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Volume 17: Number 4: Article 6
The Use of Music Therapy as a Clinical Intervention for Physiologic Functional Adaptation
Dorita S. Berger, The Music Therapy Clinic, Norwalk, CT 06850
Daniel J. Schneck, Virginia Tech, Blackburg, VA 24061
Survival depends on the maintenance, within very narrow limits, of
physiologic variables critical to life, leading to a condition known
as homeostasis. Homeostasis is achieved by cascading networks
of sophisticated feedback/feedforward control systems that operate in
accordance with prescribed reference set-points. In diagnosed populations
(such as autistic), these set-points often deviate from those that optimize
physiologic performance. Combined with misinterpretation of sensory
information, these deviant set-points act to maintain the body in a
perpetual survival mode that derives from the fear response. When this
is the case, clinicians prescribe therapy in an attempt to re-set the
reference control quantities to more desirable values through the process
of functional adaptation. Recent research and clinical applications
have verified that music therapy is one particularly effective
clinical intervention that accomplishses this goal. Its effectiveness
derives frmo its ability to function through sub-cortical, non-cognitive
pathways that are indigenous to fundamental physiological response mechanisms.
The instinct to track music is innate; it parallels and reflects the
human condition. Having been invented by humans to express emotion,
music speaks the language of the body through its six basic elements:
rhythm, melody, harmony, dynamics, timbre, and form. This
paper develops a paradigm describing how and why these music elements
can be utilized, in combination or individually, as a medical intervention
to redirect fear responses and specifically target sensory integration
dysfunction. Applied clinically as a continuous disturbance to
malfunctioning feedback-control pathways, music therapy can thus succeed
in stimulating functional adaptation, driving the physiologic
system towards more optimal responses to sensory inputs.
Keywords: biomedical engineering, music therapy, music, functional
adaptation, biomusical engineering, physiologic function, brain, fear
responses, homeostasis
FULL TEXT:
The Use of Music Therapy as a Clinical Intervention for Physiologic Functional Adaptation
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