Um espaço para partilha de ideias relacionadas com as práticas artísticas
e os seus efeitos terapêuticos, com destaque para a vertente musical

quarta-feira, 27 de novembro de 2013

Music, Language & Learning

One might ask, why do music, language and learning complement each other?

Without getting into the neuroscience of music and brain theories, the simple answer is that music involves or stimulates both sides of the brain, and when both hemispheres are engaged, we tap into more potential for cognitive growth or learning.
The other great aspect of music is that it’s auditory, visual, vocal, tactile and physical, and the more senses that are involved in an activity, the greater the capacity for learning and retention.
In a nutshell, one could say that music is an effective teaching strategy, and teaching strategies make learning highly transferable!



Music stimulates both sides of the brain, and when both hemispheres are engaged, we tap into more potential for learning. 
Music is a multi-sensory experience, and the more senses that are involved in an activity (e.g., hearing, seeing, doing), the greater the capacity for learning and retention. 
Music is universal and is accessible to anyone, regardless of age, gender, culture, intellectual or physical ability. 
Music is structured, predictable, and repetitive, and these components are all essential parts of promoting speech and language skills. 


Info from TheSpeechStop

domingo, 24 de novembro de 2013

Long-Term Benefits of Music Lessons


Childhood music lessons can sometimes leave painful memories, but they seem to carry benefits into adulthood. A new study reports that older adults who took lessons at a young age can process the sounds of speech faster than those who did not.
“It didn’t matter what instrument you played, it just mattered that you played,” said Nina Kraus, a neuroscientist at Northwestern University and an author of the study, which appears in The Journal of Neuroscience.
She and her collaborators looked at 44 healthy adults ages 55 to 76, measuring electrical activity in a region of the brain that processes sound.
They found that participants who had four to 14 years of musical training had faster responses to speech sounds than participants without any training — even though no one in the first group had played an instrument for about 40 years.
Dr. Kraus said the study underscored the need for a good musical education. “Our general thinking about education is that it is for our children,” she said. “But in fact we are setting up our children for healthy aging based on what we are able to provide them with now.”
Other studies have suggested that lifelong musical training also has a positive effect on the brain, she added. Dr. Kraus herself plays the electric guitar, the piano and the drums — “not well but with great enthusiasm,” she said.


quarta-feira, 20 de novembro de 2013

What is Art Therapy?


What is Art Therapy?

Art therapy is the intentional use of art making to explore personal issues or concerns within a therapeutic relationship. Creating art and reflecting on the art symbols, people can increase self-awareness. Being artistic is not necessary to benefit from art therapy. No previous art experience or artistic talent is needed to participate in art therapy. Art therapy is used as a primary form of therapy or serves as an accompanying treatment to other forms of therapy.

Art represents a symbolic communication. The art becomes significant in enhancing verbal exchange between the client and the art therapist. With therapeutic guidance and support, art making can facilitate new insights, expression of emotions, resolve conflicts, and formulate new perceptions that in turn lead to positive changes, growth and healing.


What Art Therapy Can Accomplish?

* Gives another language to what cannot be easily put into words, a symbolic language
* Allows for expression of feelings including anger, rage, sadness, that can be contained in the art work
* Makes abstract feelings and memories concrete, the artist can now physically do something with the negative feelings
* Offers choice making with art materials, thus may bring new insights on how to manage the problem
* Assists in enriching the relationship with oneself and with others
* Allows space to develop a deeper sense of meaning and life purpose
* Can provide a container where unwanted feelings and thoughts can be held outside of the person
* Activates more of the brain than verbal therapy, offering additional coping skills and ideas to solve issues

Info from CarlySullens

domingo, 17 de novembro de 2013

Photos of children and animals that encourages therapy through animals

Photos of children and animals at a hospital in Michigan that encourages therapy through animals. 

In September 1956, LIFE photographer Francis Miller visited the children at the University Hospital in Ann Arbor, Michigan, to document the hospital’s animal therapy program, which had already been in operation for over 30 years.

