1. Undergraduate Thesis
Music For a Lifetime
Hayden Wise
University of Oregon
“The power of art is that it can connect us to one another, and to larger truths about what it
means to be alive and what it means to be human.”
Daniel Levitin

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Hello
Hi
What’s your name?
Casey, what’s yours?
Ben…so what kind of music do you listen to?
Introduction
Many of us have had this conversation before. The interesting thing about this general
conversation starter is that “Casey” and “Ben” could be anywhere from 10-100 years old. Music
is an emotional cohesion that can create the foundation for any relationship. There are many
theories to why music exists, but many theories suggest that as a species we look for ways to
connect because it is important to our well-being and happiness. Though not only does it fulfill
this social cohesion through emotional connection, music has the ability to enhance development
in so many ways. Starting in the womb there is preliminary research that indicates music as a
developmental tool that can increase language and cognitive skills. Prenatal development is a
controversial topic that I will discuss further.
As we begin to develop, music can create a warm environment that promotes learning
and attention. For most children, music is an incredible developmental tool that many preschools
and daycares around the United States have implemented in their weekly program. Research
indicates that continuous exposure to music can increase cognitive performance on things such
as reading and language in infants. As we hit puberty and grow into our 20’s, we develop a taste
in music that I will delve into. Each of us has a unique taste in music that coincides with our
personality and personal background. The foundation of most of our musical taste lies in our

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parents’ taste. The roots of my taste in music lie in the Rock and Roll that my parents played.
But as I grew up and went to college, my taste in music seemed to change. I still have a love for
Rock and Roll, but different genres of music began to intrigue me. I am going to look into how
the idea of nature vs. nurture influences our developing taste in music.
As we grow older, music becomes something that transports us to a younger place. This
warm nostalgia is important for a lot of people because it promotes a healthy social, and
emotional environment (similar to developing infants). Nursing homes across America
implement a music program for their members because of the clear benefits that it brings.
“Abundant research shows that moving from age-appropriate music to person-appropriate music
can make a significant difference in a resident’s quality of life. Nursing homes are able to use
person-centered music to significantly reduce resident agitation, depression and anxiety, while
improving cooperation and attentiveness,” (“Music for Nursing Homes”). Music can heal us
during the bad times by bringing us back to good times. A certified music therapist said that
“research shows that we engage best with music we enjoyed from age 15 to 30, which is the time
of life associated with major events such as education, marriage and parenthood,” (Kimmel
2012). Music therapy can give nursing home patients, with or without a disorder, a sense of
independence and warmth again. Being locked in a nursing home can lead to depression and
anxiety in many people. I am going to show how music brings this warmth to people with
disorders like Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s.
Music therapy is used by all of us to create some type of emotional environment, whether
it is to prepare, forget, connect, or create. Music is used every day for all of these things, and I
believe that it needs to be more utilized in developmental and rehabilitating situations. The goal
of this paper is to go through different stages of life and look at how music can positively

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influence us in ways that are too rarely looked at. Unfortunately, the empirical evidence that
music therapy is useful is limited. Because music is so difficult to generalize, it is difficult to
create solid research. Michael Silverman says that even music therapists would say that music
therapy, at this point, “can be an effective additive treatment…however, future research is
certainly warranted…we are not sure why music therapy works or if certain types of music
therapy are superior to others.” Thus it is important to take the following research with a grain
of salt, but I think that music can be a natural tool for development and we too often take it for
granted.
Influences on Pre-natal development
There is a lot of controversy around if music is a helpful tool for development in the
womb. I am going to cover the preliminary research that explains why it can be useful and the
research on how it can even harm a fetus. As we study the development of a baby inside the
womb, we look a many different ways that we could facilitate their growing needs. This is an
incredibly important field of study because it can open up opportunities for more positive
influences on things like nutrition, emotional and physical development as well as maternal care.
Aside from the obvious teratogens like tobacco and alcohol (that weren’t so obvious not too long
ago), there are a large number of factors that go into how a healthy baby is delivered.
“…consistent attention to diet, weight, fitness, and stress [are] controllable factors that contribute
to cardiovascular disease, adult-onset diabetes, and cancer,” (Berk 2012). Prenatal development
is incredibly important to a child’s later health and wellness so it is important that every possible
influence be looked in to. Music has generally been widely accepted as a learning tool for
prenatal development. Playing classical music, for example has been widely assumed to make a
child smarter before they are even born. This is often exaggerated and the research indicates

