I recently went to see the musical film "Mama Mia", came out humming happily 
and strode briskly the half-mile home - only remembered then that I only walk 
slowly with a stick & a limp.
I'd just done non-stop in 10 minutes a walk that had taken me 30 going out, 
with 2 rests.

Go on doctors, explain that ?
Where'd I get the dopamine?
Amanda.

Quoting rayilynlee <[log in to unmask]>:

> Hearing the music, healing the brain
> By Matthew Shulman
> U.S. News and World Report
> Article Last Updated: 09/07/2008 02:08:57 PM MDT
> 
>  Music therapy is helping patients regain abilities lost to Parkinson's, 
> Alzheimer's and strokes.
> Rande Davis Gedaliah's 2003 diagnosis of Parkinson's disease was followed by
> 
> leg spasms, balance problems, difficulty walking, and ultimately a serious 
> fall in the shower. But something remarkable happened when the 60-year-old 
> public-speaking coach turned to an oldies station on her shower radio: She 
> could move her leg with ease, her balance improved and she couldn't stop 
> dancing. Now, she puts on her iPod and pumps in Springsteen's "Born in the 
> U.S.A." when she wants to walk quickly; for a slower pace, Queen's "We Are 
> the Champions" does the trick.
> Music therapy has been practiced for decades as a way to treat neurological 
> conditions from Parkinson's to Alzheimer's to anxiety and depression. Now, 
> advances in neuroscience and brain imaging are revealing what's actually 
> happening in the brain as patients listen to music or play instruments and 
> why the therapy works.
> "It's been substantiated only in the last year or two that music therapy can
> 
> help restore the loss of expressive language in patients with aphasia" 
> following brain injury from stroke, says Oliver Sacks, the noted neurologist
> 
> and professor at Columbia University, who explored the link between music 
> and the brain in his recent book "Musicophilia." Beyond improving movement 
> and speech, he says, music can trigger the release of mood-altering brain 
> chemicals and once-lost memories and emotions.
> Humans born for the beat
> Parkinson's and stroke patients benefit, neurologists believe, because the 
> human brain is innately attuned to respond to highly rhythmic music; in 
> fact, says Sacks, our nervous system is unique among mammals in its 
> automatic tendency to go into foot-tapping mode. In Parkinson's patients 
> with bradykinesia, or difficulty initiating movement, it's thought that the 
> music triggers networks of neurons to translate the cadence into organized 
> movement.
> "We see patients develop something like an auditory timing mechanism," says 
> Concetta Tomaino, cofounder of the Institute for Music and Neurologic 
> Function in New York City. "Someone who is frozen can immediately release 
> and begin walking. Or if they have balance problems, they can coordinate 
> their steps to synchronize with the music," improving their gait and stride.
> 
> Slow rhythms can ease the muscle bursts and jerky motions of Parkinson's 
> patients with involuntary tremors.
> Actually playing music, which requires coordinating muscle movements and 
> developing an ear for timing, can also bring dramatic results, says Rick 
> Bausman, a musician and the founder and director of the Martha's 
> Vineyard-based Drum Workshop.
> The workshop uses traditional drum ensembles, in which groups of 
> participants play percussion pieces, as one form of therapy for patients 
> with a variety of cognitive and physical disabilities, including Parkinson's
> 
> disease. Bausman teaches participants to play along with traditional 
> Afro-Caribbean beats like the Haitian kongo and Cuban bembe using congas, 
> bongos and djun-djun drums.
> "Participants report that their control of physical movement improves after 
> playing the drums, their motion becomes more fluid, they don't shake quite 
> as much, and their tremors seem to calm down," says Bausman.
> Indeed, research on the effects of music therapy in Parkinson's patients has
> 
> found motor control to be better in those who participated in group music 
> sessions - improvisation with pianos, drums, cymbals and xylophones - than 
> in people who underwent traditional physical therapy. But gains were no 
> longer evident two months after the sessions ended, so the best results 
> require continued therapy. To stay motivated, Tomaino recommends seeking out
> 
> both therapeutic drumming groups like Bausman's and social dance classes. 
