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| Music helps Parkinson's Patients |
This excerpt from a Los Angeles Times article further confirms the almost miraculous power of music in helping Parkinson's patients to walk with a rhythmic gait.
Movement: If you're old enough, recall John Travolta walking down the street to the song "Stayin' Alive" in the opening scene of "Saturday Night Fever." Now imagine a patient with Parkinson's disease, a degenerative brain condition that affects the initiation and smooth completion of movement. Here's where music's rhythmic qualities appear to get in the back door of a patient's brain and provide a work-around to brain functions degraded by Parkinson's. By engaging the network of regions that perceive and anticipate rhythm, music with a steady, predictable beat can be used to cue the brain's motor regions to initiate walking.
Once off the dime, a Parkinson's patient can use the music's beat to maintain a steady, rhythmic gait, like John Travolta.
"It works well and it works instantaneously, and it's hard to think of any medication that has this effect," Schlaug says.
Neuroscientists suspect that music may work in much the same way for stutterers, who can experience difficulties initiating speech and maintaining a steady flow of words. Case studies have long observed that when stutterers sing, their halting speech patterns disappear. Music's predictable beats may help them initiate speech and continue fluently.
If you are interested in learning more about my Viva La Voice program that uses singing as the basis for helping Parkinson's patients speak clearly and understandably, contact me here.
