English abstracts of the 4th Congress on Music Application in Mental and Physical Health 26th-29th May 2004 in Tehran, Iran

Mohammad Reza Abdollahnejad

(M. A. Psychologist, Founder & Member of Board of Directors, MAMPHA; E-mail: abdollahnejad@mampha.org.ir; ar_nejad@yahoo.com)

Nowadays, substance abuse is considered to be a social problem causing numerous crimes, health problems, and economical issues. Hence, therapists and researchers in several fields strive to seek ways to treat and prevent substance abuse. The application of music therapy in the treatment and prevention of substance abuse can be viewed from two angles.

First, music as a social and cultural element, which is interwoven with people in general and substance abusers in particular, can serve as a destructive and/or constructive factor. In other words substance abusers were found found to have been in close contact with music during their addiction period. Therefore, one of the approaches to prevent recurrent relapse during recovery is changing music habits during addiction period. Otherwise, it is probable that past habits cause relapse in substance abusers.

Secondly, music therapy, as an adjunctive, is able to play a defining role in behavioral and psychological reforming of substance abusers helping them to explore their feelings, emotions, lack of self-esteem, and inability to appropriately use leisure time.

Furthermore, music therapy can serve to promote self-expression and self-awareness, increase group cohesiveness and peer interaction, enhance the development of positive and healthy self-image, and reduce stress.

Key words: music therapy, substance abuse

Vahid Almasi

(Student of Medicine, Lorestan University of Medical Sciences)

Dementia is a mental disorder characterized by multiple cognitive deficits and memory loss. Affected functions include intelligence, language, problem solving, memory, learning, orientation, perception, attention, judgment, concentration, and social abilities. Only in 15% of patients with dementia, the illness is reversible if timely treatment is initiated. Treatment is generally supportive.

Therefore, alternative medicine such as music therapy can be important to cure these patients.

This article reviews 7 research works and 3 review articles about the effects of music therapy on demented patients.

The review of literature suggested that music therapy is an effective intervention for improving social, emotional and cognitive skills and for decreasing behavioral problems of individuals with dementia.Music therapy in these patients improved language, attention and memory, and decreased irritability, depressive symptoms and agitated and aggressive behaviors.

Key words: music therapy, dementia, alternative medicine

Farbod Fadai

(M.D., Psychiatrist. Associate Professor of University of Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences)

Music is an art that, due to its excessively abstract nature, was investigated by psychiatrists less than other arts. The psychiatric study of music requires research in the fields of sensation, perception and cognition in general.

Recent improvements in the last two decades in structural and functional brain imaging techniques, have made the investigation of music reception and production in the central nervous system possible.

The early psychiatric theorists stated that the cultural origin of music can be attributed to the dominance of the mankind on the terrifying sounds of the prehistoric living environment. The advocates of the psychodynamic school have presented a constructional plan with respect to the contentment and pleasure that hearing music produces:

1. music satisfies the primary aggressive and sexual impulses, and lets these drives be discharged in a sublimated form in an acceptable social environment without feelings of guilt.
2. Ego is strenghtened by the symbolic and repetitive dominance over the threatening sounds, and 3-Superego is bribed by surrendering to the aesthetic rules and standards.

According to the kleinian psychology, immersion in the ocean of music, is identical to the magical attachment to the kind, generous, and merciful mother of the era prior to the emotional ambivalence.

The evolution of music from a psychiatric viewpoint: sounds which were used by the primitive humans for expressing affective responses toward the outer stimuli, converted to melody and hence acquired certain characteristics such as the differences in timbre and the sequences of high and low pitches. So the origin of musical scale dates back to the pre-verbal period and it originates from the primary sensory-motor experiences including perception of internal rhythms of the body.

Music is related to dancing by rhythms, and to language by melodies. pitch is the third essential element of the music and a part of the "Primary process" that were used by the primitive humans for the inference of the importance of the sounds. Harmony is a newcomer with verbal aspect and is considered a part of the "secondary process".

Homo sapiens combined the melody, rhythm, timbre, and harmony and achieved various and complex forms of an art named music.

Neuropsychology, in parallel with psycho-analysis and completing it, has reached valuable findings in the relation between music and the two brain hemispheres that will be presented in detail in the full text.

