January 2, 2006
“I've Got a Pocket Full of Dreams”
Serendipity is a wonderful thing. As I sat to write this piece, streaming in on my laptop was the Louis Armstrong song with the above title. How apropos…
…because I was enamored with a piece in the Wall Street Journal on December 29 by Nat Hentoff entitled, “The Healing Power of Jazz”. It seems that in 1969, one Louis Armstrong decided to “give back” by initiating the Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation.
Anyone who has ever lifted a trumpet to their lips or has listened to the output knows the incredible talent and creativity that Mr. Armstrong gifted upon us. But there was one more gift…an important insight…that fits with our current obsession to understand how our brains work.
Knowing music could be the path to understand the neurological power that occurs with the integration of reason and passion.
Music holds a special place, like speech, in human cognitive function. And somehow music expresses and touches our combined intellects of reason and passion. Though we “compose” it, and “play it”, and “hear” it, we also “feel” it. Music can be quite powerful for reasons that are little understood. Does music have the power to “heal”?? How?? Is it science?? Not yet. It is observational. But quite interesting.
On the education front the article reports: “Among projects, including the Louis Armstrong Public School Jazz Outreach Program in New Orleans, the nonprofit foundation has added to his huge role in the shaping of jazz history a significant contribution to the history of medical music therapy in hospitals and other care centers.”
The idea of the therapeutic application of music continued to develop. “Several times, Armstrong had been a patient at Beth Israel Hospital in New York, where he became very impressed with the medical staff, and decided to provide funds that would be devoted to music therapy for children -- a field in which he'd had some experience, have years before, for instance, provided recordings of a wide range of music to help create a more relaxed ambience as children were being born in a New Orleans hospital.”
I guess Satchmo had some idea of the power of what he produced even if he didn't know how it worked.
So where has Beth Israel taken the program? It is impressive: “For more than 10 years, at Beth Israel, the Louis and Lucille Armstrong Music Therapy Program -- under the direction of Dr. Joanne Loewy, internationally known for this work -- has supported research and clinical music therapy for infants, children and families at the hospital, and for outpatients, and patients with HIV.”
“The program has been enlarged to include the hospital's nationally recognized Department of Pain Medicine and Palliative Care, its intensive care units and the neonatal intensive care unit -- an addition that would have greatly pleased the large-hearted funder of these advances in the healing power of music.”
“Last month there was a ribbon-cutting at Beth Israel to further expand the founding program by Armstrong and his wife by adding the new Louis Armstrong Center for Music and Medicine. Its focus will be on medical treatment for children and adults with asthma and chronic pulmonary disease (COPD).”
At the moment, most of what is being done is empirical and testing hypotheses, as no comprehensive integrated theory yet exists to explain the potential benefits of music “therapy”. But as both an old hack with a horn and a an old hack with a lot of experience treating asthmatics and COPD, the use of the breathing techniques required to play a horn to train patients with breathing disorders is interesting and biologically plausible for sure.
The current ideas with music therapy were summarized by its Director, Dr. Joanne Loewy: “In an article in the March Medical Herald about her work at Beth Israel, she says, for one example: "Rhythm is the first area that helps us understand the logic of medical music therapy, because the heartbeat is the first thing that a doctor looks at to assess the physical parameters of the body. If we can look into the rhythm and look at the effect of rhythm in terms of healing, that kind of work is very important, especially in diseases such as Parkinson's where you're looking to improve gait control...”
"Once I begin to use music," she continues, "people see results...Parents see their children start to sing when they can't talk. The same thing with stroke. We know that music combines right brain and left brain. So, we just see the results of music therapy" there too.”
As observational results become available and the desire to understand the basis of all function neurological, perhaps neural science will lead to our understanding of the integrated functions of Reason and Passion through Music.
Mr. Armstrong's gifts to us continue thanks to recording devices and his own generosity, understanding, vision, and will to act. His pockets were full of dreams, thankfully.
Robert B. Teague is a pulmonologist and business consultant who is based in Houston, Texas. E-mail him.
Read other blogs in this series.
