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MELODIES AND MEMORIES
The good things music does for aging brains.
The impact of music on the mind and body demonstrates how much of our makeup as human beings is based on rhythm, resonance, and perception, all of which connect us in a fundamental way to who we are. “Everything in the world is a vibration of some kind,” says Dr. Concetta Tomaino, Executive Director of the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function. “Music is an extension of who we are, and that’s why it helps us reach people who seem to be disconnected because of illness or a traumatic brain injury.” Tomaino spent decades as a music therapist, pursuing evidence based research around music and the brain before volumes of such literature existed. In 1980, she began working at Beth Abraham Hospital (now Beth Abraham Center) in the Bronx, New York, where she first met the consulting neurologist Oliver Sacks. By then Sacks had already written Awakenings, an autobiographical book (and later a movie) about a group of encephalitis lethargica patients frozen in trancelike states, whom he “awakened” using a new drug, along with music.