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that the benefits aren’t that clear-cut. “Exaggerated and even false claims that listening to
Mozart's music will augment intelligence have become so prevalent that the truth of the matter
has become hopelessly obscured,” (Anderson 2000).
At 17 weeks old, a baby begins to hear with their developing ears. At 26 weeks, a baby’s
heart rate will increase in response to music and general sounds. And, “at 33 weeks gestation,
babies have been observed breathing in time to music, indicating an awareness of the beat. By 38
weeks, a baby in the womb reacts differently to various types of music, showing different rates
of fetal movement,” (Coila 2015). Research indicates that music (in most cases) is generally
beneficial for a developing fetus as they experience their new senses and growth in the womb,
although the common assumption that music makes a developing fetus smarter is mostly false.
There are many studies that show exposure to music and musical instruments can make
developing infants smarter in many ways. For example, “Flohr et al. (2000) provided music
training for 25 minutes for 7 weeks for children aged 4-6 and compared measured brain activity
with controls. Those children who had received musical training produced EEG frequencies
associated with increased cognitive processing.” (Hallam 2010). Most of the studies of the
benefits of music and musical training are done with infants and older children. For obvious
reasons, it is more difficult to study pre-natal development.
Research has neither proved nor disproved the so-called “Mozart Effect.” Many
scientists continue to believe that it is a myth, but many don’t exclude the power of music as a
developmental tool. At birth we have a good grasp of most of our senses, with blurred vision
being the least developed of the five. The sense of hearing is developed to the point where they
can habituate to recurring sounds, recognize their mothers voice, and are stimulated by novel
sounds (Berk 2012). All these have been shown through an increased/steady heart rate and brain

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wave response when stimulated by these sounds. A study had mothers play “Twinkle twinkle
little star” in their last trimester of pregnancy. A control group with no pre-natal exposure was
used. At four months old, these infants were played the same song with some minor changes in
melody (shown in figure 1 below). Results showed that “both at birth and at the age of 4 months,
infants in the learning group had stronger ERPs to the unchanged notes than the control group,”
(Partanen et al.).
Figure 1
Studies like these haven’t produced any clear indication that pre-natal music significantly
enhances development, but the fact that a child can recognize music heard in the womb shows
signs of early memory. Memory is key in early cognitive development because it can increase
neuron connections in the brain. The brain will eventually decide to cut some of these
connections (synapses), and if they are exposed to music early on it may help with later
development of similar skills such as language. My theory is that this music recognition is a sign
that exposure to music can create connections in the brain that are mylenated (instead of cut
during synaptic pruning) if exposure is continued after birth. These reinforced connections
might allow for certain developments to be easier such as language processing and math. “The
developing child’s constantly changing capacities and experiences…can override the impact of
fetal stimulation,” (Berk 2010). More research needs to be done on pre-natal development to

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further uncover any long-term and more significant benefits of music, but the foundational
research shows some correlation with music and memory during prenatal development.
Infant Development
“Humans are born creative, and early childhood practitioners, parents and caregivers
have a responsibility to nurture this important aspect of our make-up,” (Pound 2003). Music is
an important learning tool during early development because it can coincide with other
developments such as language (speech and reading), social networking, creativity and more.
(Hallam, 2010). “Above all, it is used by babies and care(givers) to create situations which are
characterized by fun, happiness, playfulness – all of which make learning more likely to
happen,” (Pound 2003). Music is a way to instill positive focus on infants in order to promote
learning. Not only does music development coincide with other developments, it also creates a
positive, warm environment that infants are excited to learn in.
For this section of my paper, I will be observing the differences in rhythm and movement
between 1-3 year old children and pre-school aged (4-5 years old) children while music is being
played. I will look at their abilities in rhythm, movement, and in some cases singing. Other
factors that I will be looking for is musical preference, focus, social movement, imitation, and
gender differences. My goal is to look for some indications that coincide with child
developmental research. I predict that the pre-school aged children will show more adept motor
skills and rhythm control than the younger children. I also suspect that the younger children will
focus more on imitation rather than rhythm and pitch accuracy. That is they will look to copy
the musician or their peers around them. The increased musical ability in the pre-school children
is important to look out for because it coincides with their motor skills, language ability and their
ability to maintain positive focus (Hallam, 2010).

