Music and the Brain: Humans are Uniquely Attuned to the Healing Power of Song

By Karen Peterson | From the January/February 2025 issue of Strings

The bullet that entered the left side of Representative Gabrielle Giffords’ head at a mass shooting in Tucson, Arizona, a dozen years ago destroyed the Broca’s area of her brain. Broca’s area is where words are formed as speech, so as she recovered, Giffords was able to understand questions and the answers they required, but she couldn’t carry on a normal conversation. She couldn’t access the words she needed.

Giffords survived that assassination attempt against the odds and, just as miraculously, regained the ability to talk, with limitations. Today diagnosed with aphasia and continuing her therapy, the former congresswoman lives an active, purposeful life.

From that first moment of horror through every step of her recovery, Giffords’ journey has been documented and studied by doctors and medical researchers. The process has yielded invaluable knowledge about treating head trauma and other neurological disorders, including the numerous forms of dementia.

It’s also true, though not as widely publicized, that Giffords’ recovery had everything to do with music. 

Tuning Up Our Internal Sound System

Shortly after stabilizing at University Medical Center in Tucson, Giffords was sent to TIRR Memorial Hermann Hospital in Houston, Texas, where she began working with neurologic music therapist Maegan Morrow. Morrow used music and singing—and memories from friends and family—to forge pathways to areas in the brain that could build on and compensate for the skills Giffords had lost.

“Music is one of the best ways to build those pathways, because elements of music are all over the brain,” Morrow said in an interview with neurosurgeon Phil Stieg. “They used to say, you know, music is on the right side of the brain and language is on the left side. But now they’ve found that music is really dispersed throughout.”

Not centered in one spot, our internal musical sound system is a whole-brain function. Morrow and other music therapists are taking advantage of the brain’s native neuroplasticity: its ability to change and adapt given the right stimuli.

The term music therapy has often been used as a general term to describe the comprehensive universe of ways music soothes the soul, fires the imagination, inspires one to greatness, or cures “what ails us.” In the Middle Ages, Italians dancing the tarantella to cure a mythical tarantula (or other) spider bite is an example of music-as-medicine delivered in frantic 6/8 time. “The musicians’ role was to find the correct rhythm to awaken the spider and make it dance, in order to destroy it,” writes Thomas A. McKean in a study on folk ballads.

Today, music therapy is more likely to reference the fast-growing field of “clinical” music therapy, which relies on science for deeper examinations of brain function and aligns with professional accreditation from the American Music Therapy Association (AMTA).

“Our auditory systems, our nervous systems, are indeed exquisitely tuned for music,” wrote the brilliant Oliver Sacks in his 2007 book, Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, adding that it was not until the late 1970s that science and music found a grounding in studies and technologies that allow us “to see the living brain as people listen to, imagine, and even compose music.”

It Takes a Degree and Clinical Training

The job of music therapists is to assess their clients’ needs and then design sessions to help them that utilize music improvisation, receptive music listening, song writing, music and imagery, and music performance, among other activities.

For the AMTA, founded in 1998, music therapy is a standalone field with distinctive therapeutic instruction. To be AMTA accredited, students must attend one of 72 colleges and universities recommended by the organization. A bachelor’s degree or higher is required with an additional 1,200 hours of clinical training.

The need for skilled therapists is growing. According to the World Health Organization, neurological conditions—including strokes, autism, brain injuries, and dementia—are the leading causes of ill health and disability worldwide.

As defined by AMTA, music therapy is employed “to lessen the effects” of the large number of neurological and psychological conditions noted above and including Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Music also finds applications in cancer, asthma, pain management, and Parkinson’s disease.

In the beginning, the music itself is most often simple, recognizable tunes. The “Happy Birthday” song played on a guitar for Giffords offered up the first indication that she understood in context what came next: “to you.” It could be seen in her expression, but she literally could not find the way in her brain to say the words.

Brianna Lambert-Jenkins, a Colorado-based music therapist, recalls her work building situational “norms” for children aged 3–12 who were suffering from trauma and anxiety disorders, such as Adjustment Disorder and PTSD. Using the guitar, her goal was to “provide opportunities for movement, emotional expression, regulation, and peer connection,” she says. “With older children, my first priority was always creating safety.”

There is no one way to engage with patients, she adds. “As someone who primarily works with children, I always try to use popular music. If I have a client that really likes [Disney’s] Encanto, I will use music from the movie throughout the session and try to incorporate it in their treatment as much as . . . clinically appropriate.”

Hardwired for the Sound of Music

Lambert-Jenkins’ focus on movement and expression is in line with what science is saying about music and the mind—we are indeed hardwired to accept and react to the sounds of music. And not just sound, like a slamming door or chatter from another room, but music specifically, with its patterns and repetitions.

“The idea that our brains are somehow uniquely wired for music is an important point,” says Larry S. Sherman, coauthor with Dennis Plies of 2023’s Every Brain Needs Music: The Neuroscience of Making and Listening to Music. In their book, Sherman and Plies underscore that organic link. For example, the auditory cortex in the left temporal lobe processes and categorizes the multitude of sounds picked up by the ears. MRI testing shows that the auditory cortex is selective: there is an area that accepts only certain sounds—the ones that create music.

“It is music at the source,” says Sherman, adding that there are also indications of “pathways in the brain that contribute to a sense of happiness or sadness in response to certain stimuli, like music.” 

Send in the Strings

Challenging the brain is what clinical music therapy is about, says Sherman. “And I think if you talk to any music therapist, they’ll agree it’s not passive listening [that stimulates the brain]. It’s active engagement.”

Until now, most of the musical stimulation has been provided by guitars, pianos, drums, and some brass instruments. Mainly because they are more accessible. But Austin, Texas-based music therapist Brianna Marie Rzeznik, who is also a practicing psychotherapist and a violist, would like to integrate the violin family into the healing repertoire.

Doing so opens more of the brain’s welcoming doors. “One of the reasons music therapy works is that people are motivated to engage with music they enjoy,” says Rzeznik. Adding the string family would naturally create benefits, she contends. For instance, the violin, as the “most acoustically perfect instrument,” would bring “virtuosity and a range of emotions and dynamics” to the therapy setting.

The “perfectly acoustically proportioned” cello, with a timbre that is “warm and resonant,” is a natural, says Rzeznik. It resembles a human, in its deep voice and shape. The same is true of a double bass.

Rzeznik’s instrument, the viola, is a role model with much to offer, she says. It is an instrument that is “acoustically imperfectly proportioned,” she allows, “but it makes a beautiful sound”—and in this manner, the viola offers up a metaphor, she says, for a client’s own capacity “to carry on despite the challenges they face.”