Music Therapy Today a quarterly journal of studies in music and music therapy from the Chair of Qualitative Research in Medicine
Volume VII, Issue 2 (July 2006)
David Aldridge & Jรถrg Fachner (eds.) Chair of Qualitative Research in Medicine Published by MusicTherapyWorld.net UniversityWitten/Herdecke Witten, Germany ISSN 1610-191X
Editor in Chief/Publisher Prof. Dr. phil. David Aldridge Managing Editor Dr. Jörg Fachner, joergf@uni-wh.de Translation and editorial assistance Christina Wagner, cwagner@uni-wh.de Book review editor and dissertations archive Annemiek Vink, a.c.vink@capitolonline.nl “Odds and Ends, Themes and Trends” Tom Doch, t.doch@t-online.de International contacts Dr. Petra Kern, PETRAKERN@prodigy.net Scientific Advisory Board Prof. Dr. Jaakko Erkkilä, University of Jyväskylä, Finland Dr. Hanne Mette Ridder, University of Aalborg, Denmark Dr. Gudrun Aldridge, University Witten/Herdecke, Germany Marcos Vidret, University of Buenos Aires, Argentinia Dr. Cochavit Elefant, Bar-Ilan University, Israel Prof. Dr. Cheryl Dileo. Temple University in Philadelphia, USA Prof. Dr. Marlene Dobkin de Rios, University of California, Irvine, USA Dr. Alenka Barber-Kersovan University of Hamburg, Germany Prof. Dr. Tia DeNora, University of Exeter, UK Dr. Patricia L. Sabbatella, University of Cadiz, Spain
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Table of contents Music Therapy Today i a quarterly journal of studies in music and music therapy from the Chair of Qualitative Research in Medicine i Volume VII, Issue 2 (July 2006) i Table of contents vii Editorial Music Therapy Today Vol. VII (2) (online 1st July 2006) 282 Aldridge, David & Fachner, Jörg 282 LSD, Meditation and Music 286 Verres, Rolf 286 “Music is My Whole Life” - The many meanings of music in addicts’ lives 297 Horesh, Tsvia 297 The use of music therapy with substance abusers 318 Abdollahnejad, Mohammad Reza 318 ‘Set and setting’ in an electrophysiological research paradigm on music perception under the influence of cannabis and correlated brain function 333 Fachner, Jörg 333 Glitzernd...pulsierend...eine endlose Zeit lang - Wie verändert sich Musik unter Drogeneinfluß? 375 Holbein, Ulrich 375 The pleasure of being “differently able”: Integration through music vii
therapy in primary schools 413 Esperson, Paola Pecoraro 413 Biomedical Music Therapy: Research-Based Foundation of the Effects of Music - An interview with Dale Taylor 430 Kern, Petra 430 Instituto MĂşsica, Arte Y Proceso - Music, Art and Process Institute 436 del Campo, Paxti 436 Odds and ends - themes and trends 440 Doch, Tom 440
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Music Therapy Today Vol. VII (2) (July) 2006
Editorial Music Therapy Today Vol. VII (2) (online 1st July 2006) Aldridge, David & Fachner, Jörg
Welcome to a new issue of „Music Therapy Today“ In our summer issue we focus partly on music and altered states. We have already published several works on healing rituals using music to induce altered states in other issues of Music Therapy Today to show that there are current approaches of practice using music and altered states in a safe and adequate manner for research and therapeutic purposes. This research has culminated in a recent book on music and altered states ( Aldridge and Fachner 2006) and a seminar on this topic at the Witten/ Herdecke University as we have reported in March. The paper from Rolf Verres on LSD, Meditation and Music is based on the author’s presentation at the symposium „LSD – problem child and wonder drug“, 13-15th of January 2006 in Basle Switzerland. Rolf Verres is Professor and Head of the Institute of Medical Psychology at Heidelberg University Clinic in Germany. He has been a staunch proponent of
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music therapy over the years, as well as being a musician himself. We are very pleased to have his contribution. Tsvia Horesh writes in her paper “Music is My Whole Life” - The many meanings of music in addicts’ lives that “The aim of my research process –is to describe, analyze and eventually – gain a better understanding of the relationships between addicts and their music”. Her paper is based on her presentation at a conference on dimensions of the unconscious in Canada 2005. Certain people become addicted to drugs. Music therapy is a possible intervention in terms of recovery and treatment. The paper from Reza Abdollahnejad on The use of music therapy with substance abusers is based on his presentation at the world congress of music therapy in Brisbane, Australia back in 2005. When working with addicted clients in therapy, it is of interest to understand state-dependent music cognition of addicts. Jörg Fachner presents his research design on an adequate use of ‘set and setting’ for an electrophysiological research paradigm on music perception under the influence of cannabis and correlated brain function at the 2005 AAA conference in Washington, DC. The next article by Ulrich Holbein, Glitzernd...pulsierend...eine endlose Zeit lang - Wie verändert sich Musik unter Drogeneinfluß? a well-known German writer and author, is only in German. This is a german manuscript written for a radio feature together with the German radiostation WDR and was broadcast in 2004.
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There is a growing interest in the medical profession to use psychedelic medication like other remedies ( Lancert 2006). The Multiple Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) research health institutions in the US, in Switzerland and Israel, have approved proposals, designed for the medical use of psychedelic substances in treatment. Some of these research protocols integrate the appreciation of music for the participants ( Mithoefer 2006) reminding us of the early days of GIM when Helen Bonny prepared the music program for psychotherapeutic purposes ( Bonny and Pahnke 1972). In July 2006, a musicology conference on Music and Consciousness issues, to be held at the University of Sheffield, UK., will focus on music and altered states as well. Let us now turn to other features in this issue. The paper, The pleasure of being “differently able”: Integration through music therapy in primary schools from Paola Pecoraro Esperson, shows how group music therapy can help the integration, as well as the development of “differently able” children in regular schools. This paper is based on a presentation at the world conference of music therapy in Oxford back in 2002. Those regular readers of this magazine will be aware that Petra Kern has also published in this field and her contribution can be found in Music Therapy Today Vol 5(4) August 2004. When Petra Kern was teaching “Theories in Music Therapy” at the University of Windsor in Canada, she had the idea of an interview with Dr. Dale Taylor. Her students became very excited about Dr. Taylor’s explanations of the functioning of music on the human brain.
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References
The Instituto MĂşsica, Arte y Proceso (Music, Art and Process Institute) is celebrating an anniversary this year. This Institute has a lot of experience organizing courses, summer schools and congresses, among them the VII Music Therapy World Congress in Vitoria Gasteiz. Odds and ends themes and trends picked up by Tom Doch shows the variety of sciences related to music and music therapy issue and allows to surf the web for more information. Until we read again David Aldridge and JĂśrg Fachner
References Aldridge, D. and Fachner, J. (Eds.). (2006). Music and altered states Consciousness, transcendence, therapy and addictions. London: Jessica Kingsley. Bonny, Helen L. and Pahnke, Walter N. (1972) 'The use of music in psychedelic (LSD) psychotherapy.' Journal of Music Therapy IX, Summer, 64-87. Lancet (2006) 'Editorial: Reviving research into psychedelic drugs.' Lancet 367, 1214. Mithoefer, M. (2006) MAPS FDA and IRB approved MDMA/PTSD protocol. Retrieved 3. February from http://www.maps.org/mdma/protocol/index.html
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LSD, Meditation and Music Verres, Rolf
Editor’s note This paper is based on the author’s presentation at the symposium „LSD – problem child and wonder drug“, 13-15th of January, 2006 in Basel
Switzerland. It was presented on January 15th as a keynote at the international symposium for the celebration of the 100th birthday of Albert Hofmann, the discoverer of LSD. Over 1500 people joined this symposium from all over the world and new research on the medical use of psychedelics, reflections on cultural issues and problems, influence on artists and political issues has been presented by a variety of researchers.
Background My personal experience: First contacts with LSD as a student in Muenster, monitored by HansHinrich Taeger who was preparing a philosophical dissertation on texts for psychedelic music (Taeger, 1988). Thorough preparation involving the text by Timothy Leary and Ralph Metzner „on how to plan psychedelic experiences“ (Leary et al., 1964) and extensive introduction by the trip master . • Further personal experience as a member of SÄPT (Schweizer Äırztegesellschaft für Psycholytische Therapie/Swiss physicians asso•
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ciation for psycholytic therapy): encounter groups with psychoactive substances with, e.g. Ralph Metzner and Peter Hess.. • Two-week shaman excursion to Peru with San Pedro and Ayahuasca rituals (see also De Rios, 2006) under the guidance of Don Eduardo Cameron. Altered states of consciousness play an important role in music therapy research where I have been active together with music therapists since 1987 . As an active musician I stopped taking psychoactive substances years ago, in accordance with Albert Hofmann who said: „As soon as the doors of perception are open, you won’t need any psychoactive substances.“ Another background for my paper is our Heidelberg research project „Ritual dynamics and salutogenesis in the use and abuse of psychoactive substances“ (RISA): it covers interviews with adolescents, members of the Santo Daime movement, and with physicians and psychotherapists on personal experience with psychoactive substances. Over several years I held seminars on criteria of good mediational music at the psychotherapy weeks in Lindau; you find a discography with comments on my website www.rolf-verres.de.
Which kind of music to choose for therapeutical use of LSD? In his book entitled „LSD-Psychotherapie“ Stanislav Grof (1994)1 writes that music is an indispensible part of LSD psychotherapy: „It stimulates strong emotions in many cases and promotes deeper involvement in the psychedelic process. It provides a meaningful 1. Information on a new edition (2006) of this book is available from http:// www.maps.org; the cited and retranslated extract comes from the German edition of Grof’s book, which was published in 1983
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structure for the experience and creates a powerful current that helps the patient to overcome difficult moments in sessions and dead ends. Patients often report that the current of music enabled them to give up their mental defense mechanisms and to abandon themselves in their experience without inhibition. Another purpose of music is to provide continuity and relation in the sequence of unusual states of consciousness. (…) A certain choice of music may often support certain emotional qualities like aggressivity, sexuality, the „psychedelic breakthrough“ or a transcendental experience“. For the selection of music, Grof lists the following criteria, in accordance with Helen Bonny and Walter Pahnke (Bonny & Pahnke, 1972 p. 6): The experience should not be governed by any definite pattern. Pieces of highest artistic quality but with little „defined“ content should be preferred. • Songs or vocal music where the text addresses a certain subject should be avoided, unless the song is in a language unknown to the person in question, so that the human voice may become an unspecific stimulus. •
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Grof points out that there is not much danger of manipulation by a certain kind of music since patients’ unconscious tendencies would be more effective than external stimuli.
