Music is a gift for the senses… and also a therapeutic technique that was already used in the 19th century to treat people with mental disorders and that was recognized as a scientific discipline under the name of music therapy at the beginning of the last century. A new study has now revealed that when sedated patients are exposed to different musical stimuli it is heavy metal music that achieves the greatest brain stimulation.
The authors of the work are three researchers from the Hospital Universitario de La Princesa, in Madrid, Jesús Pastor, head of the Neurophysiology Service, Lorena Vega-Zelaya, neurophysiologist and Alfonso Canabal, head of the ICU Service, who analyzed the variations in brain activity of six patients (five women and one man) admitted to the Intensive Care Unit for different diseases and were in a state of unconsciousness induced by sedoanalgesia.
The six patients ranged in age from 53 to 82 years and had been sedated to prevent them from experiencing pain while maintaining their cardiorespiratory function. Their relatives authorized their participation in the study, after which they were exposed to three very different types of music: Mozart’s classical music (Sonata for two pianos in D, K 448), Schönberg’s twelve-tone (Klavierstuck Op. 33a) and the heavy metal of the Danish band Volbeat (The Devil’s Bleeding Crown).
Different types of music as a method of neurorehabilitation
The patients were fitted with headphones through which two-minute fragments of each of the three pieces of music were broadcast at the volume of a normal conversation. The sequencing of the sounds was randomized and different for each one of them, and electroencephalograms (EEG) were used to determine the brain response to stimulation, since they were considered an objective and non-invasive test.
The recorded data revealed that heavy metal stimulation caused the most changes in brain responses, while classical music tended to reduce brain activity. Music is useful for stimulation in disorders of consciousness and this pilot study brings the novelty of incorporating other types of music other than classical music into brain stimulation with music, which seem to induce various responses in the brain, so they could be used in the rehabilitation process.
In fact, heavy metal could be implemented in the neurorehabilitation of patients admitted to the ICU, and the heterogeneity of responses to different types of music could become an effective tool for the rehabilitation of patients. The study has been published in the Journal of Integrative Neuroscience and its findings open a new path to deepen this line by carrying out trials with more patients and in other hospitals.
Source: La Princesa University Hospital
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