Listening to music during surgery helps protect brain cells

According to a study at Cleveland Hospital, music may slow down neuronal combustion in the brain during surgery to treat Parkinson's disease.

Suggestions for this study began two years ago, when a patient named Damir Janigro underwent spinal surgery. Jamigro is also a neurologist of the hospital.

Lying on the surgery bed, he suddenly thought of the good dentists putting patients on headphones to avoid fear. If people suffer from music, he thinks, why aren't patients undergoing brain surgery enjoying the benefit?

Victims of epilepsy, brain tumors, depression and obsession, and motor-related illnesses like Parkinson's often wake up a few hours after surgery.

Janigro and his team decided to use the awakening period to determine how music affects the patient's ability to reduce stress.

The son of a famous cellist, Janigro is also an expert in epilepsy and is working with the Cleveland Institute of Medicine and Arts to develop methods to relieve pain and blood pressure, improve the movement of Parkinson's patients.

The medical community has long been interested in the influence of music on the brain. However, in the past most researches only involved the cerebral cortex, which has functions of memory, awareness and abstract thoughts.

In the new study, patients undergoing brain surgery will wake up with the cortex open, and listen to music. While their nerves work and remember, they will let researchers know how they feel.

Janigro wants to study movement centers deep in the brain because music is often associated with movements like finger typing. He said that music could be used to alter the activity of thalamic regions and subthalamic neurons, in areas where pacemakers attach to deep brain stimulation.

In Janigro's study, more than a dozen Parkinson patients heard three excerpts from three different, easy-listening genres (by Gyorgi, Ligety, Stanley Kubric in the soundtrack), difficult to hear (Aaron Jaykemin - press award winner Pulitzer) and relatively easy to hear (Beethoven's).

In the final genre, to prevent boredom, the melody is performed by students at Cleveland Music Institute. Most patients feel relaxed after waking up.

Listening to music has reduced the activity of neurons deep in the brain, causing patients to fall asleep, even some people snore.

When surgeon Ah Rezai needs patients to perform a movement during treatment, such as lifting the arm, he simply takes the headphones and when the music comes back, the patients quickly fall into their sleep. .

These are very positive results. Patients can relax more in the operating room. This relaxation is not only meaningful in the need for fewer medical procedures, such as blood pressure control, but also in patients who are able to recover faster, shorten the length of hospital stay.

Janigro believes that music will be used in neurosurgeons at the hospital in early 2010, and other hospitals will also follow Cleveland's experience.

In addition to the above benefits, patients also enjoy the free regime for this new method. Janigro used his ipod and colleagues in the study.

The hospital has no budget for iPods, but Janigro believes that this will soon be done, when sleep is likely to bring miracles to patients.