Welcome to the Coping With Epilepsy forums - a peer support community for folks dealing (directly or indirectly) with seizure disorders. You can visit the forum page to see the list of forum nodes (categories/rooms) for topics.
Please have a look around and if you like what you see, please consider registering an account and joining the discussions. When you register an account and log in, you may enjoy additional benefits including no ads, access to members only (ie. private) forum nodes and more. Registering an account is free - you have nothing to lose!
BBC News said:Music training boosts the brain
Music lessons can improve memory and learning ability in young children by encouraging different patterns of brain development, research shows.
Canadian scientists compared children aged four to six who took music lessons for a year with those who did not.
They found the musical group performed better on a memory test also designed to assess general intelligence skills such as literacy and maths ability.
The study, by McMaster University, is published online by the journal Brain.
The researchers also measured changes in the children's brain responses to sounds during the year.
They found changes developed in the musical group in as little as four months.
Previous studies have shown that older children given music lessons recorded greater improvements in IQ scores than children given drama lessons.
But lead researcher Professor Laurel Trainor said: "This is the first study to show that brain responses in young, musically trained and untrained children change differently over the course of a year."
CBS News said:Dr. Oliver Sacks, played by Robin Williams in the movie "Awakenings," tried using music to arouse the catatonic victims of a rare brain disease.
The movie was based on a book and documentary about Sack's patients in the 1960s.
"These were people who couldn't generate any movement or any speech for themselves, sometimes until or unless they heard music," Dr. Sacks told Sunday Morning host Charles Osgood "And then suddenly they'd be able to flow, to dance, to sing. It was miraculous to see them, amazing."
A pianist himself, Dr. Sacks has spent years exploring the effects of music on the brain, chronicled in his latest book, "Musicophilia."
"I see patients with all sorts of neurological conditions who could be greatly helped by music," Dr. Sacks said. "People with Parkinson's disease who can't generate a sense of rhythm of their own, who can't flow, who can't move, but you give them rhythmical music and they can discover their own lost rhythm."
...
Downloaded 'First Voices' by R. Carlos Nakai off 'Ancestral Voices' last night because of your suggestion and the fact I really like Native American music (my mother turned me on to it long time ago!)...very nice!You are so right! For me it would be several things, Carlos Nakai, Native American Flute; Julian Bream, his Spanish music; Chopin's Muzurkas, and Chinese string [pipa] music. Music can so direct, or redirect my mental and emotional states. What great discoveries are you making in those LPs? I am trying to find a recording, "The Art of Julian Bream," should you come across one. It is one of his earlier works. And I already mentioned Paul Horn, and Tony Scott.
A combination [music to soothe brain waves] is like a great idea!