Health: Healing Sounds & a Mysterious Hum
The lifesaving equipment being wheeled through the halls of some hospitals now includes keyboards and harps. Elsewhere, multi-sensory "Snoezelen" rooms are improving care for patients with dementia. (But what is that annoying hum that some Taos and Kokomo residents can hear -- and others cannot?)

Behind it all is Patrice Repar, a "former rock 'n' roller from Canada," who is a UNM composer and music faculty member, and who runs the hospital's Arts in Medicine program. A recent article in the New York Times profiled the program, and how evidence is mounting that music can play direct roles in healing and recovery.

Repar herself once endured a long hospitalization while living in Ecuador, an experience that triggered an interest in arts and healing. Her university's hospital is one of many experimenting with incorporating music and other arts into their medical practices, by bringing musicians and artists themselves to perform and work with staff and patients.

Does music do more than make people feel good for a little while? Studies have shown that music and imagery relaxation sessions reduce pain and nausea and increase the rate of new white blood cell formation. Other studies have shown that harp music in cardiac units reduces pain, anxiety, blood pressure, respiration rate, and secretion of stress hormones.

Hearing centers and emotion centers are close neighbors inside the brain. Their connectivity "underlies musical aesthetics," according to Dr. Mark Jude Tramo, a neuroscientist at Harvard's Institute for Music and Brain Science. Given the role of stress and emotion in health and healing, it's no wonder music has a medicinal value.

Read the article in the Dec. 16, 2003 New York Times [fee required], or read an Albuquerque Journal article about the UNM Arts in Medicine program

Find out more from the American Music Therapy Association

Visit Harvard's Institute for Music and Brain Science

A recent New York Times article described the scene in a Connecticut nursing home: "Glow in the dark stars shone faintly. Colored bubbles rose in a tall lighted column before a mirror. Fiber-optic strands winked orange, yellow and ice white. In recliners, three elderly people say comfortably, holding teddy bears. Music played softly as scenes of an autumn woods -- a country fence, a deer -- were projected on a wall."

Sensory stimulation using music, soft tactile items, interesting lighting, and odors tends to reduce anxieties, and the relaxation it induces increases alertness and awareness of surroundings. (It also shields patients from the more jarring lighting and noises of the nursing unit itself.) The objective is well-being without medication.

Studies to document the therapeutic value of Snoezelen rooms are suggestive somewhat inconclusive. Nonetheless, they have greatly grown in number since their origin in the Netherlands in the 1970s, where they remain the standard for elder care. Britain has 1,000 Snoezelen rooms, according to the Rompa Company, which owns the trademark name and sells room equipment to clients across Europe, Australia, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and elsewhere. About 5-600 rooms have opened in the US.

Two elder care executives remark, "It's a very powerful way of calming, comforting and soothing... The stories we get are of people coming alive almost when they have been very reclusive, anxious and withdrawn."

Read the article (Dec. 23, 2003) at the New York Times [fee required], or at the Global Aging site

Visit the Rompa company site

Learn about the use of Snoezelen at camps

Find out more on Snoezelen from Flaghouse

These "hummers," people who hear the sounds when others cannot, are not suffering from tinnitus, the non-stop ringing some people hear as a result of illness or ear damage. What's clear is that they're hearing something. What is not clear is the source of what they are hearing.

This is difficult to trace, because sounds can travel in the environment in unpredictably ways, and because even sensitive acoustic and vibration measuring instruments can sometimes fail to pick up what humans can hear.

The town of Kokomo, Indiana, has spent almost $100,000 to find the source of sound that about 100 of its 50,000 residents can hear. The prime suspect is some industrial ventilation fans; further work will test whether muffling the fans reduces the perceived noise.

In Taos, New Mexico, residents who complain of a low-pitched noise or vibration are still baffled. Investigations continue. The truth is out there.

Read the article in the New York Times, Dec. 2, 2003 [fee required], or at News from Babylon

For an X-Files take on the hums, visit Whitley Strieber's Unknown Country site or the World of the Strange site

Visit the site of acoustic detectives Acentech