Music for Well-Being: Reference List

This is a list of some of the sources I frequently refer to in my writing and presentations. It is not exhaustive. I will keep updating it.

Up-to-Date Comprehensive Resources

• World Health Organization Europe’s endorsement, December 2019.
  • “Engaging with the arts can be beneficial for both mental and physical health. This is a key conclusion of a new report from the WHO Regional Office for Europe analysing the evidence from over 900 global publications – the most comprehensive review of evidence on arts and health to date.”
  • Fact sheet – What is the evidence on the role of the arts in improving health and well-being in the WHO European Region?
  • Report – What is the evidence on the role of the arts in improving health and well-being? A scoping review (2019)
• The Routledge Companion to Music Cognition (2017), edited by Richard Ashley and Renee Timmers
  • A diverse range of global scholars—music theorists, musicologists, pedagogues, neuroscientists, and psychologists—address the implications of music in everyday life while broadening the range of topics in music cognition research, deliberately seeking connections with the kinds of music and musical experiences that are meaningful to the population at large but are often overlooked in the study of music cognition.

Classic Literatures on Music and the Brain

• Music and the Brain: Studies in Neurology and Music (1977) ed. by MACDONALD CRITCHLEY and R.A. HENSON
  • This was the first comprehensive book discussing music from a neuroscientific point of view. I don’t know why, but I owned a copy of the Japanese translation published in 1983. I did not understand the science part as a child in elementary school but read the case studies with great interests. I still have that copy, although just for its sentimental value at this point
• Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain (2007) by Oliver Sachs
  • Music can move us to the heights or depths of emotion. It can persuade us to buy something, or remind us of our first date. It can lift us out of depression when nothing else can. It can get us dancing to its beat. But the power of music goes much, much further. Indeed, music occupies more areas of our brain than language does–humans are a musical species. Oliver Sacks’s compassionate, compelling tales of people struggling to adapt to different neurological conditions have fundamentally changed the way we think of our own brains, and of the human experience. In Musicophilia, he examines the powers of music through the individual experiences of patients, musicians, and everyday people.
• The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature (2008) by Daniel J. Levitin
  • Dr. Levitin identifies six fundamental song functions or types—friendship, joy, comfort, religion, knowledge, and love—then shows how each in its own way has enabled the social bonding necessary for human culture and society to evolve. He shows, in effect, how these “six songs” work in our brains to preserve the emotional history of our lives and species.

Our Sense of Hearing

• We hear faster than we see…
• …because the wiring in our brain for hearing is simpler than the writing for seeing…
• …because our sense of hearing is directly tied to our survival instinct...
• That’s why our sense of hearing is emotional.

The Danger of High Level Noise Exposure (Protect Your Hearing!)

• WHO Initiative “Making Listening Safe” and the Science Behind it.
  • Under the theme “Make Listening Safe”, WHO draws attention to the rising problem of noise-induced hearing loss due to recreational exposure to loud sounds.
  • APA (American Psychological Association) article, citing various studies on the harmful health effects of noise from decreased learning abilities to hart attacks.
  • The stress inducing current sound environment at hospitals with the beeps and alarms of medical equipment.

Health Benefits of Silence

• True Silence Regenerates Brain Cells, Improves Memories (Nature World News, 2016)

Music is Pre-lingual!

• Neanderthals Sang!?
  • The Singing Neanderthals: The Origins of Music, Language, Mind, and Body (2007) by Steven Mithen
• Why Human Babies Have Developed Auditory System and Why Monkey Babies Don’t Cry
  • Various Publications (mostly in Japanese) by Juichi Yamagiwa

Music Aides Our Exercises

• Music in the exercise domain: a review and synthesis (2011)

Music for Preterm Babies: NICU

• A meta-analysis of close to 2000 studies on the subject (2016)
  • Calmer breathing (-3.91/min)
  • Reduced maternal anxiety
  • Improvement in oral feeding (through “Pacifier Activated Lullaby): rate, volume, and frequency)

Hospital-inpatients before and after operations.

• Significant reduction in the use of painkillers.

Dementia (I have a separate entry on Dementia and Music)

• Prevention:
  • Playing a Musical Instrument as a Protective Factor against Dementia and Cognitive Impairment: A Population-Based Twin Study (2014)
    • A study on twins from Sweden: Project HARMONY
  • Musical instrument training program improves verbal memory and neural efficiency in novice older adults (2020)
    • 66 musical novices between the age of 61-85, were divided into two groups. One group received one group lesson per week on a keyboard harmonica, the control group did not. After 16 weeks, the group with lessons indicated significant enhancement verbal memory and neural efficiencies in their fMRI imaging.
• Hearing Loss and Dementia:
  • The analysis covered 2,413 individuals, about half of whom were over 80 and showed a clear association between severity of hearing loss and dementia. Prevalence of dementia among the participants with moderate/severe hearing loss was 61 percent higher than prevalence among participants who had normal hearing. Hearing aid use was associated with a 32 percent lower prevalence of dementia in the 853 participants who had moderate/severe hearing loss. (2023)
    • Related study (2020): A bit of meta-study summary about the  
• Keep your Brain Young with Music (Johns Hopkin’s Article)
• Symphony of Synapsis: The Brain’s Intricate Dance with Music (May 13, 2023 Neuroscience News)

ICU Patients on Mechanical Ventilators

• Reduction in Sedative Exposure = 36%
• Economic savings per patient = $2,322/patient