Music as Medicine by Daniel Levitin: Does music hold the key to treating Parkinson’s?
Music as Medicine by Daniel Levitin (Cornerstone £22, 416pp)
Music as Medicine will be available from the Mail Bookshop
After legendary singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell suffered a brain aneurysm in 2015, leaving her unable to walk or talk, doctors thought she would never properly recover.
Yet a few years later, she was back performing to 27,000 people at a headline concert.
What was it that brought about her recovery? One reason, as Daniel Levitin explains, may be because he advised Mitchell’s nurses to play her a CD of her favourite artists – including Chuck Berry, Duke Ellington and Debussy – once a day.
The first time they did this, she smiled for the first time and her recovery went on from there.
Levitin is careful to say that he can’t prove what caused her eventual transformation – whether it was being nursed at home, time passing or the music.
But he concludes music was the catalyst for change. Beliefs about music’s power to heal mind, body and spirit stretch back 20,000 years to the Upper Palaeolithic era when healers first used drumming to try to cure a range of maladies.
This is now backed up by scientific research, writes Levitin, an emeritus professor in psychology and neuroscience.
He’s far from your average science writer though. Levitin initially dropped out of college to play in a band, although after 13 years he went back to pursue a career in academia.
Back and better than ever: Joni Mitchell performs onstage during the 66th GRAMMY Awards
Yet since then he’s also found time to remaster the Steely Dan album catalogue, co-produce an album with Stevie Wonder, and perform with stars such as Bobby McFerrin, Rosanne Cash and Sting.
Don’t be fooled by his celeb friends into thinking that this is anything other than a serious science book. As Levitin says, when we play an instrument or sing, we are engaging more mental faculties than almost any other activity, including motor systems, planning, imagining, sensory feedback, co-ordination, emotions and auditory processing.
The book delves into the complex way the brain interacts with music. This includes explaining why those who stammer, such as Ed Sheeran, can sing perfectly – the music acts as a kind of internal metronome, helping them order words and timing.
Or why someone with Alzheimer’s, such the guitarist Glen Campbell, could play impeccably on tour even if he couldn’t remember what city he was in; this is thanks to the fact that musical circuits in the brain are evolutionarily older than speech so they are more robust in the face of neurological decay.
Stutter: Ed Sheeran, despite having a stutter, can sing perfectly
One of the parts that will excite most interest is how music therapy can help those with neurodegenerative conditions like Parkinson’s.
This damages the circuits in the part of the brain called the basal ganglia which coordinate smooth, continuous movement – thus meaning patients lose the ability to walk easily. Yet, Levitin explains, music’s tempo causes other neurons in the brain to fire in synchronicity with the beat. It thus acts as an external timekeeper, allowing the patients to walk smoothly again.
Crucially, they can not only learn to walk while the music’s playing but can retrain their brains so they can walk without it.
It’s impossible to read this book without thinking of the music that has meant a lot to you in your own life.
Nothing unusual there, says Levitin – that’s part of the way the eardrum connects to the startle response in the brain, but also that music
activates long-term memories. He says that in future, health insurance companies and governments should fund music therapies to treat both mental and physical conditions.
But for those who want to know what they should be listening to or playing, there won’t be an easy, generic prescription: it’s deeply individual. But before that sounds like a guessing game, remember how often doctors have to tweak prescriptions.
For now, you can indulge in playing the songs you love – in the knowledge that your passion for Billie Eilish or Bob Dylan is safeguarding future mental and physical health.