How Music Can Play a Part in Brain Injury Recovery

I read an article by Karen Weintraub in USA TODAY about how music can help an injured brain (read it here). One man, Carey Gordon, loves R&B and when he starts getting stressed or angry, he turnes up his speakers. When he feels those emotions, a dangerous seizure can be triggered, and the music helps him calm down. This article also says that music has also helped him to recover some of the dexterity he lost when seizures partially paralyzed his right side. He can now how hold his chefs knife again, although he can't do it professionally yet! Music helped him get back his "upbeat attitude."

I also read an article about Gabby Giffords, a US Congresswoman from Arizona who was shot about 10.5 months ago, on ABC News. The article and the accompanying video was done by Katie Moisse and Bob Woodruff (I actually wrote about him earlier here). Gifford has since relearned how to talk, largely accredited to Music Therapy. She was injured in the left side of the brain, where language is controlled. However, music exists in both heispheres. The article says that scientists are finding that music can help to rebuild language on the uninjured right side. Amazing. Sometimes I like to think of the brain as a road map. There is the end goal in the distance (like speech in this case). We knew the fastest way there, but then a bullet comes along and creates a road block. So we have to find another way to our destination. Maybe its not as fast, but you can still get there. Maybe the right side has to figure out a new path to speech.

Because, you know, this is my blog, I was thinking about how music influenced my recovery (to this point). I, to, had to relearn how to talk but my injury was different. My left side wasn't hurt. It was mainly my cerebellum. I had "cerebellar mustism," which resulted in Dysarthia (which, according to Wikipedia is "a motor speech disorder resulting from neurological injury of the motor component of the motor-speech system and is characterized by poor articulation of phonemes"). I knew all the words I just couldn't get my throat muscles to say them. There was no music therapy at all.

The year after I got hurt and before I got married I lived at my parents home and they so kindly took me to all my therapies and doctor appointments. And after a couple months to my first class back at BYU (which was Personality and I got a B). Eddie made me a CD that I listened to a lot with music by Nick Drake. "Pink Moon" takes me back to that time and it makes me really sad. Apparently, I must have been pretty sad at that time of my life. Thats the only way I can think that music plays any role in my recovery. It really didn't. It justs transplants me into that time of my life. There you go.