Beliefs and practices regarding music’s ability to heal the mind, body, and spirit date back to the Upper Paleolithic period, approximately 20,000 years ago. Music was widely used by shamans and other healers to treat various illnesses, ranging from mental disorders to injuries and illnesses. Only recently have we separated healing and music; we tend to view healing as the domain of doctors and music as entertainment. Maybe it’s time to bring together two of the most intimate parts of our lives.
Scientific progress over the past ten years has provided a rational basis for this reunification. A new body of research allows us to take what were previously anecdotes and place music on an equal footing with common and well-founded prescription drugs, surgeries, medical procedures, psychotherapy, and various forms of treatment. on evidence. In the last two years alone, more than 8,000 articles have been published on the topic in peer-reviewed journals.
Over the millennia, music has been used to alleviate a variety of illnesses, from chronic pain and depression to anxiety and simple boredom. It serves as a social lubricant, an intoxicating element of courtship and life cycle ceremonies through birth, birthdays, marriage, anniversaries and even death. The year 2024 saw the culmination of years of scientific research and conferences focused on a deceptively simple question: Is music capable of producing proven medical effects? The answer is a resounding and cleverly echoed one. Yes.
We have now demonstrated the effectiveness of music therapy and musical interventions to improve various health outcomes and promote well-being. From treating Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases to managing chronic pain and depression, music is no longer relegated to the fringes of modern medicine. Major health care companies now have procedural codes for the use of music in hospital, clinical and outpatient settings.
The year 2025 will see a renewed and reinvigorated use of this age-old remedy based on the evidence of rigorously conducted studies. We will begin to see more sophisticated and nuanced uses of music for specific illnesses, as well as to improve immune system function and overall well-being.
The future of music in healthcare spans from hospital to home, from illness to neurorehabilitation, to mindfulness practices and well-being. AI will help here, not in writing music, but in selecting songs and genres that meet both an individual’s tastes and desired therapeutic and wellness goals. By extracting key characteristics from music and matching them to an individual’s preferences and needs, we can usher in a new era of personalized music medicine. In the same way that an individual’s DNA can guide decisions about treatment and which medications are likely to be most effective, AI could one day extract DNA from music to identify precisely which music will help meet the therapeutic needs of an individual.
Consider all the information about you in the cloud: your search history, your location, the people you’re with, your calendar, your contact list, and the types of things you view on social media. Some companies also know a lot about your music tastes: what you listen to, what you skipped, what time of day you listen, and where you are when you listen. Smart devices that read your biometrics know your heart rate, heart rate variability, blood oxygenation level, respiratory rate, skin conductance, body temperature, blood pressure, as well as how they fluctuate depending on the time of day and the activities you do. engaged in.
And they also know about these activities, whether you are running, walking, climbing steps, driving a car, or sleeping. Of course, when you sleep, they know what stage of sleep you are in and how long you have been asleep. (They know if you’ve been sleeping, they know if you’re awake, they know if you’ve been bad or good, so be good for God’s sake!). Soon you’ll have the option to subscribe to music on demand where the “demand” comes from your own biometrics, offering you music to calm you down, invigorate you for a workout, help you focus at work or treat conditions such as chronic pain, depression, Parkinson’s disease and even Alzheimer’s disease.