Key words: Music, Psychiatry, Neuropsychology

Marjan Farshadi & Mojgan Farshadi

(Hormozgan University of Medical Sciences)

Subjective: Showing the effects of music therapy in reducing sleep disorders including: the duration of going to sleep, amounts of nightmares and dreams, duration of sleep, and emotional condition the next day.

Introduction: Music therapy is one of the most important types of sound therapy. Music can reduce pulse rate, blood pressure, and pain; furthermore, it can cause better habits, and depression recovery. Also, increases activity, leads to sleep and peace, and reduces muscle spasm. The music must have frequency between 70-80 beats per minute (same as heart) to cause peace; because high frequencies result in more psychological pressure. The volume should be low as high volume increases pain. The music must be soft and with a steady rhythm to reduce anxiety. It seems, music changes the biochemistry of body, balances the enzymes, and affects directly cells and molecules by making specific frequencies. So, it can be harmful to choose an unsuitable music.

Methods: First, we choose 50 high school girls at random and ask them to fill in the questionnaire. Then, we give them the peaceful music and ask to them to listen to it every night. After one month, they answer the questionnaire again and the results are analyzed by SPSS software.

Results: In this paper, the peaceful music decreased the duration of going to sleep. Before listening to the music, 42% said they go to sleep in 10 minutes; after listening to the music, 74% went to sleep in 10 minutes (P=0.00005). Also, amounts of nightmare was significantly decreased. They felt better in the next day and so while getting up. The music had no special effect on amount of dreams and hours of sleep.

Summary: This paper suggests that a suitable rhythmic music can cause peace before, during and after sleep. Also it balances the emotional conditions. So, listening to soft music before sleep can cause increasing personal efficiency, and results in good nature. Therefore, those with anxiety and sleep disorder, can be recommended to listen to peaceful music.

Key words: music therapy, sleep disorders

Kianoosh Hashemian Ph.D

(Alzahra university, vice - president MAMPHA)

E-mail : Kianooshhashemian @ yahoo.com

Music therapy was strongly influenced by psychoanalytic thought in the late twenteth century. Many music therapists committed themselves to go through psychoanalytic process under the supervision of an analyst or a psychotherapist.

After passing the period of educating themselves some of them practiced as child therapists and some as adult psychotherapists.

One of the reasons which one can find about this matter is the construct of transference and counter-transference. Music therapist have a range of interesting options. One of which might be to use words. The notion of musical transference relationship which was proposed by Streeter is that free improvisation is free association with music. Also music therapists can use some aspects of counter -transference within music.

In music therapy it is important to keep three critical principles in mind:

1. Imagination, by which perception and reasoning are recognized as being always informed by the imagination. With this indirect and critical role which imagination plays in human experience has also come an increased appreciation of the power and complexity of, as well as new insight into, the nature of archetype by C.G. Jung.
2. Intuition which determines trend of thinking which are sometimes hypotheses and sometimes judgements reached so fast that reasons for them are not noticed.
3. Improvisation is at the core of music therapy practice. Improvisation is the action-product of our musical imagination and intuition as we call it intuition in action . Improvisation forms an interesting link between our discipline and other modes of work in music and arts, for example Jazz. Flamenco, Indian and African traditions in music....

Key words: Music therapy, Psychoanalysis

Leila Hamzehlou & Mina Maarefvand

(Student research committee, Zanjan University of medical sciences)

Dementia is a brain failure that has a severe effect on daily activity. Alzheimer disease is one of the common forms of dementia in old people. For example in Canada Alzheimer disease effects 8.0% of the population aged 65 and over, and 34.5 % aged (?) and over. Alzheimer disease (AD) involves parts of brain that control memory, judgment, language, and decision-making ability. Every day researchers collect more information but its cause isn't really known and doesn't have a good treatment.

The result was change in melatonin, norepinephrine, epinephrine, serotonin, and prolactin following music therapy and increased levels of melatonin following music therapy may have contributed to patients' relaxed and calm mood, and decrease the Alzheimer's symptom (aggression, confusion, anxiety and depression). In most of these studies, the music has been described as treatment in the regular programs to the patients and they have investigated before, during and after the music therapy.

The aim of the study is to organize the present knowledge with a systematic approach so that further research works lead to base the application of music therapy on evidence instead of on singular clinical findings.