In my opinion, this statement by Grof applies only to carefully monitored sessions in a therapeutic context and not to any uncontrolled drug consumption. Grof also discusses the choice of music under process-related aspects: in the latent period before the drug becomes effective, he finds soft, flowing and calming music appropriate. After the experience starts, he recommends music of a stimulating and supportive nature. When after about one hour and a half the drug reaches its full effect, he believes the time has come for powerful music that raises emotions. In Spring Grove, they played mainly classical music, e.g. by Skriabin, Brahms, Schumann or Grieg during this phase. When in the fourth hour LSD had reached its strongest influence, this was the opportunity for a strong emotional or
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spiritual breakthrough (powerful music of a transcendental nature was particularly suited, e.g. spiritual music by Mozart, Bach or Berlioz). The final phase required soft, relaxed and flowing music of a certain timeless character, e.g. classical guitar and harpsichord compositions, or music by modern composers like Georg Deuter, Paul Horn, Ravi Shankar, and meditational zen music – Grof recommends a whole range of tranceinducing music from a variety of different cultures (see Grof, 1975, 1994). CULTURE OF ADDICTION AND MUSIC
A completely different aspect, that is, some risks and side effects of certain types of music in the use and abuse of psychoactive substances, was addressed at the 10th World Congress of Music Therapy 2002 in Oxford by the Israelian music therapist Tsvia Horesh. Her paper was entitled „Dangerous Music“. Tsvia Horesh (2006) works with severely drugaddicted and drug-damaged persons in a therapy community in Israel, and she explored destructive and healing forces of popular music in the treatment of people who were considerably damaged by drug abuse. On the basis of the story in Homer’s Odyssey about the sirens’ songs she underlines the captivating power of some types of music where the attraction is stronger than any concept of danger. Drug related music can be extremely suggestive and become an element of addiction; she agrees with William White (1996) and points out that excessive drug abuse may be increased by a „culture of addiction“. We know that the addictive potential of LSD is very small; but in this context I refer to persons who take a host of drugs indiscriminately, one of which may also be LSD. Against this culture of addiction Tsvia Horesh sets a culture of healing where the challenge is to cope with cues and craving. Musical preferences that were intensified under the influence of drugs may serve to maintain unfavourable patterns of abuse – Horesh reports of obsessive music listening even in abstinent periods when an Which kind of music to choose for therapeutical use of LSD?
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emotional vacuum is often filled by music. Horesh asked her clients to describe the type of music they felt to be dangerous, and she elicited associations triggered by the music in question. She found heavy metal music associated with the following visions: street fighting, excessive drinking, but also reassurance and release from rage. She also heard of chaotic emotions intensified by an integration of psychedelic experience in the altered state of mind. Even Israeli music coloured by Arab sounds was described as dangerous whenever it expressed melancholy and hopelessness. Tsvia Horesh describes her own part in the withdrawal treatment like that of Circe who helped Odysseus to cope with the sirens as she knew about the mysteries and dangers of the subconscious mind. Those who want to offer a certain type of music to others for the purposes of psychedelic experience often follow their own preferences. However, it is important to discuss in advance the suitability of the music for the perceptive powers of the person in question. There are music recordings (Cd.s, LPs, etc.) dedicated to Albert Hofmann that are almost heavy metal – although he loves classical music, e.g. the quintett in C major by Franz Schubert (see Verres 2006). And to my knowledge Albert Hofmann has not taken LSD for a long time since his doors of perception are wide open anyway.
Using music and LSD for therapeutic purposes Going beyond the criteria mentioned by Stanislav Grof, I would like to differentiate between the following aspects that might be important in using LSD: 1. Is the motivation for the LSD experience rather hedonistic, i.e. oriented towards general enjoyment, or directed to a dilatation of consciousness? I believe that a primarily hedonistic motivation should not be generally dismissed. When I was a member of SĂ„PT, at a time
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2.
3.
4.
5.
when it was still legal to use LSD in SÄPT, I took part in a group experiment supervised by today’s president of SÄPT, Dr. Peter Gasser. He used nothing but serene, harmonic and pleasant music, e.g. live guitar music by Dr. Otto Silber from Konstanz, Germany whose CDs I would like to recommend. Is the LSD trip intended for one person, for two, in a secluded room or as a group experience? For a single experience I recommend the above-mentioned criteria by Stanislav Grof; an erotic experience for two should rather be accompanied by flowing sounds, e.g. the music by Otto Silber or Sufi music by Oruc Güvenc or unobtrusive pulsing percussion sounds from various continents; prior to any group experiments it should be clear whether the psychedelic trip should have a common theme. In a group of men, for example, the song by Marie Boine on howling wolves would be as pertinent as music dedicated to the opposite pole of the male principle, i.e. the anima according to CG Jung. Obviously, an abrupt change in thematic focus should be avoided in an encounter group in view of the slow processes in a psychedelic LSD trip; instead, a carefully staged production should correspond to the previously agreed themes for the planned self-experience. For the careful staging of a group experience it might be useful to follow the criteria for so-called movie sound tracks. I think it is not necessary to enlarge upon this aspect as it is self-evident. In contrast to what Stanislav Grof writes about the possible suggestive meaning of texts, I would expressly encourage the quotation of texts or the use of music oriented towards lyrical texts for theme-related LSD experiences. Some people wishing to have an LSD experience simply select music that is termed „meditative“ or „psychedelic“ and do not take into account that verbal content may have a very intensive effect. The text on the record „Schwingungen“ by Ash Ra Tempel from the 1970s contains passages saying that in making music you can swim in the vibrations of the music of the stars and can drink light that hurries through cosmis spaces. „That which lives in you and in us, our vibration is in everything: the paradise that is life“. But the record also contains a title „Flowers must die“ that starts with unstructured flowing sounds and gradually assumes a violently stirring rhythm with a text that is by no means hedonistic or harmonizing but fundamentally political. I use this example to demonstrate that texts may have the same effect as pure music and therefore have to be chosen with care in view of the increased suggestibility in LSD trips. Psychedelic experiences do not require a sound in the sense of the style of so-called psychedelic music. Basically, almost any kind of music may support psychedelic experience. Sound and stereoscopic effects play an important role and deserve much attention in the choice of musical instruments or amplifiers.
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6. Differences between art and kitsch are particularly important in socalled meditative music. The composer Hans Zender (in Fischer, 1998 p. 107-108) speaks of a „monstrous soulful trash that appeared recently as so-called ‚medidative music’ (…); the perfumed and cheaply euphorizing atmosphere of a ‚new age mentality’ suffocates any creative impulse“. If and insofar regression takes place within a psychedelic trip it can be uncritical to some extent; but it may also be felt and shaped quite literally as a return to the roots. 7. I refer to Adolf Dittrich (1996, 1998) and his basic categories of altered states of waking consciousness, specifically his differentiation between Oceanic Boundlessnes and Dread of Ego Dissolution. In LSD psychotherapy as conceived by Stanislav Grof, so-called horror trips in the sense of dread of ego dissolution are expressly approved provided these experiences are monitored by a professional psychotherapist so that they may be integrated in one’s self-concept and personal biography. If we strive for oceanic feelings of security without professional supervision, and originally controlling ego functions dissolve in ecstasy, then it will be important to explore the deeper meanings of the term „regression“. States of blissful infantility, harmony and relaxation may be pleasant. But according to Martin Mumelter (in Fischer, 1998 p. 110), the way in which ‚meditative music’ is marketed can exploit the need for regression in such a way that this ‚transcendental trash’ as he calls it will not support, but ruin our spiritual potential. 8. Are there specific characteristics of ‚spiritual music’? The logotherapist Otto Zsok writes in his book „Musik und Transzendenz“ (1998): „Abandoning oneself to a great piece of music is more than delight. It is a liberating, cathartic experience. It is a densely sensual experiense (…) This type of experience brings a wealth of light, beauty, truth and a brightening of our reality which we could never reach otherwise.“ In music we feel that our existence on earth is worthwhile. „While the melody is filling me completely, I perceive how wide the spaces within me really are, how wide and broad my inner emptiness is, how deep and at the same time high the spaces of soul to be conquered.“ And Otto Zsok quotes the theologian Hans Küng as follows: „You feel that you are completely turned inwards with eyes and ears, body and spirit, and that everything external, all opposition, all division between subject and object, have been overcome.
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Music is no longer opposite but is what comprises, penetrates and entirely fulfils us with delight.“ (Zsok, 1998 p. 132). A Rumanian professor of musical aesthetics, George Balan, used words that appear very solemn but nevertheless may be understood properly in the context of this congress: „Entering the holy shrine of music means entering the holy shrine of our own inner life.“ (Zsok, 1998 p. 210).
Conclusion In conclusion, let me invite you to a very short joint musical experience of about three minutes only where I try with many floating sounds and much air in between, to express some of my thoughts through music. Download music examples from CD Lichtungen recorded by Rolf Verres Track 2.mp3 (7,9 MB) Track 5.mp3 (7,9 MB) (Music by Rolf Verres (piano solo) is available at www.sound-file.de; more information: www.rolf-verres.de)
References Bonny, H. L., & Pahnke, W. N. (1972). The use of music in psychedelic (LSD) psychotherapy. Journal of Music Therapy, IX(Summer), 6487. De Rios, M. D. (2006). The Role of Music in Healing with Hallucinogens: Tribal and Western Studies. In D. Aldridge & J. Fachner (Eds.), Music and Altered States - Consciousness, Transcendence, Therapy and Addictions (pp. 97-101). London: Jessica Kingsley.
Conclusion
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Dittrich, A. (1996). Ätiologie-unabhängige Strukturen veränderter Wachbewusstseinszustände. Ergebnisse empirischer Untersuchungen über Halluzinogene I. und II. Ordnung, sensorische Deprivation, hypnagoge Zustände, hypnotische Verfahren sowie Reizüberflutung (2 ed.). Berlin: Verlag für Wissenschaft und Bildung. Dittrich, A. (1998). The standardized psychometric assessment of altered states of consciousness (ASCs) in humans. Pharmacopsychiatry, 31 Suppl 2, 80-84. Fischer, M. (1998). Da berühren sich Himmel und Erde – Musik und Spiritualität. Eine Anthologie. Zürich & Düsseldorf: Benzinger. Grof, S. (1975). Realms of the human unconscious: observations from LSD research. New York: Viking Press. Grof, S. (1994). LSD psychotherapy (2nd ed.). Alameda, CA: Hunter House. Horesh, T. (2006). Dangerous Music -Working with the Destructive and Healing Powers of Popular Music in the Treatment of Substance Abusers. In D. Aldridge & J. Fachner (Eds.), Music and Altered States - Consciousness, Transcendence, Therapy and Addiction (pp. 125-139). London: Jessica Kingsley. Leary, T., Metzner, R., & Alpert, R. (1964). The Psychedelic Experience. A Manual based on the Tibetan Book of Death: Oxford University Press. Taeger, H.-H. (1988). Spiritualität und Drogen - Interpersonelle Zusammenhänge von Psychedelika und religiös-mystischen Aspekten in
References
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der Gegenkultur der 70er Jahre (1 ed.). Markt Erlbach: Raymond Martin. Verres, R. (2006) From natural science to philosophy. A man with the capacity for insight and wonder. In: Engel, G. & Herrling, P. (eds): Exploring the frontiers - In celebration of Albert Hoffmann’s 100th Birthday. (pp. 94-121) Basel: Schwabe White, W. (1996). Pathways from the Culture of Addiction to the Culture of Recovery. Center City, Minnesota: Hazeldon Pub. Zsok, O. (1998). Musik und Transzendenz. St. Ottilien: EOS-Verlag.
This article can be cited as: Verres, R. (2006) LSD, Meditation and Music. Music Therapy Today (Online) Vol.VII (2) 286-296. available at http://musictherapyworld.net AUTHOR CONTACT
Prof. Dr. Rolf Verres Institute for Medical Psychology University Klinik Heidelberg
This article can be cited as:
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Bergheimer Str. 50 69115 Heidelberg
This article can be cited as:
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“Music is My Whole Life” - The many meanings of music in addicts’ lives Horesh, Tsvia
This article is based upon a paper given at the INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM sponsored by the Laurier Centre for Music Therapy Research (LCMTR) "MUSIC:The Royal Road to the Unconscious: Researching Unconscious Dimensions in Music Therapy" May 13-15, 2005, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada http://www.wlu.ca/soundeffects/symposium/2005/
Introduction I would like to introduce the people who contributed to my research and who’s personal stories of the music in their lives are interwoven in the following paper. All my interviewees agreed to be presented in my research, using pseudonyms, so as to protect their identity.
