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New Grants Explore Benefits of Music on Health

Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins

It’s not every day you get to perform with one of the finest voices on the planet. What an honor it was to join renowned opera singer Renée Fleming back in May for a rendition of “How Can I Keep from Singing?” at the NIH’s J. Edward Rall Cultural Lecture. Yet our duet was so much more. Between the song’s timeless message and Renée’s matchless soprano, the music filled me with a profound sense of joy, like being briefly lifted outside myself into a place of beauty and well-being. How does that happen?

Indeed, the benefits of music for human health and well-being have long been recognized. But biomedical science still has a quite limited understanding of music’s mechanisms of action in the brain, as well as its potential to ease symptoms of an array of disorders including Parkinson’s disease, stroke, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In a major step toward using rigorous science to realize music’s potential for improving human health, NIH has just awarded $20 million over five years to support the first research projects of the Sound Health initiative. Launched a couple of years ago, Sound Health is a partnership between NIH and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, in association with the National Endowment for the Arts.

With support from 10 NIH institutes and centers, the Sound Health awardees will, among other things, study how music might improve the motor skills of people with Parkinson’s disease. Previous research has shown that the beat of a metronome can steady the gait of someone with Parkinson’s disease, but more research is needed to determine exactly why that happens.

Other fascinating areas to be explored by the Sound Health awardees include:

• Assessing how active music interventions, often called music therapies, affect multiple biomarkers that correlate with improvement in health status. The aim is to provide a more holistic understanding of how such interventions serve to ease cancer-related stress and possibly even improve immune function.

• Investigating the effects of music on the developing brain of infants as they learn to talk. Such work may be especially helpful for youngsters at high risk for speech and language disorders.

• Studying synchronization of musical rhythm as part of social development. This research will look at how this process is disrupted in children with autism spectrum disorder, possibly suggesting ways of developing music-based interventions to improve communication.

• Examining the memory-related impacts of repeated exposures to a certain song or musical phrase, including those “earworms” that get “stuck” in our heads. This work might tell us more about how music sometimes serves as a cue for retrieving associated memories, even in people whose memory skills are impaired by Alzheimer’s disease or other cognitive disorders.

• Tracing the developmental timeline—from childhood to adulthood—of how music shapes the brain. This will include studying how musical training at different points on that timeline may influence attention span, executive function, social/emotional functioning, and language skills.

We are fortunate to live in an exceptional time of discovery in neuroscience, as well as an extraordinary era of creativity in music. These Sound Health grants represent just the beginning of what I hope will be a long and productive partnership that brings these creative fields together. I am convinced that the power of science holds tremendous promise for improving the effectiveness of music-based interventions, and expanding their reach to improve the health and well-being of people suffering from a wide variety of conditions.

Links:

The Soprano and the Scientist: A Conversation About Music and Medicine, (National Public Radio, June 2, 2017)

NIH Workshop on Music and Health, January 2017

Sound Health (NIH)

NIH Support: National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health; National Eye Institute; National Institute on Aging; National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism; National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders; National Institute of Mental Health; National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke; National Institute of Nursing Research; Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research; Office of the Director


Discussing Sound Health at The Kennedy Center

Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins

REACH at Kennedy Center
I had a great time at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. discussing the Sound Health Initiative and the connections between the arts and wellness. The hour-long conversation was part of the opening festival for REACH, the new cultural campus and arts incubator at the Kennedy Center. I shared the stage with Renée Fleming (middle), the Grammy®-winning soprano and Kennedy Center Artistic Advisor at Large; and Charles Limb (left), a neurosurgeon at the University of California, San Francisco, and an accomplished musician and researcher of creativity. Sound Health seeks to expand understanding of the connections between music and wellness. The initiative is a partnership of NIH and the Kennedy Center, in association with the National Endowment for the Arts. The conversation took place in the REACH’s Justice Forum on September 12, 2019. Credit: NIH

Making Music with Opera Star Renée Fleming

Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins

What an honor it was to perform these two songs with world-renowned soprano Renée Fleming , who presented the J. Edward Rall Cultural Lecture at NIH on May 13, 2019. I served as the lecture moderator, and we discussed the creative process, the intersections of music and science, and the Sound Health initiative, which is a partnership between NIH and the Kennedy Center. Credit: NIH


Performing at the Kennedy Center

Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins

Dr. Francis Collins laughs on stage with Renee Fleming and Dr. Sanjay Gupta

I had a fantastic time participating in the Music and the Mind concert at the Kennedy Center, Washington, D.C., on September 7, 2018. It was part of the Sound Health initiative, which brings together musicians and scientists to explore the links between music and wellness. Here, I’m on stage with the world-renowned soprano Renée Fleming (left) and event host Sanjay Gupta (center), CNN’s chief medical correspondent. Credit: Jati Lindsay