> Patients can also create music libraries for CDs or MP3 players that can be 
> used to help walking.
> Because the area of the brain that processes music overlaps with speech 
> networks, neurologists have found that a technique called melodic intonation
> 
> therapy is effective at retraining patients to speak by transferring 
> existing neuronal pathways or creating new ones.
> "Even after a stroke that damages the left side of the brain - the center of
> 
> speech - some patients can still sing complete lyrics to songs," says 
> Tomaino. With repetition, the therapist can begin removing the music, 
> allowing the patient to speak the song lyrics and eventually substitute 
> regular phrases in their place. "As they try to recall words that have a 
> similar contextual meaning to the lyrics, their word retrieval and speech 
> improves," she says.
> The technique appears to activate areas on the right side of the brain, 
> suggesting that these areas pick up the slack for the damaged left side, 
> according to Gottfried Schlaug, a Harvard neurologist whose ongoing research
> 
> uses functional MRI scans to study language recovery in stroke patients. 
> "It's startling to see these images," says Sacks; "one would not expect to 
> see such plasticity in the human adult brain."
> Dramatic recoveries
> Trevor Gibbons, 51, can vouch for the brain's flexibility. A patient at Beth
> 
> Abraham Rehabilitation Center in New York City, where Tomaino heads the 
> music therapy program and where Sacks first began treating chronically ill 
> patients decades ago, Gibbons has been able to restore his speech after 
> suffering a devastating spinal injury from a four-story fall and a stroke in
> 
> 2000. The former carpenter says that before he began vocal training and 
> playing piano with music therapists at the clinic, he couldn't speak or move
> 
> and would lie for days in bed, depressed.
> After intensive sessions three times a week over several years, Gibbons not 
> only recovered his speech but also has written more than 400 songs, recorded
> 
> three CDs, and performed at a benefit fundraiser for Beth Abraham at New 
> York's Lincoln Center. (Pre-stroke, says Gibbons, he sang only in his church
> 
> choir.)
> As Gibbons did, patients often report more positive moods following 
> sessions. This may be because of an increase in the production of 
> neurotransmitters like norepinephrine and melatonin, suggested a 1999 study 
> by researchers from the University of Miami School of Medicine. Several 
> studies have shown calming music can lower blood pressure rates, and last 
> year Spanish research showed listening to music before surgery decreased 
> anxiety, heart rate and levels of the stress hormone cortisol as much as the
> 
> anti-anxiety drug diazepam.
> Stress and anxiety relief, in fact, may be one reason music can help people 
> with Alzheimer's and dementia uncover memories that seemed irrecoverable, 
> experts say. Researchers reported in 2006 that enhanced memory recall 
> accompanied significant reductions in anxiety when Alzheimer's patients 
> listened to the "Spring Movement" from Vivaldi's "Four Seasons."
> Set at ease by familiar melodies, they may be more apt to communicate too. 
> Even people at advanced stages of the disease sometimes see improvements in 
> attention and alertness, sociability and overall functioning after music 
> therapy. The reason, experts suspect, is that music stimulates areas deep 
> within the amygdala and hippocampus, where emotion and long- term memory are
> 
> processed. Both are less prone to the effects of Alzheimer's than the outer 
> cortex, the hub for complex thought.
> Music played at a wedding, a religious service, favorite songs from 
> childhood, or concerts from the teenage years or young adulthood can serve 
> as cues to recover memories, says Suzanne Hanser, founder of the music 
> therapy department at the Berklee College of Music in Boston and a 
> practicing therapist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
> Not everyone will respond, and it may take several sessions to see any 
> effect, says Hanser. She finds that simple stress-reduction techniques such 
> as facial massage or muscle-release exercises can often enhance the music's 
> magic.
> 
> Rayilyn Brown
> Director AZNPF
> Arizona Chapter National Parkinson Foundation
> [log in to unmask] 
> 
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