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Here are some of their comments on the importance of music in their lives: • • • • • • • •
PREFACE
Sasha (age 25) “... the music never leaves me. Music is always with me” Dima (age 24) “ I can’t imagine my life without music. I see my life and my music always together” Yelena (age 28) “ I’m always with music. I live in it” Nahum (age 43) “I have a relationship with that word – music” Ella (age 29) “Music was like drugs” Zohar (age 20) “If I had to go stay on a desert island , and I could take either my music or my girlfriend – I would take my music. Boris (28) “I grew up with those songs” Yonatan (32) “It’s amazing how the music is half and half – with some of the experiences, like milestones …on my way down, with the drugs.
When I first started to work with addicts, 10 years ago, in various rehab. centers, my thoughts on addicts and the kinds of music they listen to – were quite stereotypical. But as time went by, I learned that above and beyond the kind of music addicts may listen to, it’s important to investigate the quality of the relationship many of them form with their music – whether it’s electronic music, Russian criminal songs or Janis Joplin. I have come to the conclusion that music therapy with addicts should include, among other things, working with the music in their lives. The music, in therapy, then changes from being a means – to becoming the goal. In our music therapy groups we listen to, discuss, negotiate and reevaluate the music the addicts listened to in their drug-using past, and their present period of therapy and rehab. For many of the people these sessions enable a first time opportunity to examine their relationship with music, in the secure and containing environment of the group; what emotions it evokes, what memories and life-stories it awakens. How it defines their personal, social and ethnic identity; how they use music in their daily life; how their music relates to their drug abuse and what dan-
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gers or risks it holds for them; how music can function as a source of relaxation, joy and well being.
Drug addicts, addiction and rehabilitation treatment I want to stress that this paper relates specifically to drug addicts, who have undergone treatment in the therapeutic community treatment model. The phenomenon of addiction to a variety of substances and behaviors is widespread; and there are numerous methods of treatment for addicts. Both are beyond the scope of this paper. My clients are chronic substance abusers, undergoing a yearlong, inpatient treatment program in the Ramot-Yehuda - Zoharim therapeutic community, in Israel. Men and women, aged 19-50, with a history of drug abuse lasting between 2 to 30 or 40 years. The majority have lived a life of crime and spent time in prison, usually as a result of drug abuse, selling drugs, thefts, violence and prostitution. Many come from multi-problem families, with a history of various addictions, life in crime ridden neighborhoods and easily accessible drugs. Our clients have abused a wide variety of addictive substances - euphoric (cocaine and amphetamines); sedative (heroin, methadone, alcohol, ), psychedelic (L.S.D., ecstasy, cannabis); psychiatric medications. The factors directing ones' choice of drugs are dependent upon age and popularity among peer group, geographical and ethnic background, and personality and biochemical makeup (Knipe, E. 1995). 40% of our clients are immigrants from the former Soviet Union, living in Israel for 15 years or less. The rest are Israeli born with a majority of Jews, and usually 5-10% Christian and Moslem Arabs.
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THERAPEUTIC COMMUNITY
The basic ideology of the therapeutic community is one of inclusive, drug free, therapeutic care for the addict, as an individual and as a member of society. This ideology is based on the assumption that drug dependency is a mix of educational, psycho social, medical, emotional, spiritual and psychological factors, all of which must be addressed by treatment. It incorporates both psychodynamic and behavior-modification methods in an effort to relate to the complexity of the issues of addiction. Addiction can be looked upon as a psychological or medical pathology, but it is also a cultural phenomenon and a culture in itself. The aim of treatment is to assist the addicts in leaving this culture and entering the culture of recovery. It is a long and difficult journey.
CULTURE OF ADDICTION
In his book "Pathways from the Culture of Addiction to the Culture of Recovery", William White (1996) writes about the role the culture of addiction plays in sustaining addiction, regardless of the etiology that led to the initiation of the person-drug relationship. And, in the late stages of addiction, the culture of addiction can pose the largest obstacle for clients entering the recovery process. The culture of addiction is a way of life: a way of talking, thinking, behaving and relating to others, that separates substance abusers from those who are not. The culture encompasses values, places, rituals, symbols and music - all of which reinforce one's involvement in excessive drug consumption. A particular client may have initially started to abuse drugs in order to deal with emotional trauma, but it is clear that his addiction has shaped every aspect of his lifestyle, and that all these aspects must be examined in the recovery process. Many addicts have found it easier to break the physiological relationship with their drug than to
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break their relationship with the culture in which the drug was used. The failure to break the cultural relationship often precedes relapse. Some of our younger clients cannot perceive their social life without pubs, clubs and rave parties - all sites where drugs and alcohol are consumed, all `danger zones' for the recovering addict. They cannot imagine going to a rock concert or party without taking - or drinking - something that will enhance their enjoyment of the music and enable them to feel part of the crowd. Contemporary psychodynamic theories also recognize that much of the psychological dysfunction displayed by addicts is the result of drug abuse rather than the cause. It seems that some aspects of personality disorders apparent in addicts' behavior have developed secondarily as a consequence of substance abuse, whereas others are primary and stem from the interaction of early developmental wounds and experiences, with biological predisposition (Kaufman, 1994). The addict is a person with an unstable personality without inner sources to deal with daily pressures. The drugs enable him to deal with frustration, to disassociate from an oppressive and demanding reality.
Experiences with clients and my step into research My clients relationships with music were a well kept secret – something they all knew about, discussed among themselves but rarely brought to the music therapy groups. The fact is that this subject didn’t come up (or at least I wasn’t aware that it came up) in the first few years of working with addicts. I knew that they listened to music a lot, in their free time. My impression ( based on hearsay and the sounds coming from their rooms) was that “they” listened to a lot a rave music, Russian rock and popular music, and Israel Mediterranean music, particularly songs whose Experiences with clients and my step into research
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lyrics and music evoke feelings of melancholy and despair. All music that I personally wasn’t acquainted with, and truthfully – at that time – wasn’t very interested to be acquainted with. I also felt that their music listening was a very passive activity, something that connected to the passivity of drug using. It wasn’t something I wished to introduce to the music therapy groups. I felt it was more appropriate to enable opportunities for creative music making – singing and instrumental improvisation, vocal work – activities which could awaken hidden strengths, enhance body-emotion connection, non-verbal expression and social interactions. I felt that the groups were beneficial for my clients, and preferred to “let sleeping lions lie” – as it later turned out. A chance conversation with a small group of clients – changed everything. To my supposedly naive question: what kinds of music do they like to listen to, they each spoke about music-related relapses – returning to drug use after periods of abstinence, or increased use , which they related to the specific music they listened to. One of the women characterised the music of her favorite rock band as “dangerous music”. I felt that this conversation was a turning point, almost an initiation into a secluded group that held important information, unrevealed until now. My clients also felt that this was a special moment, and expressed relief that someone was interested in this acute problem, which had never been addressed in therapy programs they had attended in the past. This conversation began a process which started with my delving into the different genres of music, the very ones I had tried to avoid. I began listening to heavy metal, Russian rock and criminal songs, trance and electronic music, Israeli Mediterreanean songs – much to the joy and consternation of my own teenagers, who, together with their music
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minded friends, immediately stepped in to help. My interest in ethnomusicology was rekindled upon discovering that popular music of all kinds is researched by this field. I discovered fascinating musical, cultural, historical and personal realms that were new to me. The process continued with my introducing the subject to the music therapy groups. My first impressions were that while some of my clients enjoyed listening to their music in the groups and saw it as a pleasant pastime, others presented their relationship with music as one of their life obsessions, and spoke about it with the same passion or embarrassment usually used when speaking about their drug use.
Choosing methodology This was my incentive to research – I myself began to feel overwhelmed by the many faceted meanings of music that I was beginning to detect in my clients lives. I was driven to understand the many different forces I felt were lurking behind this phenomena. I decided to conduct formal research, as a M.A. research student in the Hebrew University, in order to understand the many meanings music has in the lives of drug addicts. After deciding upon qualitative research, with analysis of narrative interviews, I thought it would be interesting to interview addicts I didn’t personally know. So I phoned all the social workers I knew who worked in the field, hoping for referrals. I told them I was looking for those clients who had a passion for music. Not one social worker could think of any appropriate clients, apart from one who had played in a band… I began to think that maybe the whole idea was in my imagination. I knew that my clients could be manipulative and compliant – were these stories of the music in their lives something they told me to fulfill my
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needs, telling me what they felt I wanted to hear? Or was I the first therapist actually interested in this aspect of their lives, which was, until now, just one more of their underground activities, not something one tended to share with their social worker? I put the question to one of my interviewees, who said : when you have one hour a week with your social worker, and your life is falling apart, you want to use drugs – you’re not going to talk to her about music. But that doesn’t mean its not a very important part of my life. NARRATIVE INTERVIEWS
I then decided to interview addicts that I personally knew, that had participated in my groups in the 2 therapeutic communities I worked in. It wasn’t difficult to choose: those clients that lingered in the room, after the group was over, to tell me about their passion for certain kinds of music; or expressed strong disinterest in any music but their own. All the people I approached in my request to interview them, agreed on the spot, even though I suggested that they take time to think about it. My feeling, strengthened by things said in the interviews, was that they saw the interview as a chance for personal attention from me (all our therapeutic work had been in groups), a chance to talk about, and gain deeper understanding of their relationship with music, and contribute to the understanding of people like them (many of them expressed surprise that the “university professors” were at all interested in this subject) My relationship with all interviewees, and knowledge of the culture of addiction and recovery, enabled a natural introduction into the data collecting stage of the research. I felt that our former mutual experiences, in the music therapy groups and other common activities in the therapeutic community’s life, made for a common language and relaxed atmosphere in all the interviews. Most of them, unavoidably, included discussions
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which were beyond the scope of the interview’s objective, such as personal therapeutic and rehabilitation themes . My research orientation is situated on a junction where music therapy, popular music studies, sociology of music and psychology of music – and theories related to addiction - converge. I am presently analyzing the material gleaned from the 8 interviews. I would like to present some of my preliminary findings, according to the main categories I have found, with the relevant theoretical context. All the interviews were held in Hebrew. In translating the quotations from the interviews, some of the cultural aspects of slang and addiction jargon – were lost. I didn’t try to use the English equivalents of addiction jargon, which is so very typical of social class, geography and ethnicity. I hope that the authenticity of the quotations will be preserved even so. In order to better understand the context of the following quotations, I will again introduce my research subjects, this time through the prism of the substances they abused. • • • • • • • •
Nahum: alcohol, cannabis and heroin Yonatan: ecstasy, L.S.D., cannabis, heroin and crack-cocaine Ruth: alcohol, ecstasy, L.S.D., cannabis, heroin and crack-cocaine Zohar: ecstasy, L.S.D. Yelena: alcohol, cannabis, heroin Sasha: heroin Dima: ecstasy, L.S.D., heroin Boris: occasional alcohol and ecstasy, heroin
Results and Discussion MUSIC LISTENING DURING DRUG USE
From the narratives we can discern 3 general stages:
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1. “falling in love” - the first years of drug use, during which music and drugs enhance each other , and their joining enables experiences of wholeness, joy and transcendence. 2. the “dark shadow-guide” – when music plays a part in the downhill path to depression and intense drug abuse. 3. indifference to music - when the addict looses interest in music. 1st stage:“falling in love”. Nahum: “ Pink Floyd is something I would listen to only when I was under the influence of drugs…to be high, to connect better to the music” Yonatan: “ …the first time I took ecstasy, we were listening to some c.d….. it was so connected to the music. My attention was half on the “exta”, and without noticing – half on the music and my imagination…it was half the drug and half the music. I think that if I was in the same situation, but without the music, it would be something totally different…I don’t think I would have enjoyed it as much…all the psychedelic drugs – they need music. " Research on the effects of psychedelic drugs on music perception confirm Nahum’s and Yonatan’s experiences. Cannabis, for example, can act as a mild psychedelic drug. Joerg Fachner (2002) has found that cannabis induces a subjective time expansion, enabling a temporary increased insight into the “space between the notes”. High frequencies and overtones are perceived more consciously. Fachner suggests that perhaps cannabis acts as a psycho-acoustic enhancer, enabling a intensified and broadened experience of the musical time space. DeRios (2003) wrote about shamanic rituals using music in combination with hallucinogenic substances – different, but still similar, to our subject. She suggests that once the biochemical effects of the hallucinogenic drug alter the user's perception, the music operates as a "jungle gym" for the person's consciousness during the drug state and provides a series of pathways and banisters through which the drug user negotiates his way. So it seems that not only does the music enhance the drug experience, it Results and Discussion
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also provides a necessary anchor for those traveling through the “doors of perception” (borrowing Huxley’s title, 1954) So far I have described experiences recognized by all who have listened to music under the influence of psychedelic substances. This is the stage I called “falling in love”, which many of our clients talk about with a yearning for the times their drug use was an enjoying pastime. 2nd stage: The dark shadow guide. As the drug abuse intensifies, certain types of music may become a kind of guide to the fall into uncontrolled drug use and self abuse. Yelena:” There were situations where the music of Grazhdanskaya Abarona1 seemed to attack me…all the harm I did to myself – was with the music. It was during drugs, and depression and alcohol…I listened to that music and it was as if somebody was sitting and talking to me…and saying that everything is wrong and bad and there’s no point in living..there are lots of songs like that….. So many of those songs that I listened to. I myself couldn’t see any reason to live, and someone, in the song, who justifies me…I don’t think that I would have had the guts to hurt myself the way I did, without that music…” Yonatan: ” the music and drugs were inseparable. Without the music, I don’t think I would have done what I did. Let’s say that of my really bad fall into the shit of heroin and cocaine – the music I listened to was like a tool in the hands of this…dark inner guide, that took me to tear myself apart…”
The 3rd stage – indifference to music. When the drug abuse becomes intense and the addiction overshadows all aspects of ones life, music looses its place beside the drugs and indifference sets in.
