06/23/2025
🎵 Music Therapist, Sara Gulbranson Severson, will be demonstrating music therapy during tomorrow's Dementia Friends St. Cloud Film Series. Below, we're sharing Sara's article about music's impact on the brain. Want to meet Sara? Register for tomorrow's event at https://form.jotform.com/250136589702459
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🎶 Music heals our minds, bodies and souls. When we listen to music, we are actually perceiving multiple attributes or ‘dimensions’. It is quite fascinating to learn about the basic elements of sound (i.e. loudness, pitch, tempo, timbre, rhythm, etc.) and how they affect the different parts of our brains.
The human brain is divided up into four lobes – the frontal, temporal, parietal, and occipital – plus the cerebellum. Musical activity involves nearly every region of the brain. Listening to music starts with subcortical structures and then moves up to auditory cortices on both sides of the brain. As you listen to familiar music, your memory center kicks in and can cause you to tap along, sing along, and even perform along. At a deeper level, emotional responses to music occur when certain regions of the cortex are reached.
The human brain begins to learn to enjoy tones, vibration, music and sounds at a very young age...in the womb actually!
A fetus develops hearing at around 17-19 weeks. Babies learn the sounds of their mother before they are even born. Do you ever wonder why babies are put on their mother’s chest as soon as they enter the world? They are immediately soothed and can recognize the familiar sounds they heard when they were still in the womb.
The sound waves from voices, wind & string instruments travel directly through the air into the ear of others listening on up into different nerves of the brain. This causes a calming, soothing feeling.
It’s not only the actual sound that does this. It’s also vibrotactile stimulation. Our bodies are made up of approximately 60% water making vibration something that can easily and quickly travel throughout the body up to nerves in the brain.
Have you ever heard someone say, ‘That song really moved me’? Not only does this mean it struck an emotion. Bones are the hardest cells in our body. Sounds and vibration can travel right through those cells. Soundwaves go right to our vagus nerve to which controls our heart, lungs and digestive tract. When soundwaves and vibration reach this nerve, it can help to stabilize the heart rate, blood pressure, improve digestion and other vitals.
Our music memory is stored in a different part of our brain than all of our other memories. This is why those that are cognitively impaired can sing along to songs they learned when they were young, but, sadly, may not know who their family members are anymore. Keeping music familiar is an impactful way to help those with dementia feel like themselves again, if even for a short period of time.
Providing live therapeutic music for patients on Moments Hospice is a non-invasive, feasible way to enhance one’s quality of life by bringing in-the-moment healing and comfort to the patient’s whole being – emotional, spiritual, mental and physiological – simply by having the patient in the presence of music. It may also lead to improved human contact and communication, more positive emotions and improved relationships.
