You’ve Got to Read This

Ann Marks (one of our Kindermusik moms), told me about this article months ago. I was totally intrigued when I heard about the story. She graciously chased it down for me, even calling down to the school to find it. Thanks, Ann!

I’ve said at least a thousand times this research-proven fact – Music is the only activity that simultaneously stimulates EVERY area of the brain. My son Rob is living proof of that. He lived for nearly 6 years with what doctors called a “healthy, disorganized brain”. As a mother, it was heartwrenching, time consuming, and sometimes even a little embarassing. I need to share my story with you, even if it is just in bits and pieces. I’ve put it off, as it is painful to do talk about it in great detail (all those emotions that I experienced come up to the surface), though it has a happy ending. But… I’ll do that later.

Like the young man in the article I’m about to share with you, Rob now plays the violin. With great joy. And beautifully. Here is just an excerpt straight from the article. I’ll give you the link to the full article at the end. Read on, and like me, be totally blown away.

“Better Minds Through Music” by Michael Shasberger, Adams Professor of Music and Worship, Westmont Magazine, Fall 1997

In 2007, one of our violin students nearly died in a car accident and lay in a coma for several weeks. Doctors told the family there was little hope of recovery. He did regain consciousness, however, and while he had limited speech, he couldn’t form cogent thoughts or recognize simple objects. Case workers predicted months or years of therapy and doubted he’d recover his intellectual capabilities.

His violin professor visited him in the midst of these assessments. At the time, the student was doing tests that determined he couldn’t recognize or name simple objects such as a spoon. Then Dr. Phil Ficsor took out his violin and put it in the student’s hand. Perplexed, the student was unable to name the instrument and said he didn’t know what to do with it. Dr. Ficsor put the bow in his other hand and encouraged him to try. Moments later he was playing music from memory that he’d studied a few months earlier. Two months later he was back in school playing drums in the Chapel Band and violin in the orchestra and taking a full academic load. Music played a seemingly miraculous role in a recovery that exceeded the doctor’s wildest imagination. But it wasn’t miraculous. It was the result of violin studies this young man began at the age of 6. The musical resources of both his brain hemispheres were so strongly developed and linked that they could pull together when linguistic skills, which operate in only one lobe, couldn’t. His parents’ investment in musical studies —and the resources committed to his high school orchestra —made the difference. What happened to this student vividly illustrates the value of music education.

I wonder. If musical training had such a profound effect when it was begun at six, (a year past the time when most of the neural connections are finished forming), what could the brain do as a result of having had developmentally appropriate musical “training” since infancy?

As promised, here’s the link to the whole article.

-posted by Miss Analiisa, who remains in awe of the way the brain was created to adapt and recover, whether it be from major trauma, or being “healthy but disorganized.”