1. “Grazhdanskaya Abarona” is a contemporary Russian punk and anti-establishment rock group.
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Ella:” In the last years of my drug abuse, when drugs where the only thing that I got out of bed for, and couldn’t fall asleep without – music wasn’t important anymore. I didn’t care anymore, there was nothing nostalgic about the music, there was nothing in it... the first few years, I could get excited or emotional about some song, but later on…I lost interest in music. I needed my quiet space, I used at home, didn’t go out and wasn’t interested in anything.” Zohar: ”When you start using a lot you’re less interested in music. The drugs are whats important….it used to be like – there’s a rave party, so you take some pills. Later on it became : there’s pills, it would be nice if there’s some music but it’s not really important.”
Functions of music in addiction We will now look at some of the psychological functions music has. MUSIC AS DRUGSUBSTITUTE – ORTRANSITIONAL PHENOMENA (WINNICOT,1953)
Yelena:” When I was in treatment at the therapeutic community, I hadn’t brought a Discman with me. So I wrote my mom a letter and she sent me one. That’s when the problems started – it was like she had sent me drugs…sometimes when I just couldn’t take any more, I would ask permission to go to the bathroom but went off to my room…I would feel like I was in withdrawal and there was what I needed in my room…something was missing, I needed something…so I would go, listen to a song, and go back to work as if nothing happened, feeling better. Because I’m addicted – to music too. Whats interesting is that I didn’t have my own music, I had to listen to c.d.’s that belonged to the other girls…love songs, happy songs…not the stuff I listen to. But – when there’s no heroin you take pills…” Yelena recognized the fact that she used the music as a drug substitute , during abstinence and treatment. Lacking the ego capabilities to deal with external pressure, she could enter the transitional space of music-listening, almost “cuddling up” with the sounds.She could draw strength by absorbing the external, benificing object into herself. Zohar:” When I was in the army jail1, they didn’t let us hear music. I remember, I was so desperate…I would call up a friend Functions of music in addiction
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on the phone and tell him to put a song on…I would listen to the song over the phone…” In Zohar’s case, the music wasn’t a drug substitute – because he had access to drugs in jail. But, as he said of himself: ”it doesn’t always matter what music – but I need it . Music is one of the obsessions I haven’t overcome”. It seems that the music fulfilled needs over and beyond what the drugs could do – perhaps distraction, filling an emotional void, calming…LikeYelena, he manipulated his way to get what he needed – characteristic behavior of addicts Nahum:”You're asking how music and drugs are connected? Why you need the music? So as not to be alone. I want to be alone, but my soul is crying out, I can’t understand whats going on with me, I don’t want to be like this. At first the drugs were for fun, but then they became a need, a very very deep physical and spiritual need. An almost total lack of ability to function in all parts of my life…but I didn’t want to see it. So...the music comes, doesn’t matter what you listen to….it was a very strong dependence” Lehtonan (2002) suggests that music seems to create a symbolic distance between the individual and his traumatic experiences… probably because of music's "ability" to act as a transitional phenomenon, where by listening to music one can safely and without anguish work through his feelings. He quotes Racker (1951) who described the qualities of music as a transitional phenomenon. Music can protect an individual against unpleasant feelings and yet, at the same time, give psychic strength to face and overcome them. Music can also be used in frightening and unpleasant situations, for instance, against silence representing loneliness. Music can function like a "mirror" where the listener sees himself and his inner, incoherent feelings and experiences – in an integrated state. As Nahum concludes:” I would sit and really listen to the music, and try to see where I was and what I was doing with my life” 1. for drug abuse during service.
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LISTENING TO MUSIC AS AN ESCAPE - AS A SUBSTITUTE FOR COPING WITH REALITY
Almost all my interviewees spoke about listening to music as a means of avoiding thoughts and emotions and coping with difficult situations. Sasha:” I think I can say that I avoid my thoughts, by listening to music…when things are rough, and I want to be alone……..but then it’s hard to sit all by myself and concentrate on whats going on in my life, so I put on my music, and that’s it. I run away……I sort of sit by myself, with my music, don’t have to explain anything to anybody. I got my music. That’s it. “ Music fills the void.
HIGH RISK SITUATIONS
These are any life situations which may endanger a recovering addict’s obligation to recovery. All emotional and environmental cues and triggers which bring about memories of use or weaken one’s self efficacy, which may bring about relapse to substance abuse. Many of my clients, Israelis of middle eastern background, listen to a local genre of popular music. This Israeli Mediterranean music is a hybrid genre created in Israel by Jews from Arabic speaking countries. The music was, in the 1970's, thought to be culturally inferior by the mainstream, European-orientated culture and media. The music developed as an "underground" alternative, giving voice to the themes and musical heritage of the lower and working classes. The music is essentially either western music overlaid with middle-eastern "colors", and the Arabic mellismatic form of singing, or authentic Turkish, Yemenite or Iraqi music with Hebrew texts (Horowitz 1999). The strongest connection the addicts have is with the sub-genre nicknamed "crying songs". The lyrics and music of these songs evoke feelings of melancholy and despair. My clients relate that in times of depression, they are drawn to choose music that mirrors their mood, and while identifying with the words, and the memories the song evokes, sinking into feelings of self-pity and worthlessness (Horesh, 2006). Functions of music in addiction
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Zohar Argov is one of the idolized singers of Israeli Mediterranean songs. He himself was addicted to heroin and committed suicide in jail. My interviewee Zohar chose his pseudonym because of his admiration to Zohar Argov. Zohar:” Not too long ago, my girlfriend and I broke up. I found myself listening again to all those depressing songs of Zohar Argov, it really drew me in, the words – exactly how I felt. And I could see myself going down hill, I would listen to the songs, go to sleep sad and wake up sad. so I took all of those c.d.s, brought them to a friend and said – listen, don’t give them back to me till you see that I’m all right. And he said – I’m proud of you. He knew that I never gave my Zohar c.d. to anyone.” Music, as a cue that can bring about memories of drug abuse, can also function as a warning signal before relapse. Like in the above example, an addict going through a crises might, unawares, find himself listening to drug-related music, which he may have stopped listening to as a result of his abstinence and changed life style. The music is not the cause of his emotional upheaval but reflects it. The music may heighten his emotional unstableness. But, if he has acquired awareness of the connection between certain kinds of music and negative emotions such as loss of control, depression or anxiety – the actual act of listening to the music may become a warning sign, or red light – a signal to stop, evaluate his situation and seek help. Nahum:” Even now, I can listen to Pink Floyd, and straight away it takes me to…places of chaos, drugs, grass, alcohol…” Research in music cognition supports Nahum’s experience. Music can evoke emotional and physical responses not just because of the music's properties, but because music recreates a mental and emotional representation of the essence of the moment when it was first heard (Ortiz 1997). The memory evoked can be of negative experiences or emotions, or of actual drug use. The established links between certain types of music and
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the euphoric recall of drug intoxication, reinforced through thousands of repetitions, serve as powerful connections to the culture of addiction (White 1996). But music isn’t just a perceptual stimulus, something that reminds us of something else. Most of my interviewees spoke of the importance of the texts of the music they listened to, and preferred songs sung in languages they understood. Dima:” I really pay attention to the words, they mean a lot to me. Maybe because I want my life to have some meaning, like the words of the songs do.” Identification with song texts could be seen as a means of amplifying unbearable emotions, as a mirror for those emotions, and a search for validation -which is usually lacking in the addict's social milieu. Sasha:” There’s this song, where he sings about how hard everything is, how it hurts so much but nobody can talk about it. How he sits with his friends all day but when he’s alone, at night, he cries his heart out. How he’s sick and tired of it all. ….maybe I use the music to cry about my pain, maybe that’s how I get it out.” Addicts may choose to listen to certain kinds of music as an attempt at self-healing, as a quest for integration of past pains and experiences with their present life, or as a search for emotional and spiritual catharsis. They are used to turning to external factors to manipulate their mood and emotional state, using drugs and music, to this purpose, interchangeably. The drugs they used blocked out almost all emotional activity, bringing them to a state of, what they call “living dead”. Listening to music, they feel alive, connected to their past and present emotional repertoire. Nahum:”…now I’m depressed, and I want something that will deepen my depression, so I take this thing from the outside that’s called music”
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Yelena:” I feel bad, listen to bad music, go on feeling bad” By listening to music under such circumstances, instead of it being a positive experience - something goes wrong. The addicts' weak ego structure cannot deal with the overwhelming flood of emotional memories of pain, abuse and rejection. They figuratively “drown” in the oceanic feeling of regression, and reach out to the kind of acting they know best - substance abuse or risk seeking behavior. Identification with the song is not limited to the texts only, but also with the social context of the song. Four of my interviewees were born in the former Soviet Union, and were all avid listeners to the local genre called “blatniye pesni” – criminal songs. Their identification with these songs cannot be disconnected from their identification with the criminal society and life style that gave birth to these songs. Boris was born in a small town in the Soviet Union, where, he said, crime was the common way of life. When he was 6 years old, he saw his father being arrested during an armed battle with policeman that broke into their house. As a child, Boris, like his father, loved to listen to the blatniye songs. His dream was:” to go to jail, I wanted to see what it was like, maybe I just wanted to feel what my father was feeling out there, in jail. I missed him so much.” These songs play an important role in the lives of addicts and criminals of Russian culture. More research should be done to understand the cultural and emotional meanings these songs have for them. MUSIC AS PART OF CHANGE – LISTENING WITHOUT DRUGS
Addicts have to go through fundamental transformations during therapy and rehab, in order to insure (as much as possible) their commitment to change. All areas of their lives – past traumas, secrets, emotions, behavior patterns, occupation, relationships – are examined and re-evaluated. Clients often are uncomfortable and express mis-belief regarding the pos-
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itive changes they themselves, and others, detect in them. They don’t always recognize themselves, and find it difficult to accept themselves as calm, happy and functioning people. Boris:” I grew up with those songs, the blatniye, and now, I’m finishing my time at treatment, its like I understood all the things the songs were trying to tell me, I finished with them, I can say – goodbye, thanks, that’s it, I’m on my way. It’s really interesting, maybe that’s why I’m listening to them less and less…maybe that’s part of my change…I didn’t even decide, it just happened. But I’m afraid to stop listening to those songs. I can’t believe I’ll be without them. Every once in a while I’ll have to hear one or two songs. “ Boris seemed to be so enmeshed in his personal and cultural identity, symbolized by the blatniye songs, that separating from them seemed almost impossible. Yelena:” These days, I’ve been listening to, and enjoying – music that I couldn’t listen to in the past. Really happy music, like disco. I was surprised at myself….because, who would of thought that I would listen to that shit. I never liked it before. It disgusted me. I mean – just stupid people listened to it…this is a recent change, just the past few months…I hardly ever listen to rock anymore. When I stopped listening to rock, it sort of frightened me…..but music has stopped threatening me. I’ve changed my outlook on life, I’ve started to smile, I think this new music has a lot to do with it…I allowed myself to try something new. The truth is that the first time I really felt good – I couldn’t accept it. And I couldn’t accept the fact that I was listening to this music, even though I liked it. But I can smile now, I feel alive.” Zohar:” In therapy I learned to talk about my feelings so I don’t really need the songs anymore…its changed, a lot, the music I used to listen to, I was really stuck on one kind of music…but today I can choose, I have the power not to listen to that. It used to be, like, the songs didn’t ask me if I wanted to hear them, I would turn on the stereo and all the sad songs were there…I know that because I changed so much, things changed in my music. I don’t want to suffer anymore, don’t want to get depressed, those songs remind me of things…but if you ask me what music I really like –its that. Those sad songs. But today I don’t do what I want…it’s more – what I have to do.” Functions of music in addiction
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Dima tells about using music as a guide, for self-healing. Dima:” When things are rough, I can put on some music, to push the feeling aside. I don’t wipe it out altogether, like I did with the drugs. I just put it off for a while, till I can find a way to deal with it. I sometimes act out on what I feel, if I’m angry I can act on the anger…so to be normal, its like a tool for me, the music……sometimes I get too much inside myself, and it frightens me. I get to thinking, and a lot comes up…the music helps me to connect better, helps me concentrate on what I want to think about…actually I’ve turned the music that was with me my whole life –into a tool to help me deal with my life without drugs…something to watch over me.”