Key words: Music therapy, Alzheimer disease

Abdulhamid Hossein Nia

(E. N.T Surgeon)

E-mail: Hossein_nia@yahoo.com

One of the strangest subject in the world of music art is the deafness of Ludwig van Beethoven, the most famous musician of the world. Stranger than this subject is that his memorable symphonies were made when he was deaf.

Key words: Beethoven, deafness

Sheida Kazemi Malek Mahmoody(M.Sc); Abolfazl Rahgooy (Ph.D); Hassan Ashayeri (Ph.D); Mehdi Rahgozar (Ph.D)

About 30 per cent of children are hospitalised in childhood. Hospitalisation of children causes anxiety, because of separation from their parents, fear of new enviroment, fear of disabilities, fear of future and also causes situational crisis for children. In view of the high percentage of hospitalized children and sideeffects of drugs (medical ways), more attention, has to be paid to non-organic interventions ways. One of the non-organic interventions is music therapy (listening to music).

This study is a semi- experimental research into the effect of music therapy on the basis of anxiety in school age children (age 9-12 ) who were confined to bed in Taleghani children hospital in Gorgan in 2002-3. 60 children who were confined to bed in a medical ward were qualified in sample choice, then they were randomly divided in to 2 equal groups for intervention and control of 30 each.

The tools of gathering data included

• information questionnaire,
• patient's demographic data
• State - Trait Anxiety Inventory for Children by Spielberger (STAIC)
• Face Anxiety Children examined Scale Piyeri (FACES)

to collect and compare the necessary information of before and after the intervention. The intervention group received two music therapy sessions listening to music on two continuous days, each session 20 minutes. Data were collected before and after interventionand treated with:

• Kolmogrov - Smirnov test
• t-test
• Wilcoxon signed ranks
• Bartlet and Man Whitney tests

The results of analysis show no important difference (P>0.05) between the average of state anxiety and amount of face anxiety in both group before music therapy (listening to music). After listening to music there was a significant difference (P<0.05) for intervention group. Therefore this decrease of amount of anxiety in the intervention group depends on how musictherapy (listening of music) is applied.

Key words: Hospitalization, School age children, Anxiety, Music, Listening of music

Khadijeh Mazaheri

(Bsn Of Nursing)

Stroke refers to the damage to part of the brain caused by an interruption to its blood supply. The interruption is most often due to the blockage of a cerebral artery by a blood clot and may also result from localized hemorrhage due to rupture of a blood vessel in or near the brain. Weakness or paralysis on one side of the body, called hemiplegia, is a common effect of a serious stroke. A stroke that affects the dominant cerebral hemisphere may also cause disturbance of language (aphasia).

Music can improve various neurological deficits such as amusia, apraxia, emotional disturbance.

Music therapy aims to affect physiological, behavioral and psychological changes by the clinical application of music and musical activities within the context of an interactive client-therapist relationship.

Music therapy however, has brought a uniquely dynamic and expressive dimension to this rehabilitation process, and has emphasized the importance of tackling behavioral and psychological needs directly.

As a result, the contribution of music therapy to stroke rehabilitation has covered a diversity of areas including:

1. gait improvement
2. hand grasp strength
3. rate of speech and verbal intelligibility (Purdie et al 1995).

Evidence has shown the significance of music therapy in facilitating behavioral and psychological change in people with stroke
(Purdie et al 1997). Interpretation of the results of such studies indicated that the treatment group showed improvements on:

• communication
• behavior
• musical behavior
• anxiety and depression tests, and
• individual behavioral items - emotional stability, clarity of thought, spontaneous interaction, motivation and co-operation

Key word: music therapy, stroke

Farah Naderi; Behnam Mackvandi

(Members of Faculty Board, Psychology Dept, Islamic Azad University, Ahwaz Unit)

In this study the effects of music on the learning and educational performances in mentally retarded students were examined. The only hypothesis of this research was assumed as follows:

Music impacts the educational performance in retarded children.

For hypothesis testing, Pre-Test and Post-Test Experimental design with control group were processed.

The subjects were 30 (15 female and 15 male) students at the first grade of elementary exceptional education schools in Ahwaz city. All subjects were randomly selected. The sample was divided into two groups by random: Experimental group (Students who received music) and control group (Students not receiving music). After a period of 3 months, the educational performance scores of the two groups were analyzed by using T test for two independent groups. Results indicate significant differences. Therefore the research hypothesis was confirmed as following:

Music affects the educational performance in mentally retarded (Learning Disability) children.