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I observed preschool-aged children (4-5 years old) at the Vivian Olum daycare center,
and younger children at the Eugene Public Library. Since the attendance at the library was less
organized, I am not exactly sure what ages I was observing, but they all seemed to be younger
than the preschool aged children that I previously observed at the daycare center. I am going to
categorize them as 1-3 year olds for the purpose of my observation discrepancies. All of my
subjects except for two were Caucasian (one African-American child and one Indian child). The
gender difference seemed to be split down the middle. All of the subjects (with some exceptions
at the library) seemed of middle SES families. The family music time that I attended at the
library was a free event, while the daycare center requires parents to pay for their children to be
there. It is safe to assume that the children at the daycare were of middle SES families, while the
library was again less predictable. The daycare center consisted of about 10 children of the same
age, without their parents. The library event consisted of about 15-18 children, all of whom were
with their parent(s) or caregiver sitting with them. There were mostly children with no siblings,
but there were a couple children with their older siblings (about 7-8 years old) present. The
parents’ (or caregivers’) ages varied greatly (30-60 years).
The daycare center was a very organized setting with time sensitive activities that the
children regularly participated in. I was able to watch these children who had participated in this
activity before. I arrived during their outside time and watched them become curious about me,
but they never came up to me. I saw them get excited after hearing that the music teacher was
coming. This prompted them to clean up and get in a circle in the classroom where they had to
stay still and focus on the music teacher. In the classroom I sat in the back. At the Eugene
library, the family music time was held in an empty conference room. The room was fairly large
and the parents sat in the middle with their kids. As expected, this space wasn’t as organized as

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the daycare center and the parents were staggered all around the floor in front of the piano where
the singer played. I sat in the corner of the conference room where nobody noticed me as I
observed.
For both locations, I sat in the back of the room and observed the children while they
interacted with their parents and the lead musician. I arrived just before the “music time” started
in each session and observed how the children and caregivers prepared for the music. During the
session, I mostly observed how they responded to the musical stimuli in terms of movement. I
paid attention to their abilities in rhythm stability and general musicality. I also tried to read
their emotional response to the music. At the library, the children’s emotional response was
difficult to read because of their distractibility. I observed their ability to stay on task and listen
with all of these distractions. I paid attention to what they tended to focus on during each song as
this focus could indicate preference. After music time was over I made sure to talk with the
musicians about their experience with children’s music and get their insight on some of the
children’s behaviors.
Observation 1
I arrived at the daycare center a bit early so I observed the children playing outside for
about 5 minutes before they had to clean up and get ready for “circle time.” When this was
announced, the children seemed excited about seeing “Jamie” because she was the one who
played the music. A couple of kids were curious about me, but none ever approached me. After
they cleaned up, they were allowed inside where they sat in a circle on top of their nametags.
They all seemed very focused on the music teacher when she arrived. They all seemed to
want to tell her stories and things that had happened to them (“my dress is new,” etc.). I believe
they hadn’t seen her in a couple weeks. Before the teacher brought out the auto harp, they did

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some clapping and hitting their legs. All of them seemed to be simply copying the teacher and
they were not in sync with each other. When the teacher brought out the auto harp, the kids
became more excited. The teacher reminded them of the auto harp and they all remembered it.
She strummed it and it sounded out of tune. Some of the children even noticed this and covered
their ears. There was another auto harp sitting next to her and she strummed the strings of each
one and asked the kids if they noticed a difference. They all seemed to notice the difference
between the two sounds. Once she started to play chords, a lot of them started to sway along to
the music.
She played songs that they had heard before so most of them knew and remembered the
words (which I thought was surprising). Their singing and swaying rhythm was more accurate
when the auto harp was being played. She played two or three songs and they all had repeating
choruses with goofy stories in between them. The stories weren’t sung, but when the chorus
came the children all sung along with her. As I was sitting in the back I noticed that a couple of
the children were having trouble focusing on the music. Their singing and attention would go in
and out and most of their attention was spent on the other children. Some of them were curious
about me as well and would turn to look at me for a quick second.
After “circle time” they were dismissed for lunch and I spoke with the teacher for a little
about the children’s previous behaviors and their affinity to the songs she had played. She said
she rarely brings in new songs because they loved those ones so much.
Observation 2
The Eugene Public Library holds “family music time” every Saturday at 10:15 for
around 30-45 minutes. I arrived a bit early so that I could observe the children and caregivers
getting prepared to sit, stand, and dance. Due to the unpredictability of the age range, I made