Conclusion The aim of my research process –is to describe, analyze and eventually – gain a better understanding of the relationships between addicts and their music. We have seen that for many addicts, music has powerful destructive and healing potential. It can be abused, as drugs are. It can be misused and lead one into a vicious circle of dependency and selfdestructiveness. But music has the potential to heal. Clearly, I have a vested interest in the process and outcomes of this research. I hope that the heightened understanding gained from my research will benefit my own work with addicts, and cause more awareness to the importance of music and other cultural aspects, in the treatment of addicts. I believe that by achieving a deeper understanding of the relationships addicts form with music, we can assist them in discovering more of their inner selves as manifested in their music. By rehabilitating their musiclistening habits, they can begin to incorporate music into their lives as a source of enjoyment and enrichment.
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References de Rios, M. D. (2003). The Role of Music in Healing with Hallucinogens: Tribal and Western Studies. Music Therapy Today (online) Vol. IV (3) June 2003, available at http://musictherapytoday.net Fachner, J. (2002). The space between the notes - Research on cannabis and music perception. In K. Karki, R. Leydon & H. Terho (Eds.), Looking Back, Looking Ahead - Popular Music Studies 20 Years Later (1 ed., pp. 308-319). Turku, Finland: IASPM-Norden. Forinash, M. (1995). Phenomenological Research. In Wheeler, B.(Ed). Music Therapy Research. Barcelona Pub. Horesh, T. (2006). Dangerous Music -Working with the Destructive and Healing Powers of Popular Music in the Treatment of Substance Abusers. In: Aldridge, D. & Fachner, J. (Eds.) Music and Altered States - Consciousness, Transcendence, Therapy and Addiction. (pp. 125-139) London: Jessica Kingsley Horowitz, A. (1999). Israeli Mediterranean Music. Journal of American Folklore 112(445):450-463 Huxley, A (1959). The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell. Penguin Books, Middlesex, England Knipe, E. (1995) Culture, society and drugs. Prospect Heights, Ill.: Waveland Press Lehtonen K.(2002). Some Ideas About Music Therapy for the Elderly. [online]
Voices:
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Ortiz, J.M. (1997). The Tao of Music. Samuel Weiser, Maine U.S.A. White, W. (1996). Pathways from the Culture of Addiction to the Culture of Recovery. Center City, Minnesota Hazeldon Pub Winnicot, D. (1953). Transitional objects and transitional phenomena. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, Vol. XXXIV
This article can be cited as: Horesh, T. (2006) “Music is My Whole Life” - The many meanings of music in addicts’ lives. Music Therapy Today (Online) Vol.VII (2) 299319. available at http://musictherapyworld.net AUTHOR INFORMATION
Tsvia Horesh CMT Ramot Yehuda Zoharim Therapeutic Community Israel Tel.fax. 972-25346510 Horesh.tsvia(at)gmail.com
This article can be cited as:
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The use of music therapy with substance abusers Abdollahnejad, Mohammad Reza
Abstract: This article is about music therapy activities in Tehran TC that involve the use of lyric analysis, song sharing and a self-designed questionnaire of the effects of music which substance abusers listened to during their addiction period. A total of 25 sessions of lyric analysis / song sharing were held. Clients were asked about their feelings at the end of each session. Also each session was recorded and analyzed. Conclusions showed the use of lyric analysis and song sharing was particularly useful for enabling residents to express their feelings and thoughts. Finally it was found that the music which substance abusers had listened to during their addiction had positively affected their relapse and aggressive consuming.
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Introduction Nowadays one of the major problems in societies is a phenomenon known as substance abuse which, on an annual basis, is imposing huge expenditures on governments all around the world. Hence, the issue of therapeutic interventions along with prevention is one of the approaches
which is the center of attention of government,
researchers, and therapists in order to solve the issue of addiction. In recent years, with regard to advancements in research, different rehabilitation and treatment methods have been employed to improve substance abusers’ recovery. Music therapy, in this regard, is an adjunctive and adoptable modality that can play a significant role in rehabilitation (James 1988). On the other hand, music therapy has been welcomed substantially by substance abusers for its dynamic, open-ended nature of creativity, and non-threatening nature. Therapists who deal with substance abusers usually regard their feelings and emotions as mysteries. Substance abusers, in accordance with their life style, apply such defense mechanisms as rationalizing, minimizing, manipulating, denying, and lying. Such defense mechanisms cause the substance abusers difficulties in recognizing and expressing their emotions and feelings (James 1988). Music therapy has proved to be a most effective method in dealing with such defenses. Teder Wolff (1990) discusses how such creative experiences can be applied to remove emotional conflicts and inner blocks which are known to be obstacles toward change and growth.
Introduction
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Treatment of addiction in Iran dates back to 50 years following a governmental ban on substance abuse when therapeutic centers were established. At that point of time, medical treatment was the only modality of treatment; however, in the course of time and as other treatment methods improved, different other rehabilitation methods were taken into account. Hence, in recent decades, therapies such as psychotherapy (individually and in groups), twelve-step groups and therapeutic communities became emergent. Out of the mentioned approaches, therapeutic community is the most recent and dates back to 5 years ago. Music therapy is also in its early stages and MAMPHA in Iran have started to scientifically look at music therapy in the past five years. In Iran, this research work is the first experience as far as the application of music therapy in therapeutic community and substance abusers is concerned. The objective of this research was to help the substance abusers residing at Tehran TC express their feelings and emotions by applying lyric analysis and song sharing taking into account the fact that the same techniques had been successfully used and experienced in other countries.
Music Application in Mental & Physical Health Association In 1996 a group of university students in the fields of Medical Sciences, Psychology, and Music at Tehran University started their studies in music therapy and continued their activity by holding work shops and doing research works based on the local culture with the assistance of university conductors.
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In 1997, the first nation-wide congress was held in Iran and subsequent to the feed-back arising from the first congress reflecting such demand in the society, it was decided that an association be established with the mission of extending and developing the overall aspects of music therapy both quantitatively and qualitatively including the training of experts in the field. Finally in the year 2001 the association was established. Since then, this association has succeeded in holding long term and short term training courses, work shops, in the field as well as creating a database as reference for interested researchers. The association has also tried and applied music therapy in the treatment of children with mental and physical handicap besides substance abusers. On the other hand, this association has so far held five nation-wide congresses aiming at wider exchange of information with researchers and experts in the field. Last but not least, due to the efforts of the association, music therapy will soon become an academic field of study in Iranian universities.
Tehran Therapeutic Community The therapeutic community (TC) for the treatment of drug abuse and addiction has existed for about 40 years. In general, TCs are drug-free residential settings that use a hierarchical model with treatment stages that reflect increased levels of personal and social responsibility. Peer influence, mediated through a variety of group processes, is used to help individuals learn and assimilate social norms and develop more effective social skills.
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TCs differ from other treatment approaches principally in their use of the community, comprising treatment staff and those in recovery, as key agents of change. This approach is often referred to as "community as method." TC members interact in structured and unstructured ways to influence attitudes, perceptions, and behaviors associated with drug use. Many individuals admitted to TCs have a history of social functioning, education/vocational skills, and positive community and family ties that have been eroded by their substance abuse. For them, recovery involves rehabilitation - relearning or re-establishing healthy functioning, skills, and values as well as regaining physical and emotional health. Other TC residents have never acquired functional life-styles. For these people, the TC is usually their first exposure to orderly living. Recovery for them involves habilitation - learning for the first time the behavioral skills, attitudes, and values associated with socialized living. In addition to the importance of the community as a primary agent of change, a second fundamental TC principle is "self-help." Self-help implies that the individuals in treatment are the main contributors to the change process. "Mutual self-help" means that individuals also assume partial responsibility for the recovery of their peers - an important aspect of an individual's own treatment (NIDA 2005). Tehran TC is a six-month residential center which was established in the year 2000. In this center, substance abusers are admitted following a detoxification process, an initial interview by social workers as well as psychologists. Subsequent to admission, the clients have to go through four phases of treatment as follows:
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1. Orientation phase where the program plus rules and regulations are introduced to the client and the client decides whether or not they can finish the whole process. The client is not allowed to be visited by the family. This lasts one month. 2. Treatment phase which lasts for three months where the client uses several therapeutic programs available at the center and, unlike the first phase, family visits are permitted. 3. Re-entry phase where the client is gradually released from the center in the course of a two-month period. 4. Follow-up phase where the clients attend the weekly group therapy sessions held at the center and the social workers follow up on the status of the client be it by phone or visiting the client at their place. In the first six months of therapy, the clients attend in different therapy applications conducted by expert social workers such as group therapy, individual counseling, occupational therapy, training classes, vocational rehabilitation and music therapy. Psychologists, social workers, psychiatrists, as well as the recovered staff of Tehran TC itself handle the therapeutic programs of Tehran TC.