Key Words: Mental Retardation, Learning, Music

Masoud Nematian

(M.D., Founder and Member of board of Directors, Music Application in Mental and Physical Health Association,Tehran University of Medical Sciences)

The Brains of musicians have definite anatomical and functional characteristics which are not found in non - musicians and which are correlated with the age at which musical studies began. These differences have been detected in musicians by modern neuroimaging methods. Indeed, maturation of the tissue fibres and interacortical networks continues up to the age of seven. Consequently, early musical training results in structural adaptation, probably plastic organization, i.e. changes in synaptic connections and / or neural growth processes. Whether those brain characteristics in musicions are due solely to cortical plasticity through training or to an innate structural property, or both, however, is still an open question; After all, it is not known how the expression of neuroplastic processes is modulated by genetic or environmental factors.

Key words: Music, Brain, Musician

Z.Rojhani shirazi

(Iran university of medical sciences.faculty of rehabilitation)

Introduction: Pain is a symptom in many diseases. It can decrease appetite and produce sleep disturbance and it may cause prolonged hospitalization. There are two kinds of pain: acute and chronic. Pain relief is important in both conditions. There are many ways for relief of pain including invasive such as nerve block and non-invasive such as physical therapy, drug thrapy and music therapy

Causes of using music in pain relief: Music decreases stress responses such as anxiety and hypertension and it is effective in migraine and pain. Review of articles showed that music decreases pain and anxiety in patients in ICU and decreases pain and nauseas in patients with bone marrow transplantation and abdominal surgery.

Why music decreases pain and anxiety: music decreases pain and anxiety by psychological and physiological processes. It can influence the limbic system and neuronal connections in brain. New research works showed that nitric oxide has an important role in this respect.

Parameters in music therapy: Intact auditory cortex has a major role in the perception of auditory patterns and thus music. Types of music,duration and number of sessions are other parameters in music therapy.

Conclusion: Music is used in the management of post surgical pain. Auditory cortex of temporal lobe has a major role in music perception. Music through psychological and physiological pathways can cause relief of pain.

Key words: music,pain,anxiety

M. Shahriary Ahmady

(M.A. Psychologist, Islamic AzadUniversity)

Music is an effective stimulus on mood. Studies in cognitive psychology suggest that cognition is related to mood. The purpose of this study is the relationship between different typs of music (classical, pop) and mood induction.

120 pupils (all students of psychology in Azad University) assigned to four groups of solomon design. Results from statistical data analysis (ANOVA), support the effects of pop music on mood induction.

Key words: Music, Mood induction

Mohammad Saeed Sharifian

(Ph.D. Academic & Composer)

E-mail: Saeed_Sharifian 2002@yahoo.com

The purpose of this speech is about music and its importance in human societies. Regarding its history, music has affected sociological issues which is an ever - continuing interaction.

Key words: Music, Sociology, Music history

Ali Yousefi nejad

(MSc Nursing, Tehran University of Medical Sciences)

Background: Acute pain is a major issue in patients and there are different methods for reducing it. Music therapy as a non-invasive method is sometimes used in pain treatment to help reduce pain as well.

Objective: To evaluate the effects of music therapy on the acute pain degree in some patients with pain in TUMS hospitals.

Method: This is a semi-experimental study. The total sample consisted of 40 patients with acute pain aged between 15-65 years. In this cross-over study, pain degree was measured by scaled ruler (0-10). The data was analyzed by Wilcoxon statistical tests.

Findings: Comparison of acute pain degrees in stages of before-after implementation of music therapy showed significant differences on variables of research.

Conclusion: This research shows that music therapy reduces acute pain degree .

Key words: Acute pain, Music therapy

Address

M.R. Abdolahnejad (M.A. Psychology)
Board / Founder Member - MAMPHA
(Music Application In Mental And Physical Health Association)
Head of central TC (Therapeutic Community) at Tehran, Iran
No. 66, Tabarestan Alley, Farhang St.,
Vahdat Esla mi Ave., Tehran, Iran
Postal Code: 11939
Mobile:0098-912-113 490
www.mampha.org