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sure to take note of this while they arrived. Overall, I noticed that the age range was younger
than I expected in that they were all younger than pre-school. Since I had observed pre-school
aged children before, I used this knowledge to assume the general age of the children. I put the
majority of the age group at 1-4 years old.
The musical guest started to play and the children got excited. There were a lot of hand
movements involved in the songs and that allowed me to observe the children’s motor skills.
The children seemed to be able to clap to the music, however they were mostly imitating these
motions instead of using a rhythm and not many of them were singing. The younger children
tended to look towards their parents singing and hand signaling. The parents who were more
involved with the music (singing and clapping) seemed to have more focused children (due to
joint attention). The room (and the event itself) seemed very unorganized as everyone sat on the
floor, which led to distractibility. Many of the children lost focus on the music and became
focused on their environment. The most interesting part of the event was when the teacher
handed out two sticks to each child so that they could play some rhythms. The children were
very excited about this and eager to participate and once they received the wooden sticks, they
knew what to do with them (as directed by the teacher). They all struggled to find a rhythm and
they seemed to be imitating the movements of the teacher.
Overall, the music was very repetitive and simple (as expected) and most were songs that
the children had heard before (e.g. “Old McDonald Had a Farm,” “Wheels on the Bus,” etc.). By
the end of music time, hardly and child was paying attention to the music. They seemed happy,
but more focused on exploring and their caregivers. After music time was over, I spoke with the
music teacher and asked for her insight. A big concept that was important was the fact that the
songs were repetitive.

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Summary of Conclusion and Discussion
As expected, the preschool children showed more development in general musical
abilities such as rhythm and singing. They also showed a significant amount of focus during
their “music time.” This could be influenced by a number of things including environment,
regularity, and age. After the library event, I spoke with the musician and we discussed the
importance of a consistent schedule and musician. Every week, the library has a different
musician come in and play. This lack of consistency isn’t beneficial to the children. Exposure to
music is going to have an impact either way, but the children at the daycare center proved to
have a higher attention span and a more impactful experience with their music teacher based on
their increased focus toward the teacher and positive emotional response. Their relationship with
the music teacher is based entirely on regularity and this helps build connections in the brain that
can be used in other aspects of life. “As individuals engage with different musical activities over
long periods of time permanent changes occur in the brain. These changes reflect what has been
learned and how it has been learned. They will also influence the extent to which developed
skills are able to transfer to other activities,” (Hallam, 2010). As these infants learn new things,
their brain creates connections and myelinates those synapses. During preschool years, the brain
has overproduced these connections and begins the process of synaptic pruning. During this
time the areas such as the hippocampus create certain connections through memory and
regularity. The important connections get strengthened while unused connections get cut. (Berk,
2012) The daycare center provided a consistent, organized environment through which a routine
was created. This allowed the students to strengthen previous knowledge through their
relationship with the music teacher. The music teacher listened to the kids and played the songs
that they wanted to hear. She told me that she rarely introduces new pieces because of the kids’