Music Therapy Program Music therapy program for the first time was practiced in the therapeutic communities of Iran. It was even the case that such program was very rarely practiced for substance abusers as a therapeutic method. Hence, it was necessary that the therapists and the people in charge were briefed so that they became aware of the aims and benefits of music therapy. The briefing took place in one session. CLIENTS AND THEIR MUSIC
Then, in line with a planned schedule with the therapists, the clients who had difficulty expressing their thoughts and feelings were referred to music therapists.
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There were a total of twenty participants. In the course of these 25 sessions, 7 clients left the TC. The participants had a history of 5 to 15 years of substance abuse. 80% of the participants had heroin intervenes injection abuse and the remaining 20% were addicted to opium and narcotics. The participants were all male in an age range of 22 to 50 years. Another point to note is that 60% of the people had been homeless for 2 to 5 years TABLE 1. Type of drug use Type of drug dependency Frequency
Heroin 16
Alcohol 0
Opium 3
Cannabis 0
Narcotics 1
Total 20
On the other hand, 80% of the participants were sentenced to prison on charges of drug smuggling, substance abuse, robbery, and fighting. Last but not least, all clients took part in the program eagerly and voluntarily. The first two sessions were allocated to familiarizing the group members with the aims and benefits of the program. At the beginning of the first session of therapy, the clients were given a self-designed questionnaire covering the areas below: Questions. 1. their favorite music and singer 2. duration of their addiction, type of the drug they were addicted to, and duration of their jail sentence 3. the relationship between their favorite music and resuming abuse aggressively
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Results question 1. TABLE 2. Favorite song Favorite song Frequency
Lively (happy) music 6
Calm (light) music 3
Sad music 11
Total 20
The majority of clients are fans of singers that sing sad music. Results question 2. TABLE 3. Duration of jail sentence Duration of jail sentence/ year Frequency
None 5
0-1 8
1-3 5
3-5 1
5-7 1
Above 7 0
Total 20
TABLE 4. Duration of dependency to drug Duration of dependency of drug/year Frequency
1 -5 1
5-10 9
10-15 8
Above 15 2
Total 20
Results question 3. In the last item, surveys showed the music the abusers listened to during their addiction period significantly tempted them to go back to drugs during their recovery period (see also Horesh 2006). About 12 clients mentioned that listening to some of the music motivated them to abuse aggressively and 8 individuals said that it didn't have any affect on them. The majority of clients who said that music had affected them referred to listening to songs of singers with sad music and they
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stated whenever and wherever they have listened they were motivated to abuse drug. Each session lasted for 45 minutes and at the end of each session, the clients were asked about their opinion of the therapy. Also, all sessions were video taped and the remarks of the clients were analyzed. The therapists chose the songs for lyric analysis on the basis of clients’ problems, and clients themselves chose the songs for song-sharing. After each session I discussed with the therapists the things the clients had divulged about their ongoing feelings, and about their thoughts for solving their psychological and family problems. These discussions suggested that the clients used the music and words of the lyric analysis and song-sharing sessions to indirectly express their thoughts and feelings (see also Hedigan 2005).
Lyric Analysis In one of the lyric analysis, a song named Niloofaraneh by an Iranian traditional singer was used. The content of the lyric is about one who claims to be a lover of Almighty God and requests God Almighty to become closer to him and that He makes His love to His subjects known to them all and frees them from all worldly kinds of love. Following the playing of the recorded music, some questions were posed to the group members as follows: •
What the song was all about was one of the questions to which one of the members named BIDAR replies that the song is about human love to their creator as opposed to other types of love, that is to say, love of wealth, power, and the like. Another member named MEHRAYEEN considers the song to be about a desperate type who might be well to do but feels nil and that's why he seeks protection under his superior. One other member believes the lyric to be about longing and nostalgia addressed to Almighty God who is supposed to be the all knowing about human feelings and thoughts.
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Put yourselves in the shoes of the singer and guess how the singer had been feeling was another question brought forward to the members to which one member replies as the singer having been feeling unsatisfied about all things and looks at God as the solution to this problem. Another one points out that nobody can ever perceive the singer and so the singer has turned to God. • How and what you feel toward Almighty God was a third question asked. One says that he feels God never hears his voice and that there is no contact between him and the creator. Last remark by another member is that he loves God but he dislikes himself because whenever he has a problem he remembers God! •
In another lyric analysis sessions, we selected a song by an Iranian pop singer. The song name was Doll. The song was of a sad atmosphere and the content of the song is one who is in love with a pretty girl and after a while realizes that his beloved one has no feeling for him and it is like he has loved a doll all the while. In this lyric, we picked some questions to extract the thoughts of the group about the song. The first question was posed as what the subject of the song was. One of the members said thoughtfully that the song is about a person who has been perusing a goal without achieving it and now feels his time has gone to waste and has left no door open behind him to be able to go back! One other question was what the singer was complaining about. In reply, one member said that the singer is complaining about himself because he has been pursuing an untrue love and he is upset why he didn't realize the fact about his love earlier. The group members in reply to what their suggestion to solving the problem of the singer is, say that the singer must refer to himself and get his needs right, be hopeful about future, and start a new life.
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Song Sharing In one of the song listening sessions a group member selects a song named TAK by an Iranian pop singer. The song was about a period of the singer's life which reminded this group member of his own past. He says in a sad tone that he was born and brought up in a poor family and due to this fact he has always felt inferior when going out with his friend who enjoyed a rich and educated upbringing. Further, he suffered from a leg handicap which again contributed to him having a low opinion of himself and inability to deal with the opposite sex! In the same phase of his life, he makes friend with a cannabis consumer. Consuming cannabis, he feels happy and relieved and this trend continued till he ended up consuming heroin. Then the group started analyzing his situation and the causes of his addiction to drugs and asks him what caused him to start with drugs. He reasoned that his family neglected him and considered him to be less confident and efficient compared to his brother hence his brother got all the family attention and care. One group member concludes that he is seeking the attention and confirmation of others in all that he does and he is following the same practice even now that he is a resident at TC. He says in reply that his friend had nicknamed him a free-loader, due to him having financial limitations. Therefore, to compensate, he would do them services as car washing, house cleaning, etc. He further explains the cold relationship between his parents. When asked if he tried to have a girlfriend despite all his problems and shortcomings, he says that, at the beginning of his drug abuse he fell in love with a girl whom he did not succeed in marrying as her family objected to the marriage because he was handicapped and it could also be that the girl's family had learned
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about his addiction. The girl has married someone else; however, they are still in love and have a romantic relationship.
Discussion In the course of the 25 sessions of lyric analysis and song sharing, the participants discussed noble issues and subjects which were not at all discussed in other types of therapy sessions. The participants proved to express their feelings and thoughts more freely and openly without any holding back. These feelings and thoughts included forbidden love affairs, and individual private matters which according to the participants themselves they had never discussed with their families and/or close friends. It is also interesting to note that the participants were actively taking part in the discussions which caused the others to involve themselves too so as to exchange opinions and experiences. There we noted a close interaction between the group members which resulted in them learning about each others' difficulties and feeling responsible and committed to solving each other's problems and this matter played an important role in their recovery. In the end, we learned about the high interest of the participants in such therapy as they heavily insisted that I increase the duration of the discussions. To conclude, I would like to mention that according to my observations and considering the complexity of the participants' issues and problems in expressing their feelings and thoughts and their habitual holding back
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in group therapies and counseling, music therapy proved to be one of the best therapeutic interventions at TC.
References Hedigan, J. (2005) Music Therapy in a Therapeutic Community: Bringing the Music to the Players. Music Therapy Today (online) Vol. VI, Issue 1 (February), p.5-22. Available at http://musictherapyworld.net Horesh, T. (2006) Dangerous Music -Working with the Destructive and Healing Powers of Popular Music in the Treatment of Substance Abusers in Aldridge, D. & Fachner, J. (Eds.) Music and Altered States - Consciousness, Transcendence, Therapy and Addiction. (pp 125-139) London: Jessica Kingsley James, Mark R. (1988). Music therapy and alcoholism: I. An overview of the addiction. Music Therapy Perspectives, 5: 60-64. James, Mark R. (1988). Music therapy and alcoholism: II. Treatment services. Music Therapy Perspectives, 5: 65-68. Treder-Wolff, J. (1990) Music Therapy as Facilitator of Cratives Process in Addictions Treatment. The Arts in Psychotherapy, 17(4), 319-324. NIDA (2005) What is a therapeutic Community? Retrieved 15. May 2005
from
http://www.drugabuse.gov/ResearchReports/Therapeutic/
Therapeutic2.html
References
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This article can be cited as: Abdollahnejad, M. R. (2006) The Use of Music Therapy with Substance Abusers. Music Therapy Today (Online) Vol.VII (2) 318-332. available at http://musictherapyworld.net AUTHOR INFORMATION
Mohammad Reza Abdollahnejad is psychologist and music therapist based in Tehran, Iran. He works as a researcher and therapist in the field of the music therapy, addiction and substance abuse and has established a music therapy program in the Tehran Therapeutic Community. Abdollahnejad is one of the founders of MAMPHA (Music Application in Mental and Physical Health Association) and is board member of this association. He is the director of Tehran Therapeutic Community and Persian therapeutic community that has been newly established.
