I Heard There Was a Secret Chord: Music As Medicine

Playing and listening to music soothes the agitated mind, stimulates memory, and improves physical coordination, according to this exuberant treatise from neuroscientist Levitin (This Is Your Brain on Music). Drawing on experiments conducted in his lab—the brain produces endogenous opioids when listening to music, his students found—and his experience as a professional guitarist and producer, Levitin delves into the burgeoning field of music therapy. Music, he writes, promotes the mind’s default mode network of high neural connectivity and stimulates facets of brain function from motor control and memory to focus and emotional control. As a result, research suggests, music may diminish anxiety and depression, reduce blood pressure, improve walking and speech in Huntington’s disease patients, lessen Alzheimer’s symptoms, and even help to bridge seemingly uncrossable social divides (at a 2009 Esalen Institute workshop Levitin attended, Israeli and Palestinian participants wrote a song together that called for the removal of walls between the West Bank and Israel, swaying some Israeli hardliners that the wall was antithetical to peace). Enriching lucidly explained neuroscience with ebullient musical appreciation (a Billy Pierce saxophone solo is “in turns thrilling, heartbreaking, bustling, radiant, and always, always moving forward”), Levitin makes a persuasive case for music’s therapeutic potential that gives due to its medical promise without undercutting its mysteries. The result is a fascinating take on the tuneful raptures of the mind. (Aug.)