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affinity towards the songs she plays. They all remember the words and the funny stories from
each song. They have clear musical preference for these songs based on a positive emotional
response.
The pre-school aged children also showed clear signs of rhythm control through their
swaying back and forth. This is something that I did not notice in the younger children, but
noticed in just about every child at the daycare center. This has to due with their motor control.
An example that I noticed at the library was a child who was handed two sticks to play as a
rhythm instrument (by hitting them together). He would occasionally hit them together, but was
more focused on waving them around and even dropping them and picking them back up. This
shows a clear difference in motor control between ages. “Children’s music-making ability is
limited by their levels of motor control,” (Pound 2003).
The songs that were played were filled with a lot of repeating choruses and melodies.
This repetition can help create schemes for children to predict. Children use imitation and
repetition to try and apply what they know in order to reproduce the behavior and apply it to
everyday life. These are called scripts (Beck 2012). Children use scripts in order to predict
future events. These scripts allow for better story recall and memory in general. Repetition in
song is a memory strategy that can allow children to create these scripts. As the children get
more familiar with the song, they can begin to apply the scripts to other songs and even other
aspects of life. It is important to note that the children cannot create these scripts without the
help of the music teacher. The music teacher uses guided participation and scaffolding to help
develop these musical abilities. This is a concept that is most efficiently used in the daycare
center. The children create an emotional bond with their music teacher that wasn’t found at the
library event. This emotional bond allows the teacher to more appropriately scaffold the learning

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based on consistency and positive relationships (Beck 2012). The musician at the library event
used their time well enough, but the lack of emotional connection didn’t allow for efficient
learning.
Research has shown that musical engagement can promote learning. Through repetition
and imitation, children can create positive emotional relationships based on learning. This
consistency was clearly shown at the daycare center and the observations supported that the
children had benefited from this. Their increased motor skills with respect to rhythm and
attention supported my prediction that an organized environment can lead to more healthy
learning. I think that these connections and results can help bring music to schools around the
country that don’t believe in its ability to teach. “…as we engage with different musical
activities, skills in these areas may then transfer to other activities if the processes are similar,”
(Hallam 2010). Even 30 minutes of consistent musical training can help enhance language skills,
reading comprehension, and even social development.
Adolescence and Music Taste
“In contemporary society, interest in music also peaks during adolescence…” (Levitin).
It seems that as we grow through our teenage years, we develop a strong liking to a certain type
of music; to some, rock and roll is and forever will be the greatest invention ever created. Music
discriminates people, though, because to others rock and roll is simply loud noise with no
meaning. Some answers to this may come from looking at the idea of nature vs. nurture. I think
the simplest answer that most people can wrap their heads around is that we listen to music based
on our environment. It seems that we can safely say that we are largely influenced by what our
parents and friends listen to. The deeper question of taste has to do with comparing it as innately
originated and/or an acquired development. Are we more predisposed to like Beethoven no

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matter what? Does our brain identify with the musical structure of classical music as opposed to
the loud, less structured rock and roll? Another point that this section will attempt to cover is the
lifetime of our musical taste. As we grow passed our teenage years does our musical taste
generally shift? This section delves into the science and research behind our brain’s
development of musical taste.
In order to identify the reasoning behind our musical tastes, it is important to go back to
childhood development. In the book This is Your Brain on Music by Daniel Levitin, he discusses
a musical experiment done on unborn babies. Interestingly enough, he further uncovers that
music depends on exposure and that we are more predisposed to prefer what we have heard
before from our parents, friends, etc. In this experiment, Dr. Alexandra Lamont from Keele
University in the UK has mothers in their last three months of pregnancy play a piece of music to
their babies on a regular basis. “Of course, the babies were also hearing…all of the sounds of
their mothers’ daily life, including other music, conversations, and environmental noises. But
one particular piece was singled out,” (Levitin 224). The pieces ranged from classical music to
popular music to reggae. One year later, the babies would be tested to see if they preferred the
music they heard in the womb to a different piece (the other piece would be similar in style and
genre). Since the mothers were not allowed to play the piece for their babies after birth, this
would be the first time (ideally) that they would be hearing the piece since inside the womb. The
results came from a conditioned head turning procedure (made by Robert Fantz) and “confirmed
that they preferred the music to which they had the prenatal exposure.” Levitin goes on to
explain that children in early development are not known to have any memories, especially from
the womb. “It appears that for music even prenatal experience is encoded in memory, and can be
accessed in the absence of language or explicit awareness of the memory,” (225). Somehow,