CONTACT
M.R. Abdollahnejad (M.A. Psychology) Board / Founder Member - MAMPHA This article can be cited as:
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(Music Application In Mental And Physical Health Association) Director of Tehran (Hejrat) Therapeutic Community No. 66, Tabarestan Alley, Farhang St., Vahdat Esla mi Ave., Tehran, Iran Postal Code: 11939 Mobile: 0098-912-113 4909 E-mail: ar_nejad(at)yahoo.com mr_abdollahnejad(at)yahoo.com
This article can be cited as:
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‘Set and setting’ in an electrophysiological research paradigm on music perception under the influence of cannabis and correlated brain function
Fachner, Jörg
Introduction Music and intoxication (“Rausch”) appear to have common forms of emotional processing, at least in regard to processing in the limbic system. Everybody has a particular musical style or styles he prefers to others. Some very special pieces of music may even send shivers down the spine; it is exactly these shivers or chills felt in listening to our favourite music that were used by Blood and Zatorre (2001) to demonstrate that musical information reaches even those brain structures that are involved in conveying emotion. Listening to our favourite melody, we register changes not only in the activity of the autonomous nerve system, changes in heart beat, muscle tension, skin resistance and depth of breathing but also in the blood flow in brain structures that according to recent findings are also involved in 333
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processing emotional stimuli. The activation pattern (blood flow) of brain regions (increase: ventral striatum, dorsomedial midbrain, insula, orbitofrontal cortex; decrease: amygdala, left hippocampus, ventromedial prefrontal cortex) show a surprising similarity to activity patterns induced by drugs with a primarily euphoretic effect like e.g. cocaine; this suggests that the perception of favourite music interacts directly with structures associated with emotions (Blood & Zatorre, 2001). This may help to explain why music has the power to ‘intoxicate’ individuals who love this particular type of music, and to transport them to an altered state (Brandl, 1993; Mayr-Kern, 1985; Rösing, 1991). It depends on the listener whether in contemplation this becomes an inner spiritual experience, whereby the music ‘lends wings to the soul’, as admirers of classical music like to point out, or whether the rhythm ‘gets into your legs’, i.e. stimulates movement and thus triggers an experience of the entire body (David et al., 1983), like a dancing ecstasy at a rave party (Mitterlehner, 1996). Rösing writes: Music “can only be of limited importance in the network of receptive variables compared to personal and social factors. Consequently, music seems to be only what the recipient, as an individual marked by his social environment, makes of it in the moment of listening” (Rösing, 1991, p.8). MUSIC, DRUGS AND MEANING
The combination of music and drugs as a phenomenon specific to the 60es is certainly not something new. Walther von der Vogelweide e.g. described drunken festivities with „wine, women and song“ at castles in the middle ages, and the Greek even added psychedelic substances (ergot) to the wine for their bacchanalia (Rätsch, 1995; Wasson et al., 1978). Drugs were discovered in nature and cultivated, used by experienced shamans in initiation rites or for tribal festivities (Metzner, 1992), could be found by the way-side, invited to rest or contemplation in kairologic moments, caused thoughts to wander or dive into inner worlds, Introduction
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posed the first questions about the nature of reality – as postulated by the ethnobotanist Terence McKenna – and helped the brain to mature (McKenna, 1992) or created a real awareness of a hunger for answers. There were always situations that “told” intoxicated individuals something and marked an altered states of consciousness (Rätsch, 1992b). Whether this happens in dance, in love-making, or in contemplation depends on individual lifestyle and preferences (Taeger, 1988). ‘The ritual of drugs’ (Szasz, 2003) has often created the mood, led to ecstasis, produced a first evidence experience (Laing, 1967) or gone beyond to make contact with new worlds of imagination (Masters & Houston, 1968), ideas, visions, or even spirits (Rätsch, 1992b). Walter Freeman (2000) discusses connections between music and dance and the cultural evolution of human behaviour and relationships. He assumes that the knowledge of the induction of altered states of consciousness is connected with chemical and behavioural forms of induction. The trance states produced this way served on the one hand to break through traditional customs and concepts of reality, but also to heighten susceptibility to new information. Such intended changes might lead to the formation of ‘initiated’ groups and confidentiality in passing on significant findings. Musical skills in particular appeared to be important for an efficient trading of knowledge. CANNABIS, MUSIC AND CREATIVITY
Various authors explored the cultural aspects of drug use among artists and its influence on artistic creativity and performance (Aldridge & Fachner, 2006; Boyd, 1992; Böhm, 1999; Marlene Dobkin De Rios & Janiger, 2003; Marlene Dobkin De Rios & Katz, 1975; Fachner, 2000a, 2002a, 2002b; Fachner, 2006; Fraga & Lopez, 2004; Kimmens, 1977; Krippner, 1977, 1985; Kupfer, 1996a, 1996b; Markert, 2001; Masters & Houston, 1968; Plant, 1999; Plucker & Dana, 1998; Shapiro, 2003; Taeger, 1988; TenBerge, 1999). Barbara Kerr (1992) interviewed artists on Introduction
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drug habits and found a significantly higher tendency to consume cannabis in musicians compared to other artists. In answer to the question what inspired the Beatles’ music, or what it expressed, at the time when the album ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ was published, Paul McCartney said: “Experience with drugs, mostly. But remember that in 1967 our drug habits followed a long-established tradition among musicians. We knew about Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Count Basie that they had always taken drugs. Now it was time for our musical scene to make the experience. Drugs found their way into everything we did. They coloured our perspective of things. I believe we realized that there were fewer limitations than we had expected. And we understood that we were able to break through barriers.” (Davis & Pieper, 1993, p.7) Cannabis effect on auditory perception and musicians’ creativity has been a crucial issue since the early days of jazz (Behrendt, 1956; Fachner, 2002a, 2003; Mezzrow, 1946; Sloman, 1998). However, there has been little research accomplished on cannabis and music perception. Webster discussed one reason. Research is part of the social life-world and researchers are social beings with more or less reflected societal attitudes, values or prejudices. Research on stigmatized cultural lifestyle issues, consciousness and drugs is surely not a theme to open doors to a serious scientific reputation. Research should be a neutral way to the ‘truth of the story’, but researchers are most often part of an institution with certain goals and politics. Doing research on cannabis and music perception was not the “big theme” for a good reputation, and so, research in aesthetics and culture of cannabis consumption was abandoned for a long time (Webster, 2001). However, one of the most prominent cannabis effects seemed to be that on auditory perception. For Lindsay Buckingham cannabis seems to work like a refreshing of his listening abilities and a break-down of pre-
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conceptions, “If you’ve been working on something for a few hours and you smoke a joint, it’s like hearing it again for the first time” (Boyd, 1992, p. 201). George Harrison would have agreed with him, “I think that pot definitely did something for the old ears, like suddenly I could hear more subtle things in the sound” (Boyd, 1992, p. 206). Not only musicians, but casual listeners also seem to be convinced that cannabis enhances auditory perception (Aldrich, 1944; C. Tart, 1971). CANNABIS, ACOUSTICS AND AUDITORY PERCEPTION
Research on musical acoustics (Risset, 1978) considers four parameters: pitch, duration, loudness and timbre. In short, defined pitch differences form melody intervals and harmony patterns, duration is needed to identify rhythm patterns and tone length, loudness and timbre form certain characteristics of instruments and sound sources. Are there results in past cannabis research that point to changes on these four basic parts of musical acoustics? Duration: Aldrich (1944) observed a small change on the SeashoreRhythm-Scale, a result that was replicated with higher changes by Reed (1974). Music as a multi-dimensional auditory Zeitgestalt (Zuckerkandl, 1963) appears in time. Melges (1970, 1971) explained cannabis-induced effects on time perception as a speeding up of the internal clock that is experienced as time expansion (see C. Tart, 1971, p.89ff). Time expansion may temporarily allow an increased insight into the ‘space between the notes’ (Whiteley, 1992). This might help experienced individuals (Becker, 1953) to perceive acoustic sound structures more effectively. Loudness: Cannabis seemed to change metric units of auditory (intensity) perception in audiological tests. Caldwell (1969) reported changes on intensity thresholds. Globus (1978) suggested an intensity expansion
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of the auditory measuring units as responsible for the experience of an enhanced intensity perception. Pitch: In the 1940s, Aldrich observed no changes in pitch discrimination after administering oral doses of Pyrahexyl, a synthetic cannabinoid. By choosing between two different pitches (de Souza et al., 1974), cannabis induced dose-related preferences for higher frequencies as a function of frequency. Higher frequencies represent the location of sound sources and the overtone spectrum of sounds. Martz (1972) investigated frequency thresholds and reported improved thresholds at 6000 Hz after cannabis intoxication. For a review on audiological tests, see Fachner (2000b, 2001). Timbre: Thaler (1973) and Fitzpatrick (1980) investigated speech discrimination rates after cannabis intoxication and reported significant changes on different sound levels, even with hearing-impaired subjects and similar results in a follow-up study. Subjects showed an increased speech perception rate at 10 dB SL and at 40 dB SL, even when tones were covered with noise. Another study (Lindenman, 1980) reported no improvements during speech perception tests. But results suggest that cerebral processing seems to be altered. A closer view on prosodic features may help to solve this gap. Rodin et al. (1970) reported a change of prosodic structure and a change to a “sing-song-type-pattern” of subjects” responses during his experiments. Tart reported that people “understand words of a song better” and that “quality of own voice changes” after cannabis consumption. Effects were statistically ranked as characteristic and common effects (C. Tart, 1971, p.75). It seems that cannabis has a stimulating effect on the perception and production of prosodic and suprasegmental parts of speech, which might have had an influence on developing certain slang, a personal
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sound and timbre of jazz artists (Mezzrow, 1946). De Souza’s change of preference styles reported above might indicate a change of overtone recognition in frequency spectra of sound sources. Moskowitz (1974) reported an increasing number of false alarms in a task where subjects were asked to detect a randomly occurring 1000 Hz tone embedded in noise. It seemed that cannabis was stimulating tone imaginations and subjects heard tones that were not there. Tart”s subjects reported an intensification of auditory images, as well (C. Tart, 1971). Thus, cannabis seems to enhance auditory perception throughout a temporary change in the metric frame of reference and allows a larger intensity scaling of perceived musical components. This might help experienced musicians to play more intensively during improvisations (Fachner, 2000a). On the background of research results mentioned above cannabis seems to act as a psycho-acoustic enhancer, or exciter, equalizer, attenuator, etc. used in modern recording studios, making sounds more transparent and sound sources more distinct. Greater spatial separation of sound sources and perceptions of more subtle changes in the sound were other characteristic cannabis effects in Tart’s study (C. Tart, 1971). Baudelaire’s and Tart’s descriptions of synesthetic effects, weakened censorship of visual depth perception (Emrich et al., 1991) and a transition to a field-dependent style of thinking (A. Dinnerstein, 1966), suggest intensification of individual cerebral hearing strategy. This type of learning (Becker, 1963) strategy promotes hyperfocusing on acoustic space (Curry, 1968), musical time-structure, and a more effective attention on auditory information. This short overview on cannabis and auditory perception, an extensive discussion has been published elsewhere (Fachner, 2000a, 2000b; Fachner, 2001), clearly suggests that there is potential for the use of cannabis
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as medicine for the hearing impaired. Changes in auditory test give us reason to argue that perception of acoustic shapes and higher frequencies, spatial relationship of sound sources and even speech perception, seem to be enhanced. Will it be possible to show this subtle change in auditory perception with an EEG brain imager, which visualizes the topographic electrophysiological changes in the brain? Do we have a chance to relate cannabisinduced auditory changes to an altered individual hearing strategy?
Aims of the study Do we have a chance to relate THC-induced auditory changes to an altered central processing of sensory data as visible in the EEG? Most EEG laboratory studies appear to lack sensitivity to the experimental setting. Perceptual field-dependence of drug action in personal set and experimental setting has to be taken into account in THC studies on human behaviour and cognition (A. J. Dinnerstein, 1968; Weil, 1998). CONSCIOUSNESS, BRAIN IMAGING AND CONTEXT
Cannabis effects on consciousness, human behavior and lifestyle are complex issues that cannot be easily generalized or proved in a timelocked laboratory setting. Furthermore, collection of experimental EEG data about what occurs in the brain while listening to music under the influence of cannabis seems to offer many confounding variables. Results could be caused by differing inter-individual perceptual strategies of listening to music (Aldridge, 1996), as might be observed in the topographic EEG, the subjective history of drug experiences and tolerance effects, pharmacokinetics and dynamics of the specific substance absorbed.
