Mircles Of Music
For the first entry of my passion blog, I would like to enthuse about a topic that is currently quite relevant to my life. As we all know, music fuels our souls. It helps us become our own self. Music gets us through rough, bumpy, pathways in life. As you listen to a certain song, it can bring back old memories and emotions as if they just happened the day before. For instance, as you listen to a song you and your friends used to jam to, you immediately think of your friends, the first time you listened to it, or the happiness you got when you heard it. It’s the kind of song that you know every beat, every base drop, every lyric, every second of the composition. Whether you're in a car, a restaurant, a store, walking down the street, or your room, you get a mini heart attack of excitement when you hear the first note play.
Recently, my cousin was involved in a terrible motorcycle accident and was listed in critical condition and in a coma. Prior to the accident, I had read an article about how music can generate all different kinds of reactions from patients in comas. I had mentioned to my dad how we had to play some music for him and see if he will react in any way. So, while my dad and I were in the room with my cousin, we played a song that we knew he loved, and we did too. The songs we played that my cousin really reacted to was “All Eyez On Me” and “California Love” by the rapper Tupac. “California Love” being a jam for almost every person in the world. We didn’t want to play some random songs that didn’t have a meaningful, sentimental, memory attached onto it. And both my dad and I knew that these songs did, because we were apart of the memories. They were songs that my cousin, my dad and I used to jam to in the car. They were songs that he knows every beat, every base drop, every lyric, and every second of. As we began playing the music, he began to shift and move around more than he usually did. When “California Love” began to play, he began to wake up and to move around even more(If you are not aware, while you’re in a coma, you can still either be asleep or awake. When you’re awake you just don’t open up your eyes and talk like you usually do). During the song, he moved all four of his arms and legs in some way and shifted his body. This was an amazing reaction that we saw from him. Both my dad and I figured he would react, but not as much as he did. Even the nurses said it was the most awake they had seen him since he had there. As the music was playing, we talked to him and let him know that we were there with him. It is an amazing what music can do and how much of an affect if can have on us.
A coma is a state of deep unconsciousness that lasts for a prolonged or indefinite period, caused especially by severe injury or illness. Injuries that involve the brain such as seizures, infections in the brain, brain damage caused by a lack of oxygen, an overdose of medicine or other abusing drugs, chemical imbalances, or a severe injury to the head that causes pain, cause a person to slip into a coma. While in a coma, the person loses the ability to talk and understand things going on around them. Music, is used as a form of therapy for patients due to the fact that it exercises the non-dominant hemisphere of the brain. In fact, music is one of the several triggers that have been said to rouse patients from unconsciousness. Exactly how it happens are still unproven, but by using new technologies, researchers can observe the ways in which music can stimulate key parts of the unconscious brain. In some hospitals, they often have musical therapists that use music to try to evoke responses from patients in comas. Studies have proven that the musical therapy is most effective if the music was something that they know, and had sentimental meaning behind it. The patient’s age and what parts of the brain that are damaged are factors that determine whether or not a patient will come out of a coma and how long it will take. In some cases, patients sometimes just snap out of the coma. It all depends if the brain has recovered enough to come out of unconsciousness. The miracles that music can perform is absolutely fascinating in so many different ways. The power that the sound of music holds is astonishing and it proves the fact that music is a form a therapy for the brain. Through the good and the bad times, listening to music improves your brain's ability.
"15 Songs That Brought People Out of Comas." Mental Floss. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Mar. 2016.