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three weeks before being born we are storing information about music, language, etc. This
experiment begins to shine the light on many other aspects of early childhood development. It
opens the door to asking questions such as, “Can infants learn inside the womb and get a head
start on their development?” However, “these babies' outstanding musical memories are not at
all related to their intelligence. Dr. Lamont emphasized that there is no evidence here that
playing classical music to babies helps make their brains develop - the babies perform just as
well with pop or reggae music, and the same high levels of musical memory are found in babies
from families where IQ levels differ enormously.” (Pearson 2001). This project opens the door to
a lot of further research, but in no way does it explain that pre-natal music can lead to a more
intelligent baby (as discussed in the ‘Prenatal Development’ section).
This research is furthered with another experiment on fetal development. In this
experiment, “Eino Partanen and colleagues explored how pre-natal experiences influence
learning,” (Lethbridge). Unborn babies were exposed to the nonword, “tatata” many times a
week. A couple big differences in this experiment includes that they re-exposed the babies not
long after their birth. They also looked at the babies brain activity using an EEG. “Infants who
had been exposed to the sounds previously reacted much more strongly to them.” Not only did
they react more strongly, the previously exposed infants could detect very subtle differences in
the tonality. While in the womb, the experimenters occasionally changed the tonality of the
middle syllable of “tatata.” The noticeable ability to detect this subtle difference allows
researchers to infer that prenatal exposure to music may have an impact on a child’s early
development. This could be where the brain begins to develop some sort of musical preference.
Alexandra Lamont says we are “a long way from finding out if prenatal exposure to systematic
sounds would be of any benefit,” (Lethbridge). This research could potentially benefit in many

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ways to prepare a baby for a more optimal development. To summarize and apply this research
to the subject of taste, it is clear that exposure to music in the womb can give us a natural
predisposition for the music we like as a baby. But how does this translate to our taste in music
through our teenage years? This begins to explain that our taste is more experience-based than
anything. When it comes to nature vs. nurture, nurture seems to be more heavily related.
During early development, our brain is very malleable and prone to creating new neural
connections. (*To help explain this concept called neuroplasticity, I highly suggest watching
this amazing video: https://youtu.be/MFzDaBzBlL0). As we begin to hear music, our brain
begins to create connections and we start to learn the subtle complexities of music. The more we
are exposed, the faster we develop our musical knowledge and the earlier we can begin to dive
into and experiment with different, more complex music. The concept of brain malleability
during early development is called neuroplasticity. Donald Hebb first began discussing this
concept, coining the phrase "neurons that fire together wire together.” This idea has to do with
repeated exposure to the same concept. So once again, the more we are exposed to music at an
early age the quicker we come to the next developmental stage. As we move passed
understanding, the next stage becomes experimentation. Since children have more
neuroplasticity, their brain is not yet solidified in it’s musical taste, allowing for more
experimentation (some more than others). “Preferences begin with exposure and each of us has
our own ‘adventuresomeness’ quotient for how far out of our musical safety zone we are willing
to go at any given time,” (Levitin 245). As we experiment throughout our teenage years, we are
searching hard for something to grasp and call our own identity.
“Much like learning a foreign language is easier to do as a child, so is developing and
changing a taste in music,” (Casarella). Experimenting allows children to delve into the many

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different genres of music into their teenage years, searching for one (or more) that they can
identify with. This identifiable quality is what connects the brain, music, and emotion. As
infants, it is very difficult to discriminate important memories and unimportant memories, which
is why we cannot remember a lot from our very early childhood. As our brain develops we tend
to connect these important memories to emotion. “Our amygdala and neurotransmitters act in
concert to ‘tag’ the memories as something important,” (Levitin 231). Emotion is what solidifies
the music that we identify with. “This ties into the evolutionary idea of music as a vehicle for
social bonding and societal cohesion. Music and musical preference become a mark of personal
and group identity,” (Levitin 232). Due to enculturation, we are automatically predisposed to
certain exposure (musically, etc.), but most of us are given the freedom to form bonds with
people who we like and people we have things in common with. Thus forming the experimental
stage in our taste in music, or the stage of personal identity.
As we grow into our identity and move on to our 20’s, our taste in music becomes more
solidified and unchanging. We tend to become set in our ways, and slow in our experimenting.
As we reinforce our preferences by listening to them over and over, our brain starts to prune back
certain and unnecessary connections that might allow us to develop new skills, or new
preferences. Just as there is a critical period for children to learn how to read, there is a larger
critical period to learn music. Learning music at an early age might be the difference in creating
new musical preferences based on performance knowledge that some people don’t allow their
brains to discover.
“The ability to influence someone’s mood is probably the most valuable quality you can
have as a musician.” In an interview of the artist Abhi//Dijon, Jesse Bernard struck a chord (no
pun intended) in that the artists that we choose to listen to have a great influence on our mood.

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And, in turn, the way that an artist can change our mood has a great influence on whether or not
we choose to listen to them. We allow ourselves to create a connection with the artists that we
love through our vulnerabilities. This musical preference becomes more than creating an identity
in that it helps shape us emotionally as adults.
In conclusion, our musical preference is forged through our teenage years as we discover
who we are and who we want to be. The artists we decide to listen to appeal to our identity and
shape much of our adulthood. Our friendships are molded by sharing music with one another
and creating commonalities with new people. Early development gives us a natural
predisposition to listen to the music of our culture, but once we attain the right neurological
tools, we can begin to search for more complex, more adventurous music that may or may not
appeal to our identity. It is our job to naturally dig into that preference and expand our taste in
order to explore the many different facets of music.

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Music Therapy for Elderly People
As we grow older, our memories begin to fade and neurological diseases become
increasingly more common. Music therapy is an important tool in many nursing homes because
of the many benefits that it can offer. “In Wisconsin, two-thirds of the state’s nursing homes use
personalized playlists of music as part of daily caregiving routines,” (Geist 2015). Music allows
nursing homes to use less drugs in their programs because of the way music changes the patients.
Music and Memory is a company that partners with nursing homes across the country to give
their patients who are suffering with a cognitive or physical disability iPods with personalized
playlists of music. Their goal with these playlists is to allow for patients to engage in familiar
music to boost mood and general quality of living. Their findings “show consistent results:
• Participants are happier and more social.
• Relationships among staff, participants and family deepen.

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• Everyone benefits from a calmer, more supportive social environment.
• Staff regain valuable time previously lost to behavior management issues.
• There is growing evidence that a personalized music program gives professionals one
more tool in their effort to reduce reliance on anti-psychotic medications.” (“Help Spread
the Music”)
This familiar music gives patients a warm, youthful environment that helps them to do things
like re-engage with their families, socialize with other patients, and even boost cognitive
performance without having to take drugs. “New research is confirming and expanding an idea
long held by those who work with dementia patients: Music cannot only improve the mood of
people with neurological diseases, it can boost cognitive skills and reduce the need for
antipsychotic drugs,” (Geist 2015). The most common use for music therapy in nursing homes
seems to be patients suffering from dementia. Patients who have become debilitated by this
disease are often “woken up” (Geist) when they hear music. A lot of researchers look down on
music therapy because it can’t be prescribed and directly help with the disease that they are
fighting. This research has proven that if music doesn’t do anything to cure their disease, it
definitely brightens their mood and enhances their quality of living (which in turn can lead to
longer/healthier lives). Another thing that it can do for people with dementia as opposed to a lot
of other diseases is that it can change peoples’ moods for days at a time. This longevity can be
seen in this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKDXuCE7LeQ) where Oliver Sacks, a
neurologist (and author of Musicophilia) explains the effect that music has on this particular
man. After this patient hears his favorite music again, his demeanor changes immediately and he
becomes more responsive. Even after his music is taken away, he continues to engage in
conversations.

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Music offers a very short-term fix for older patients with diseases like Parkinson’s and
other neurological disorders. More specifically, rhythm can assist many patients with movement
disabilities. Our brains have the ability to match a tempo of a metronome and/or a song.
Through this rhythm entrainment our brains become adept at anticipating a beat and keep an
accurate tempo according to the baseline. “The imagination of music, of rhythm, may be as
potent, neutrally, as actually listening to it,” (Sacks). Oliver Sacks goes on to explain that
rhythm is basically the relationship between movement and sound and this relationship is the
basis for why rhythm can be an important tool for rehabilitation and therapy for people with
movement disorders.
One study took older (70 years) patients with Parkinson’s disease and used rhythmic
entrainment as a means to facilitate their decreased walking abilities. Patients with Parkinson’s
show a slower walking speed and shorter strides. Foot switches were placed on the subjects to
assess when their foot hit the ground and for how long. They tested patients who were on
medication and patients who had been off medication for 24 hours. A normal speed is 113
steps/min and the subjects that they tested showed an average speed of about 98 steps/min (with
meds) and 91 steps/min (without meds). The diagram below shows an example of how a patient
would respond to the rhythmic stimulation.

