Hearing a certain song can transport you to another time and place. Music has always had the unique ability to evoke emotion. And now more and more, music therapy is being used to rehabilitate the sick. 7’s Caterina Bandini has more.
Cooking is Carey Gordon's passion. Just two years ago, he didn't think he'd ever be able to get behind the stove again. Several seizures and a stroke left him unable to walk, with limited motor skills and poor memory.
Carey Gordon says, "Numbness of my entire right side from the top of my head to the bottom of my feet, every thing was down. I couldn't hear properly, I couldn't, I still can't see properly." Now music therapy is helping Carey get his life back.
Assistant Director of Music Therapy at Beth Abraham David Ramsey says, "Because of Carey's brain injury he has problems remembering things. In order to play this keyboard, he has to remember all the buttons, where they go, what they control. He has to remember chord progressions, so there is a multitude of neurological functions in play."
Dr. Steven Sparr from Albert Einstein College of Medicine says, "Music has the ability to sort of unlock patients who have severe dementia. Patients who are unable to speak can suddenly come alive."
Music therapy helps patients like Carey with their motor skills and cognitive abilities like memory.
"Only in the recent years that we have had the scientific tools to begin to see how music is processed in the brain, how music changes the brain," explains Dr. Sparr.
Music can also be a powerful rehabilitation tool helping substance abuse problems, brain injuries, physical disabilities, and acute and chronic pain.
Carey says music therapy has been a miracle for him. He says, "Music therapy works, in my book it works."
(Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
