of
daily life, including work, self-care and relations. In these patients, also, quality of life is
significantly impaired. To this respect, many psychosocial approaches have shown
effectiveness, including music therapy, which in multiple trials has been correlated with
substantial decreases in symptoms, such as hallucinations.
Scientists studied the effects of a music therapy on quality of life and symptoms of
schizophrenia patients and auditory hallucinations diagnosed in a Turkish hospital. Of the 28
patients (78.6% females) enrolled in the study, 14 were assigned to a music therapy focused
on Turkish music's Rast tonality, which is said to influence the body "both physically and
mentally, have muscle effects, offer pleasure, and cause feelings of joy, harmony, strength,
warmth, relief, and satisfaction," and 14 were assigned to a non-music control category. The
results showed decreased scores on standardized tests of hallucinations and constructive
formal thought at discharge and follow-up, as well as overall Single Assessment System
ratings, in the study community relative to scores collected during hospitalization. Six months
after discharge, the quality of life levels in many areas had increased. “In line with these
results, listening to music may be recommended to cope with auditory hallucinations and to
provide positive quality of life,” the researchers concluded.
A longitudinal study published in January 2018 in Frontiers in Neuroscience examined the
effects of a classical music intervention on patients with schizophrenia (n=36), who were
assigned to a 1-month Mozart music intervention group or a no-music group; both groups
were receiving treatment with antipsychotic drugs. A control group consisted of 19 healthy
individuals. “Together, these
ndings revealed that the insular cortex could potentially be an
important region in music intervention for patients with schizophrenia, thus improving the
patients’ psychiatric symptoms through normalizing the salience and sensorimotor networks,”
the authors wrote.
There is evidence that music therapy can help individuals with schizophrenia change their
global condition, depressive effects, stress, anxiety and social interaction in the short to
medium term as an alternative to routine treatment. Music therapy tends to address
therapeutic, mental, and psychological issues in particular, and helps people communicate
with both intrapersonal and social means.
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