Concetta Tomaino and the Healing Power of Music

Congratulations to Disruptive Women in Health Care Dr. Concetta Tomaino who continues to show us the power of music to heal. The following post by Deborah Harkins first appeared in Women’s Voices for Change on July 11, 2016.
Concetta Tomaino with her late colleague Dr. Oliver Sacks, to whom Dustin Hoffman presented the Music Has Power award in 2006.
Music! We know it can stimulate, excite, soothe, transport . . . . indeed, it sometimes sparks emotion so pleasurable that it actually sends chills down the spine. (Like sex, cocaine other abused drugs, and food, music triggers the area of the brain that releases dopamine, a neurotransmitter associated with feelings of pleasure and reward.)
But who knew that music has the power to help stimulate the memory of patients with Alzheimer’s disease; help Parkinson’s patients learn to walk again; help restore speech to a patient who has had a stroke; help a child with autism learn to socialize and speak for the first time; reduce blood pressure; and reduce severe anxiety in pre- and post-surgery patients?
Back in 1978, when Concetta Tomaino was doing her clinical internship as a music therapist at a nursing home in Brooklyn, practically no scientist was doing evidence-based research on using music to heal. She would be one of the first.
“At the time, all that people thought about music therapy was that it could be used to engage people, to help them socialize,” she says. “I was working with people with end-stage Alzheimer�...

Source: Disruptive Women in Health Care - July 11, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: dw at disruptivewomen.net Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs