Let Music Be Your Medicine

Rhythmic wave signals

Source: Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

The brain generates rhythms naturally. One way to confirm this is to record the brain’s electrical activity. This electrical activity results from the passage of ions (particles with positive or negative charge, such as sodium and chloride, the components of salt) across brain cell membranes.

EEG (electroencephalography), a painless and harmless technique using wires (electrodes) placed on the scalp to record this activity, has been around for nearly a century. EEG reveals that much of a healthy brain’s electrical activity is rhythmic, not random. With brain disease, however, the rhythmicity deteriorates.

An EEG measures rhythmic brain waves in cycles per second, called Hertz. In a region of the brain’s temporal lobe known as the entorhinal-hippocampal network, slow brain waves (termed theta)¹ and fast brain waves (termed gamma)² couple during successful memory performance.

The brain’s ability to couple these rhythms wanes in Alzheimer’s disease. It has been known for several decades that the earliest memory decline in this disorder correlates with pathology in the entorhinal-hippocampal network.³ More recently, memory decline in Alzheimer’s has been linked to a decline in the coupling of theta and gamma brain waves in this network.⁴

Edward Large, Ph.D., a neuroscientist at the University of Connecticut, collaborates with colleagues Ji Chul Kim, Ph.D., and Psyche Loui, Ph.D., to study this brain wave coupling phenomenon as well as non-invasive methods to address abnormalities. The team’s research indicates that external stimulation delivered in the theta and gamma frequencies can compensate for the loss of theta and gamma brain waves generated internally by the brain. Simply stated, music can provide theta brain wave stimulation while light can provide gamma brain wave stimulation.

In addition to academic research work, Large and Kim co-founded Oscillo Biosciences (oscillobiosciences.com) to develop a practical device to deliver sound and light stimulation in the privacy of a person’s home. In her lab at Northeastern University, Loui is testing the use of music and light to provide stimulation in the delta and gamma frequencies, respectively.

How does light provide gamma brain wave stimulation? The device intermittently emits pulses of light at a rate of 30 times per second. It is not known at present how a visual stimulus, which is processed in the brain’s occipital and posterior parietal lobes, can find its target in the temporal lobe. This is one of the questions Large and his colleagues are investigating.

How does music provide theta brain wave stimulation? After all, the main pulse of most music resides in the delta range (under 4 Hz; i.e., less than 240 BPM). But music also contains sub-rhythms, often subtle, that are faster than the main pulse beats. These sub-rhythms occur at integer multiples, typically two or three times, faster than the main pulse beats. Sometimes these sub-rhythms are distinct, consider the waltz-like sub-rhythm occurring at around 300 BPM in Can’t Help Falling in Love or Colour My World, and reveal what is hidden within many pieces of music.^5,6 These faster sub-rhythms bathe our ears and brain even though we’re not aware of them in many music pieces.

Loui and her team have investigated their music and light stimulation method on people in good health (normal controls) and are now testing it on people with Alzheimer’s disease. At this point in time, they have found evidence that their method results in better memory and increased activity in the hippocampus in people with early-stage Alzheimer’s.^7,8,9 Large reports that over 90 individuals have been tested to date (roughly equal numbers of normal younger adults, normal older adults, and adults with early-stage Alzheimer’s), and no adverse effects have been reported.¹⁰

Large, whose background encompasses classical guitar and higher mathematics, hopes that music and light stimulation will one day be a mainstream method for managing cognitive symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease (and, possibly, other diseases as well). He relates that one of the great strengths of his company’s method is that it allows people to choose whatever music they prefer to listen to, since music contains sub-rhythms in the theta range.

Music has played a role in managing behavioral symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease, such as agitation, for a long time. That music is now being assessed as a means to improve the disease’s cognitive symptoms marks this as an exciting new development.