At the time, the hospital treated about 3,000 children every year, and the staff operated a “perpetual animal show” to help ease their pain and anxiety.

So wonderful, anything that can put a smile on the face of a kid in hospital is more than worthwhile!

A nurse brings a puppy to a child. Source

A nurse helps a child cuddle a duckling in a towel. Source

Nurses help the kids bathe a baby pig. Source

A little girl looks at a pool of ducklings while receiving tests. Source

A little girl is held up to pet and feed a kitten. Source

1956, by Francis Miller for LIFE.


sexta-feira, 15 de novembro de 2013

How Music Can Reach the Silenced Brain

Words Spoken And Sung
There are several cases in which a patient has recovered speech through the systematic use of rhythmic patterning, leading first to recovery of familiar lyrics and words embedded in songs, then to self-initiation of normal, fluent speech.Image courtesy of Concetta M. Tomaino
Because music has parallels to spoken language, much research on music and the brain has zeroed in on the similarities and differences between them. The similarities could be clues to more successful methods of using musical cueing to stimulate similar language responses in people with brain injuries. One remarkable example of the functional difference between music and language, however, occurs in people who have suffered a left-side stroke, resulting in a type of aphasia where verbal comprehension still exists but the ability to speak or find the right words is lost. In these cases, the brain lesion is often located in what is called Broca’s area; speech is slow, not fluent, and hesitant, with great difficulties in articulation.  Yet, despite the loss of speech, many people with this type of aphasia can sing complete lyrics to familiar songs. This has usually been attributed to the separation of function of the left and right hemispheres of the brain, speech being dominant on the left and singing on the right.
Because many clinicians assume a complete separation of function between singing and speaking, they give little attention to the potential for using music to aid speech. But there are several cases in which a patient has recovered speech through the systematic use of rhythmic patterning, leading first to recovery of familiar lyrics and words embedded in songs, then to self-initiation of normal, fluent speech. In each case, however, this remarkable change had been attributed not to the music but to spontaneous recovery during the early months after the stroke.
A similarity shared by music and speech is what we call “prosody,” which includes the elements of stress, pitch direction, pitch height, and intonation contour, or inflection. People with nonfluent aphasia can perform a type of prosodic speech that includes the inflection and contour of previously known phrases. This speech differs, however, from propositional speech (which includes verbal expression of new thoughts and ideas) in its rate, discrete pitch, and increased predictability. Aniruddh D. Patel, Ph.D., a scientist at the Neurosciences Institute in California, theorizes that rhythm and song, which are inherently predictable, may create a “supra-linguistic” structure that helps cue what is coming next in an utterance.
Brain-imaging studies by Dr. Pascal Berlin, of the Service Hospitalier Frederic Joliot in France, and more recently by Dr. Burkhard Maess at the Max Planck Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, used PET and MEG scans to determine that areas peripheral to the left language regions of the brain are involved in processing the singing of single words. Additional imaging studies suggest that some aspects of music and language are processed in both the right and left sides of the brain. In many patients who are able to carry over speech techniques from music, success seems to come from their increased ability to attend to sounds and to initiate them, perhaps because parallel mechanisms for these functions have been called into play by music and singing.

sábado, 9 de novembro de 2013

Playing violin to escape from impoverished and crime ridden environments

The boy who cries in the photo is Diego Frazao Torquato, who played the violin in the String Orchestra of the Afro Reggae. Afro Reggae is a non-profit organization that gives kids hope and an escape from their impoverished and crime ridden environments. The occasion was the funeral of his teacher and social project coordinator, Evandro João Silva, who was murdered in downtown Rio. 

Diego contracted meningitis at age four, aggravated by pneumonia, and struggled with memory difficulties. He still managed to learn the violin. Diego, born and raised in the slums of Parada de Lucas, dreamed that the violin would take him to see the world. Sadly, shortly after this photo was taken Diego died of leukemia. At Diego’s funeral José Júnior, the coordinator of Afroreggae stated, “I think the legacy of Diego is hope, it is the willingness to change, to transform”.


Info from WorldFacts