The Sound Health Network is an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts, in partnership with the University of California, San Francisco, in collaboration with the National Institutes of Health, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and Renée Fleming.
Our mission is to promote research and public awareness about the impact of music on health and wellness. Visit our website here.
SHN Monthly Newsletter
September 2021
Feeling the Beat: How Music Moves Us

Healing Breath: Teaching breathwork to the world

Many of those with long COVID and other respiratory illnesses struggle to regain their full breathing capacity long after their other symptoms have subsided. As thousands around the world struggle with this new normal, soprano Renée Fleming and other vocalists and music therapists (including SHN Communications Director, Dr. Indre Viskontas) partnered with Google Arts and Culture to create Healing Breath.
"As singers, most of us have our trusted breathing exercises that we have used for years to build our voices," Renée explains. She and other renowned vocalists lead viewers through a series of breathwork exercises, from calming music therapy sessions to breath control with an opera singer.

You don't have to be ill to benefit from these exercises—learning breathing techniques like these can simply be a quick, re-centering break in the middle of your busy day.
In Conversation
Featuring Susan Weber and Dance for PD
Stiffness, tremors, shaking: these are the symptoms that come to mind when most of us think of Parkinson’s disease (PD). But the presenting symptoms - and those that most significantly affect quality of life - involve voluntary movement. Getting out of bed, starting to walk, or turning around - actions that most of us don't even think about, begin to demand intense effort and focus.
 
But at a Berkeley Ballet Theater class, people affected by PD are dancing with smooth, gliding steps and moving their arms to the beat with a fluidity that eludes them in their everyday lives. This is Dance for PD, a program developed in Brooklyn by the Mark Morris Dance Group in 2001. Susan Weber, Director of Berkeley Ballet Theater’s Dance for PD program, was one of the first dance instructors to take it outside of NYC.
 
Dr. Indre Viskontas, SHN’s Communications Director, interviewed Susan in an episode of Cadence, her podcast about music and the mind. “I was kind of sensitized because my dad had Parkinson’s disease,” Susan tells Indre. “Some classes are based on ballroom dance, or ballet, or modern or creative movement, or tap, or flamenco. And there are just a lot of different ways that it can go.”
Classes often begin with students and teachers seated in chairs for warmups. Afterwards, Susan invites participants to join however they feel comfortable, standing or seated—it’s open to all ability levels. One of Susan’s students describes meeting a woman there who could only move one hand, but kept coming to every single class, without fail.
 
“I have seen people who may be frozen—freezing is one of the symptoms where people really have trouble beginning to move at all, they can also have the opposite problem of having a hard time stopping, or particular movements can be difficult,” Susan says. “And sometimes those various difficulties actually go away with the addition of music and or choreography.”
So what’s going on in the PD patient’s brain when they are in dance class? Dr. Jessica Grahn is a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Western Ontario who studies music-based interventions as part of the treatment for PD. She tells Indre that physical therapists have long known that their patients respond to a steady beat when trying to walk—and this seems to apply to patients with PD as well. “One thing that rhythm and steady senses of pulse seem to do is unlock these patients and mitigate that freezing behavior so that they can carry on moving as normal,” she says.
Another possible benefit from the dance classes comes from the increases in dopamine that we get when listening to music and engaging in enjoyable social activities.
 
“Their appearance changes. The way people come into the room... it will be a little more labored, a little less fluid, and just a little gray,” Susan says. “And then after an hour and fifteen-minute class, they're walking with more security and confidence, their cheeks are pink. They're smiling, and everything seems easier. Lighter.”
 
Learn more about Dr. Grahn’s research and how music is helping people living with Parkinson’s disease in our webinar on September 8th, 2021, 12pm PT/3pm ET: Feeling the Beat: Syncing Up with Music, featuring Dr. Jessica Grahn, and Dr. Michael Thaut, a Professor of Music and Rehabilitation Science and Neuroscience at the University of Toronto. This event is free and will be streamed live on YouTube here. Mark your calendars!

Photos courtesy of Berkeley Ballet Theater
Research Spotlight: Music Therapies for People Living with Neurological Disorders

This paper provides a review of behavioral and neuroimaging studies in musicians, non-musicians, and clinical populations relating to executive function and attention processes, including neurologic music therapy (NMT).

This systematic review of 56 studies published between 1989 and 2020 assessed the potential benefit of all active group-based performing arts interventions in Parkinson's disease. The interventions can be grouped into four main categories: dance, singing, music therapy and theater. While the authors do not draw comparisons between these modalities, study results indicate there is evidence of beneficial effects from all of these group-based arts interventions.

While many studies have established the benefits of rhythm-based interventions in the treatment of Parkinson's disease, this study takes a novel approach by looking at the musical background of the patients in these interventions. In short, this study asks: Could a patient's existing musical abilities impact rhythm-based interventions, for better or for worse?

Levitin, Grahn and London, 2018, The Psychology of Music: Rhythm and Movement
How and why does music literally move us? Unlike the visual arts, music is manifest across time, and its temporal qualities like beat, tempo, and rhythmic patterns have the power to immerse and transport listeners. This article reviews studies that address rhythm, meter, movement, synchronization, entrainment, the perception of groove, and other temporal factors.

When people say that music, broadly, is therapeutic, what exactly does that mean? This paper proposes the Therapeutic Music Capacities Model, which links seven properties of music (engaging, emotional, physical, personal, social and persuasive, and promoting synchronization of movement) to therapeutic mechanisms and their benefits. This provides a framework for non-pharmaceutical treatments for neurological disorders.

In Parkinson's disease, defective internal timing affects both the ability to process beats in a rhythm and maintain a steady gait—metronomes have proven to help, but could singing? This single session study compared the gait patterns of individuals with PD under five cued conditions (uncued, music only, singing only, singing with music, and a verbal dual-task condition) and found that their walking was less variable when singing.
Related Conferences and Events

October 14 - October 17, 2021
Job Opportunities


Research Engineer/Neuroscientist Technician, LIVELab, McMaster Institute for Music and the Mind

Postdoctoral Positions, LIVELab, McMaster Institute for Music and the Mind


Postdoctoral Scholar, University of California, Irvine

PostDoc Position, Acoustic Research Institute (ARI) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences



Tenure-Track Assistant Professor in Neuroscience, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Graduate and post-doctoral research, University of Rochester: The following labs are interested in taking graduate and postdoctoral students. All PhD applications are through the associated departments, but prospective students are encouraged to contact the lab head if they are interested in working in that group.
Funding Opportunities


NEA Research Labs funds transdisciplinary research teams grounded in the social and behavioral sciences, yielding empirical insights about the arts for the benefit of arts and non-arts sectors alike.

Over the next five years, Creative Forces®: National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Military Healing Arts Network intends to provide $2.5 million in new research funding.

NEA Research Grants in the Arts funds research studies that investigate the value and/or impact of the arts, either as individual components of the U.S. arts ecology or as they interact with each other and/or with other domains of American life.

This funding opportunity is intended to: (1) increase our understanding of how music affects the brain when it is used therapeutically and/or (2) use that knowledge to better develop evidence-based music interventions to enhance health or treat specific diseases and disorders.

This funding opportunity is intended to: (1) increase our understanding of how music affects the brain when it is used therapeutically and/or (2) use that knowledge to better develop evidence-based music interventions to enhance health or treat specific diseases and disorders.

The purpose of this FOA is to promote innovative research on music and health with an emphasis on developing music interventions aimed at understanding their mechanisms of action and clinical applications for the treatment of many diseases, disorders, and conditions.