Thomas Budzynski, an affiliate professor of psychology at the University of Washington, conducted similar experiments with a small group of underachieving college students at Western Washington University. He found that rhythmic light
and sound therapy helped students achieve a significant improvement in their grades.

Budzynski also found that rhythmic therapy could improve cognitive functioning in some elderly people by increasing blood flow throughout the brain. “The brain tends to groove on novel stimuli,” Budzynski explained. “When a novel stimulus is applied to the brain, the brain lights up and cerebral blood flow increases.” To maintain the high blood flow, Budzynski used a random alternation of rhythmic lights and sounds to stimulate the brains of elderly people. The result: Many of the seniors improved performance on an array of cognitive tests.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that this increased blood flow also could help victims of brain damage regain cognitive function. Russell used brainwave entrainment to help his wife recover from a severe stroke. “One day she told me the fog went away,” he said.

Neuroscientists caution that there is still a great deal to learn. “While these things are intriguing, we haven’t worked out the perceptual pathways in the brain for processing hearing as well as we have for visual and sensory perception,” said David Spiegel, the Jack, Samuel and Lulu Willson Professor in Medicine at Stanford. “Figuring out this entrainment is complicated by the fact that we need to learn more in general about how the brain processes auditory stimuli.”

Most music combines many different frequencies that cause a complex set of reactions in the brain, but researchers say specific pieces of music could enhance concentration or promote relaxation. “If we can get some reliable evidence from  neuroscientists that music therapy works, music is cheap and nearly anybody can get access to it,” Russell said.

Brainwave entrainment research is still in its infancy, but advocates hope that it may prove a cheap, safe and effective way to treat a variety of neurological disorders from depression to ADD and even prove invaluable in repairing brain damage.

We may be sitting on one of the most widely available and cost effective
therapeutic modalities that ever existed,” Turow said. “Systematically,
this could be like taking a pill. Listening to music seems to be able to change
brain functioning to the same extent as medication, in many circumstances.

Jonathan Berger, chair of the Stanford Department of Music, said he was thrilled with the free flow of ideas at the symposium. “There was no question by the end of the day that this symposium is going to become a regular feature at Stanford,” he said. “I’m pretty confident that this will lead to a new research lab here.” Berger also plans to produce a book based on the research presented at the symposium.

So there you have it. All that meeting and talking and in the end, they came to the same conclusion that the rest of us came to a while ago. Music is good for you, music with a beat inspires you, but most of all, singing lets you be you. Hold that thought, I will come back to it again….. a lot!

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