“Being able to reconstruct your biography just by remembering music attached to time and place”. This is how the verses of one of the hits “Ella es tan cargosa”, a historic band began rock Argentina. And without a doubt, for many people, talking about it song special. It’s not just a note or a chords: There is longings, anecdotes and feelings that vibrate in each one melody.

For parent this dynamic is not small. Although there is scientific evidence showing that over time, humans have less curiosity by discover new rhythms and genresfrom the field music therapy put special emphasis on benefit from voice to get to long live.

Gisel Martinez (MN 798) is a music therapist who treats children, youth and Mature. dialogue with infobaeanalyze the importance of music during aging: “The main benefits of music are always related to improving the quality of life and in well-being subjective older adults, that is, in how they perceive their way of life. If we had to list a few other benefits, it would be stimulating memory and attention, improving body coordination, increasing integral expression, increasing resilience and developing socialization and social bonds.”

Under these teachings, Martínez points out: “In older adults, there is a very mobilizing connection, because listening to music enables the ability to evoke life stories, and more so in therapeutic contexts, where most of them suffer. Alzheimer’s and music serves as a great stimulant for memory, attention, and reliving situations that once brought happiness.”

In turn, music therapist nuria sierra (MN 865) explained to infobae why with old age usually reduce That opening to the new melody: “All humans, over the years, have made identifications related to cultural issues, and music is one of them. Up to a certain age a person incorporates new music and after a while in life it gets less and less. The music that identifies us relates to the first years of life or to youth and we feel it as our own.”

How Sierra and his partners work to claim the benefits of music and promote it curiosity hearing? This is how the expert tells it: “From music therapy we try to improve what is there and maintain certain functions. In cases of old age or old age, we seek to stimulate memory, operational functions or, for example, a person who plays a musical instrument continues to do so.”

Recently, a Study A scientific study conducted by experts from the Netherlands and Denmark investigated the relationship between song and moments of relaxation. The authors are from Aarhus University and Radboud University. “Many people report that listening to music is a tool to improve sleep quality,” they said in the introduction to their work, which also referred to the elderly.

“46% of respondents indicated that they use music to fall asleep, which can significantly improve sleep quality at night. adult population”, emphasize the experts. “The habit of using music to promote sleep may have its roots in caregivers’ tendency to sing lullabies to their babies. This can be physiological or psychological through pleasurable emotional responses, or by acting as a distraction from stressful thoughts.”

To facilitate the relaxation response, according to these scientists, “music must have simple, repetitive rhythms and melodies, small changes in dynamics, slow tempos, no percussion instruments, and minimal vocalizations.” This conclusion was made possible after analyzing the 225,626 songs that are in sleep playlists on Internet music platforms.

Years ago, a work A scientific study conducted by the University of Roehampton, in England, provides interesting data about music and aging. Coining the term ‘open listening’, experts point out: ‘An explanatory concept that has proved useful in this context is ‘open listening’, formulated with the suggestion that younger children may be more open to forms of music that others consider unconventional. mature.

In the same vein, another paper An earlier study, conducted by British psychologists Adam Lonsdale and Adrian North, postulated that responsible adults may have less time to explore their musical interests than younger people.

From Martínez’s point of view, “in adults, even though they have developed personalities and have formed social groups”, music can function “as a unifier, as if it were a bridge between generations”. How? “I see a lot in the office how parents try to get closer to their teenagers through their favorite style of music, which is often surprising and satisfying because they manage to be for a while part of a great young world that has often distanced itself from father-daughter relationships. primitive”, the professional deepens.

For Sierra, “music itself brings a profit pleasure, that accompanies you in the moment and makes it resonate feeling”. In this sense, the therapeutic process “holds to the bond we all have with sound, which predates even the bond we have with language and has been with us since before we were born. The idea is to connect with those emotions and reach out to some of the aspects that, for example, cause the person to suffer or go through a crisis”, as he explains.

And he added: “Every moment in life is linked to something emotional, and that makes music allow us to relive certain pasts. There is no need to have a serious illness: anyone can do music therapy as they do psychoanalysis.”

While drafting her proposal, Sierra considered the case of one of her older patients: “She was a woman who had to undergo a very large and complicated operation. I brought him a recorder because he evokes certain moments from his childhood, thereby bringing him to a happy and happy place where he can feel vital. He needs to feel that way because he will be spending three months in bed.”

So, “recreating those moments helps stimulate all other bodily functions and increases endorphins (NdeR: substances associated with well-being). If you feel better and have a good memory, then you are in a better mood,” concluded the specialist.

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