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The stimulation came in the form of a simple square wave pulse in 2/4 time. Each patient had
their own baseline and were tested based on that baseline movement. The diagram supports the
research that shows our brain learns the rhythms and anticipates the beat. This patient stepped a
bit early on his first step anticipating the beat. He continued this error in sync with the beat for
the remainder of the walk. Their next goal was to test whether or not patients could use this
rhythm as a facilitator for faster movement so the baseline rhythm stimulation tempo was
increased by 10%. 19 out of patients on medication were able to match the increased rhythm and
similar findings for the patients without medication. This study further uncovers the relationship
between rhythmic signals and movement. “Several authors have suggested that predictive
external sensor cues, such as auditory rhythm, can provide the necessary trigger in Parkinson’s
disease to…bypass defective internal…projections,” (McIntosh et al. 1997). Overall, there is
very little evidence that shows how music and rhythm are related to movement and coordination,
but this study shows that it can act as a clear facilitator for patients with Parkinson’s disease.
Music Therapy can be used as a means to manage specific disorders such as Parkinson’s,
Alzheimer’s, and more. By no means can music therapy be used as a prescribed treatment for
these disorders, but it can very clearly be used as a positive influence on people’s lives as they
grow older and develop disorders like these. “For people with Parkinson’s disease or movement
disorders, making or listening to music can improve gait, balance, range of motion and
coordination…For people with dementia or Alzheimer’s disease, music can unlock memories
and improve communication,” (Kimmel 2012). Music therapy is also not specific to these
disorders as it can help patients who are depressed, anxious, etc. Music can create a positive
environment in which people are comfortable socializing and re-engaging with family and

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nurses. This re-engagement with their life can lead to positive outcomes such as a better overall
quality of life, a healthier living, and even a longer life.
Conclusion
Music has been used for thousands of years, but the reasons remain unknown. There are
many theories, including courtship/sexual selection (proposed by Darwin; Levitin). The two
theories that appeal to me are promotion of social connection and cognitive development. I have
stated before that music is a foundational subject through which many of us connect, but the
evidence is more apparent with the facts that music makes us more social when we have
developmental problems. Music has continued to promote a warm environment in which people
become more engaging and social. The warm environment that it provides is strong evidence for
social connection as an adaptive reason for it to exist. Not only does it bring people together
through simple song and dance, but the environment that it creates for young and old people
consistently and historically "promote feelings of group togetherness and synchrony," (Levitin).
Music to me, though, doesn't need to be justified in order to appreciate its value. Music is
an important part of ones personality and culture. As we develop a personal taste in music, we
continue to develop as humans. Music is used by all of us at some point in our lives, and
evidence points toward music being developmentally helpful in each and every stage. Music is
far from being prescribed to treat disorders, but it is an additive that can facilitate healthy
learning and development. Music has the ability to create neural connections in the brain before
birth as evidence to the early recognition of prenatal music. As we develop into infancy, music
begins to promote an environment of attention and learning. "Music for the developing brain is a
form of play, an exercise that invokes higher-level integrative processes that nurture exploratory
competence," (Levitin). Music then allows us to create a social identity through a unique taste in

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music. Our musical tastes overlap at points, which create social bonding. This social bonding
leads to memories created that are used to associate with the music of our youth. When we get
older, the music associated with these memories can be important to maintaining a healthy
lifestyle. Older adults with depression, anxiety, dementia, and other disorders feel that they can
break free from the isolation that their disorders bring through the music of their youth.
Therefore, music can be an incredible tool for development across every stage of life. From
break-ups to nostalgia trips, and from before birth to after adulthood, music is therapy for a
lifetime.

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