Music is constantly surrounding us. Sometimes, all you need
is a happy tune to brighten your mood. Whenever I’m down, I find myself
singing, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” by Bobby McFerrin, and it is all the
reassurance I need to make it though the day. For city-goers, music is a must.
Without music, there would be no other way to tune out the obnoxious person
sitting next to you on the el. Still, others find the only way to get through
writing a paper is to jam out to the XX, Ray Charles, or Mozart. However, for
kids with Autism and other learning disabilities, music takes on a much deeper
meaning.
Kids today who suffer from autism and various autism
spectrum disorders (ASD) are turning to music to help them grasp concepts that
otherwise would be very challenging for them to understand. These disorders are
often characterized by difficulty with speech or delayed speech in a young
child, as well as impaired social interaction. They have trouble understanding
social cues, and lack empathy (NINDS 1). Music therapy helps children reach
academic standards by coupling rhythm and motion and by engaging multiple
regions of the brain to understand a particular concept. Gary Marcus outlines
these phenomena in his book, Guitar Zero:
The New Musician and the Science of Learning.
A recent article by Ronna Kaplan in the Huffington post
called “Music Therapy in Early Childhood Classrooms”, describes what a music
therapy session would look like for children with autism and ASD. One of the
things the music therapist focuses on is helping children with speech and
language delays. The therapist will help children recognize rhymes in songs and
words by having the child sing a song while beating on a hand drum at the same
time. Teachers reported that students would refer to these songs throughout
their day and saw a noticeable improvement in their cognitive skills (Kaplan 1). Gary
Marcus suggests in Guitar Zero that the
reason this technique is so effective is that the neural architect of the brain
“seeks links between different types of sensory information, such as sound and
motion”(30). He talks about a study performed by developmental psychologist
Laurel Trainor who found that babies pay more attention to rhythmic patterns
when the pattern is associated with bouncing than when it is not associated
with bouncing. He argues that no matter what the stimulus, babies like it when
information in any two senses goes together. This is often referred to as
cross-modal matching (Marcus 30-31). This explains why it might be easier for a
child to remember certain patterns or rhymes in words when singing and playing
a drum. The child is creating a stronger association of that rhyme by engaging two
different regions of the brain, perhaps the prefrontal cortex and the premotor
cortex. Hebbian learning is another way of understanding this phenomenon. When
neurons fire together they wire together. While engaging the brain across
various sensory domains, the child is creating a stronger association between
neurons and therefore a stronger association with the concept.
Another thing music therapists focus on with children who
have ASD is expressing emotion. Music therapists use music to help children act
out certain emotions. For instance, the therapist will beat loudly on a drum
while saying, “I am mad!” or shake a maraca and say, “Look! I am happy!” This
helps the children associate the sound of music with a particular emotion.
Marcus argues that music engages various parts of the brain that aren’t
specific to music but have other functions as well. In this example, music is
engaging the amygdala, which helps with the perception of musical emotion.
However, the amygdala is also involved in many other cognitive abilities not
related to music like fear, anxiety, and lust (Marcus 32). The amygdala can
evoke these emotions in children while listening to music and therefore help
children better express emotion.
Music therapy for children with autism and ASD is not just a
fun activity, but also a serious component in their development. Without music,
associations between concepts would be harder for these children to grasp and
they would fall even more behind the average child. Gary Marcus, in his book Guitar Zero, outlines the brain’s
mechanisms for various types of learning and suggests reasons to why music is
so effective for children with these disorders. So, the next time you’re riding
the el and tuning out the world you might think a little harder about the
deeper implications that music can have for people.
http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/autism/detail_autism.htm
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