Sound healing: can you drum your way to better health? Sing your way to serenity? Tune up your immunity with a tuning fork? Science takes a surprising look at the restorative powers of chant, rhythm and music

Natural Health, March, 2004 by Jill Neimark

As you read this, a black hole about 2.5 billion years old is humming the deepest musical note ever created: a B-flat that's a million billion times deeper than your ear can hear. This stellar cantata comes from vibrating gasses in a galaxy known as the Perseus cluster, 250 million light-years away. At the same time, a yeast cell in a research laboratory is emitting high-pitched clicks: Jim Gimzewski, professor of chemistry at the University of California at Los Angeles, is using an atomic force microscope and computer imaging to record the motion of cell membranes, which can then be listened to. Gimezewski calls the process sonocytology, and believes it may one day allow scientists to distinguish healthy from unhealthy cells.

from stars to cells, dolphins to crickets, birds and bees to human beings, the universe is alive with melody, sending and receiving waves of sound. Scientists now realize that something so omnipresent and so fundamental has a powerful influence on everything we think and feel.

This dawning awareness had turned into a grassroots movement of sound healing, a kind of "tuning in and tuning up." On Yahoo!, for instance, there are some 80 groups devoted to music therapy and 90 groups dedicated to drum circles. In 2002, the first International Sound Symposium was held in San Jose, bringing together experts in fields such as "overtone chanting" and "psycho-acoustics." Sound healing CDs have been produced by specialists like Andrew Weil, M.D., founder of the Program in Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona, and Mitchell Gaynor, M.D., founder and president of Gaynor Integrative Oncology in New York City.

Over the past few decades, music therapy has secured a legitimate place in the healing arts, and the practice continues to grow. More than 70 colleges and universities have degree programs approved by the American Music Therapy Association, and over 3,800 music therapists in the U.S. are board-certified.

the gathering evidence

Body rhythms can be hastened or decelerated by music. Listening to Pachelbel's Canon, for instance, with its rhythm of about 60 beats a minute, slows breathing and heart rate through a process called entrainment, which is the tendency for two oscillating bodies to lock into phase so that they vibrate in harmony. It's the same phenomenon that causes swinging pendulums to synchronize when they are close together, or that causes a tuning fork to vibrate sympathetically when another tuning fork of the same pitch is struck. Conversely, syncopation, which occurs when a beat comes in just ahead of your expectation, is experienced as exciting and physically stimulating; it's often used in dance music and drumming ceremonies.

Blood flow within the brain also appears to vary according to the sounds heard. Brain scans using Doppler sonography, conducted in 1999 in Germany at the University of Munster and the University of Dortmund, found that when non-musicians listened to music, the blood flow to the right hemisphere increased. But recordings with very strong rhythms, such as rock music, increased the blood flow in both hemispheres, suggesting that rhythm and pitch are processed in different parts of the brain.

Investigators observed that melody appears to act on the brain's emotional core, the limbic system, which moves us to joy, awe, peace, fear and sadness. Researchers at Cornell University looked at physiological changes in volunteers as they listened to music, and found that the cliches hold true: Music with rapid tempos in major keys correlated with happiness, while slow tempos and minor keys triggered melancholy.

how sound moves us

The effects of music have been noted for millennia. David played his harp to lift King Saul's depression, and Alexander the Great was restored to sanity by the music of a lyre. In the Himalayas, sacred healing chants have been performed daily by Buddhist monks for over 2,000 years. Yet only recently have researchers begun to understand how sound moves body and soul.

Petr Janata, Ph.D., a neuroscientist at Dartmouth College, mapped the brains of people as they listened to a melody that moved through all the major and minor keys. In addition to activity in the temporal lobe, which is involved in the basic processing of all sounds, Janata found that a region just behind the forehead (called the rostromedial prefrontal cortex) responded according to specific keys in the melody. Interestingly, this region is linked to memory and emotions.

"Music is not necessary for survival, yet something inside us craves it," says Janata. Even deaf people sense vibration in the part of the brain that is normally used for hearing, according to research from the University of Rochester School of Medicine.

Studies on music's health benefits are intriguing, though still preliminary. A single, 30-minute music-therapy session boosts immune function and increases salivary IgA (an immunoglobulin), according to Deforia Lane, Ph.D., resident director of music therapy at the University Hospitals of Cleveland in Ohio. However, it's unclear how long those levels stay elevated or how much of the effect is due to the music therapist's presence and care.