Monday, November 3, 2008

Brain Music Therapy

Dr. Orli Peter Explains and Demonstrates Brain Music Therapy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1qHgmTmado&feature=related

Brain music therapy as explained by Dr .Orli Peter (who runs the Center for Accelerated Psychology- http://www.drorlipeter.com/) is a technique that can help people with anxiety, depression, ADD, etc... This therapy, in the Doctors words can “recalibrate you brain”. The methodology used is to first record ones brain waves via EEG, then extract the relaxing brain waves and activating brain waves. These are then converted into an auditory frequency and put into music called BRAIN MUSIC (I admit this part is a bit convoluted). These recordings are then played back to the “brain wave donor” and they supposedly respond more positively to this recording then to other kinds of music. This promotes relaxation and has known side effects.

This video show the process in greater detail http://gallery.venturacountystar.com/video.cfm?VideoID=247#loaded

Originally developed at the Moscow Medical Academy as a nonpharmacological method for treating insomnia in the early '90s, Brain Music Therapy has received a boost from some scientific evidence of its effectiveness, including randomized double-blind studies in small-scale groups. It is now used on an experimental basis throughout the world to treat a variety of neurological scenarios including post traumatic stress disorder, attention deficit disorder (ADD) and withdrawal symptoms from drug or alcohol dependence. The Russian-born Dr. Galina Mindlin received the exclusive rights to provide this treatment in the United States in 2004 and has now treated hundreds of patients through her private practice in New York.( http://www.metroactive.com/metro/04.23.08/cover-0817.html)

Comment:

I found this fascinating at first and the more I searched the more I found. However the information on every web site seems to be the same. I thought could this really work? The women in the second video say that it worked for her as did others I found on the net. The question is what would have happen had she listened to any relaxation type of music for 2 weeks, would she have fallen asleep? Is it that the music simply allows her mind to focus on one thing rather that everything form her day in the same way that a meditation can work. At $500.00 -$1100.00 a shot I would have at least listened to Beethoven 6th a few times or sat in the lotus position for a while. The real problem with providing this information on the net without the data to back it up, is that it gives all music brain research that info-mercial quality.
Dr. Jan Mohlman, a psychology professor at Rutgers University, wants to see more data on the long-term effectiveness of brain music. Mohlman, who specializes in treating depression, anxiety and stress, thinks it needs to be tested against other types of cognitive behavioral therapy — and even other types of music, for that matter — to assess its merit. (http://www.journalstar.com/articles/2005/11/22/stat/doc43825a41ae04c977390471.txt)

So although promising and meeting with some success I think before they start charging the big buck they need to provide the data to their patience and the public.

1 comment:

Lee said...

This is an interesting concept. But in my opinion essentially much to do about something that is easy - it adds lots of placebo power. Essentially what this is doing is zeroing in on the high delta -= low theta brain activity - extracting its regularity which is about 4 or 5 per second, and then allowing a synthesizer to play bad music with that many "hits" per second. You can do that any time without first going through this unecessary brainwave extraction charade.

The idea was first promoted in North America I think here at U of T by Leonid Layumov. See the following:

http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/news/2002/08/54842

http://stressed.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20020916/stress_brain_music_020916/SpecialEvent2/story/


I believe it works but so does music crafted to present that level of brain wave entrainment.

Lee