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Furthermore, the nature of the brain imaging method and their produced data themselves (Revonsuo, 2001) show different patterns of brain activity. Comparing hemodynamic aspects as revealed in cerebral blood flow techniques, they do not necessary correlate with electrophysiological changes. Consciousness states are variable (C. T. Tart, 1975). To believe that there is something like a “normal state of consciousness” and an “altered state” after administering the drug is a more scientific way of assuming that a comparison of quantitative data of a laboratory experiment would reveal the difference of consciousness states. At least “consciousness states” end up as small slices of data, artifact-free epochs of the process in a laboratory setting. Here the timeline of the actual experience might be lost or fragmented in the process of editing comparable data-epochs and eliminating artifacts. Moreover, administering the apparatus causes behavioral discomfort for the sake of optimizing data transmission via a lot of cables, electrodes, blood sampling with syringes, postural restrictions, etc. Furthermore, I could mention somewhat tedious, boring or abstract test batteries, which are felt as being not adequate to the “state you’re in,” double blind structures with non-verbal gesturing perceived more intensely and other behavioral context interactions which make this situation different from “normal.” The critique from social scientists on these behavioral measuring procedures addressed the situation and process of measuring itself, which have an impact on the quality of the data (Deegener, 1978). Humanistic critiques are based on the uniqueness and contextual nature of the human experience, which is dependent on biographical time and place as well as the uniqueness of the situation in which subjects are involved (Eisner, 1997; Rätsch, 1992a; Weil, 1998). Leary (1990) therefore emphasized the
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importance of set and setting in a psychotherapy research paradigm on psychedelic substances (Metzner, 2005). Waskow (1970) attempted a closer look at the influence of music as a setting variable on cannabis effects with a psycho-physiological form of measurement. She compared THC under four different conditions with/ without music and placebo with/without music. Test persons chose their favourite music during test phases. In general, no significant changes in THC effects were found in the musical setting; some trends emerged, however. Independent of THC, music appeared to have a general positive effect on increasingly euphoric moods, to produce relaxation and content, and “tended to endorse items such as: feel like laughing, feel more free, wide awake, more control of feelings” (Waskow et al., 1970, p.106). But a contrary effect was also found. Cannabis effects were accompanied by unpleasant physical feelings, which were even more pronounced in the THC music condition; Katz illustrated this in higher scores on the scale “Subjective Drug Effects Questionnaire”. In the placebo music condition, however, the music reduced these feelings of being unwell. SITUATION AND EXPERIENCE OF MUSIC
The auditory perception of musical acoustics is surely not the musical experience itself. What constitutes the process of music listening as a holistic musical experience of a person? To understand what makes a certain musical experience of one composition different from another, musicologists analyzed musical content by using scores. Score analysis to explain varieties of music experience has been questioned from the stance of situated performing and listening (Small, 1998; Tagg, 1982). Being in a concert or listening to music on the radio, adds the contextual dimension of personal experience in an ongoing situation onto perceptual processes (Buytendijk, 1967; Hall, 1996). This influences intention and selection of what has been heard, selected Aims of the study
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and perceived consciously during perception. Perceptions and actions are based on the particular content of these situations in environments in which people are situated during their actions. Situationism refers to “the inseparability of action and context, the relation between the social and materal conditions of action, the need to theorize the “higher psychological functioning” in relation to situated action and the tension between the emphasis on situation and the scientific ideal of abstraction” (Costall & Leudar, 1996, p.101). Research on popular music stressed semiotics of signs used in artistic context, which produce meanings for performer and audience. Thus, music becomes a mediator of cultural symbols (Tagg, 1987). Therefore, several issues of identity, place and performance, musical practice and production styles, mediating experience of a certain song or classic composition in a specific listening, or even music production situation, are taken into account to understand the aesthetic experience (Aldridge, 2004; Frith, 1998; Kärki et al., 2002). MUSIC AND EEG
Research on music and the EEG reflects the problem of inter-individually different music experiences. EEG coherence analysis showed intra-individually constant EEG-coherence profiles during music perception, but profiles spread inter-individually over the whole cortex (H. Petsche, 1994). Music listening seems to involve many different areas, but is pragmatically believed to have a right hemispheric dominance (Kolb & Whishaw, 1996; Springer & Deutsch, 1987) as results in EEG research conveyed (Auzou et al., 1995; David, 1989; F. H. Duffy et al., 1981; H. Petsche, 1994; Walker, 1977). However, in a review on human brain mapping methods of music perception, Sergant (1996) insisted that there is no real evidence that music seems to be processed dominantly in the right cerebral cortex. Even dichotic listening methods, auditory evoked Aims of the study
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potentials (AEP) (David et al., 1989) or positron emission tomography (PET) scan varies in stimulus-locked localization strategies of individual perceptions. Davidson concluded that variations reflect individual perceptual differences that can be observed in the baseline measuring before administering sound bits, music fragments or words (Davidson & Hugdahl, 1996). Therefore, we should look closely at structural similarities of rest and music EEG Gestalt in the visual analysis of brain images. CANNABIS AND EEG
Even though it is possible now to link the mechanism of cannabis action to the densities of recently discovered cannabinoid receptors in the brain and immune system (Joy et al., 1999), topographic pre/post EEG studies of cannabis-induced changes are not available. Transient cannabisinduced EEG changes have been previously reported in laboratory studies. Most EEG studies that exist, however, were oriented toward finding brain damage with casual or long-term use. Quantitative EEG measuring in the 1970s commonly used 1 or 2 electrodes attached to the right occipital or parietal areas (Hollister et al., 1970; Rodin et al., 1970; Volavka et al., 1973). Results of this research are somewhat contradictory. Hanley’s quantitative EEG study, done with 8 electrodes from frontal to occipital areas, found only decreased amplitudes and percentage over the whole spectrum (Hanley et al., 1976). Others reported an increase in relative α-percentages (alpha) and power, a decrease in main or central frequency and a transition to theta (θ) during contemplation, as well as a decrease of relative theta- or beta (β)- percentage and power (Struve & Straumanis, 1990). However, only in the work of Hess and Koukkou has music been part of the experimental setting (Hess, 1973; Koukkou & Lehmann, 1976, 1978). Both reported results mentioned above, that were spread in a certain order corresponding to music over the time-course of drug action. Lukas correlated eupho-
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ria and higher alpha-index during the first 20 minutes (Lukas et al., 1995). Results remind us to be aware of an inter-individual implicit order of electrophysiological signal processes during personal cannabis experiences. The psychoactive action of THC induces EEG signatures that can be identified, but some frequency ranges seem to be more indicative for the quality of the actual experience.
The Exploration The aim of this explorative pre/post EEG study was to accompany the way persons used to smoke cannabis and listened to music in a habituated setting of a living room. Cannabis induces a field-related perceptual style (A. J. Dinnerstein, 1968). Most of the EEG laboratory studies appear to show a lack of sensitivity to the experimental setting. To reduce the laboratory-setting bias in EEG results, the field-dependence of drug action in personal set and experimental setting has to be kept in mind by conducting research according to a suitable paradigm (Weil, 1998). The topographic changes induced by cannabis while listening to music may well be radically different in the laboratory setting as compared with one in which the subject normally listens to music. An obvious reason to use the EEG in researching cannabis and music perception is based on the high time-related resolution of the data. We can observe synchronous electrophysiological traces of cognitive activity in the EEG (H. Petsche, 1994). While the synchronous correlation of the EEG is its big advantage, it lacks on spatial resolution of data origin. We can only observe summations of generating units below the surface of the
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brain. With the NeuroScience BrainImager®, source information is interpolated and therefore it provides spatial information about the distribution of cerebral changes. Amplitude and significance mapping (F.H. Duffy, 1986; Maurer, 1989) can be used to identify and localize changes of cerebral areas and their functional claims during perceptive states. With these limitations in mind a research project, which compares pre/ post-THC-EEG changes gains topographical EEG data, gives us spatial information on the cortex distribution of cannabis-induced electrophysiological changes of neural activity. But the “map is not the landscape” and so we can only conclude that the frequency changes accompany (Machleidt et al., 1989) cannabis-induced alteration of music perception in this particular case. After all, EEG research has gained lots of experimental data that can be compared to similar experimental topics. To research the real world situation of auditory changes an ethnographic exploration in cannabis culture seems to be indicated first. This data could be compared with upcoming laboratory data, subsequently. METHODS
To ensure a minimum of laboratory-setting bias, a non-blind pilot study was conducted with a mobile bedside EEG-Brain-mapping system in the consumers” habituated setting of a living room. Four subjects (3 male/1 female) smoked a tobacco joint mixed with Nepalese hashish (hereafter phrased as THC) and listened with closed eyes to three pieces of rock music in a comfortable armchair. EEG was recorded through rest and music listening periods. FIGURE 1. Experimental schedule
EXPERIMENTAL SCHEDULE
Baseline State: Pre-THC-EEG (music and rest - eyes closed) • Listening to 3 Rock music pieces (defined order) • 1 minute silence/rest between the songs •
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• • • • • •
30 minutes intermission Smoking 0.3 gr. cannabis (20 mg THC) in tobacco joint After 10 minutes EEG start Altered State: Post-THC-EEG (music and rest with THC) Listening to the same music / same measuring situation and setting 4 Subjects (3 male/1 female)
The aim to do research with an EEG of peoples’ habituations in a naturalistic life world setting with minimum limitations introduced by the researcher evokes problems in estimating the quality of the data. Results of this explorative study should be regarded as a kind of physiologically correlated ethnographic description of cannabis culture in Europe. This methodology might evoke some questions that should be discussed at the outset. How can we ensure to visualize substance-related music perception during a brain imaging study in an ethnographic setting? SETTING AND CULTURE
Following Baudelaire’s description of cannabis intoxication stages, this study accompanies the second contemplative stage (Baudelaire, 1966). This ethnographic setting of cannabis consumption, which is in itself a development within cannabis culture of music listening, goes back to Chinese drug culture and Harlem Tea Pads of the 30s (Anonymos, 1936; Jonnes, 1999, p.119ff). Nowadays a “chill-out room” used in modern rave parties has the same setting characteristics (Fachner, 2004). It permits a relaxed contemplative listening to music with closed eyes in the way David described physiological types of music listeners (David et al., 1983). Listening to music with closed eyes was also used in a certain music therapy approach called Guided Imagery. The setting of this approach was developed throughout psychedelic therapy (Grof, 1994; T. Leary et al., 1964) where music and psychedelic drugs were used to stimulate the unconscious to evoke imaginations and associations of an individual (Bonny, 1975; Bonny & Pahnke, 1972). Closed eyes EEG recording is a common procedure in pharmacoencephalography (Struve The Exploration
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& Straumanis, 1990), and the EEG studies reported above were selected on this premise in order to compare results with closed eyes conditions. TOBACCO JOINT
A guideline of research in an ethnographic field in an ethno-methodological manner is to accept and describe habits, ritualistic aspects and setting of consumer life-world as Rätsch (Rätsch, 1992a) has proposed for research on psychedelic substances. One of the bad habits associated with cannabis consumption in European as well as in Australian Aboriginal peoples (Burns et al., 2000) is to mix hashish with tobacco in a joint. The use of tobacco in this experiment is surely a crucial aspect, because the hashish-tobacco mixture causes different pharmacokinetic and dynamic action of THC compared to smoking only herbal cannabis or hashish. Furthermore the hashish as obtained on the black market (subjects brought their own cannabis) cannot be expected to be pure. Qualitative gas chromatography testing of the smoked substance was done a week after measuring. Quality was estimated as “medium quality,” containing approximately 20 mg ∆9-THC in the used 0.3-gram hash (“Black Nepalese”). However, the aim of this study was to find out whether smoking induces changes on the EEG, not to reveal a dose-related THC action profile during music perception. No specific inhalation technique to ensure a comparable uptake of smoke was used, because this would distract from the naturalistic setting of the experiment. Subjects were sitting in an armchair and smoked at their own pace, as they would customarily do. The subjects obviously attained a cannabis high, said they felt “stoned” and attributed the experienced altered state of consciousness to be mainly produced by the smoked joint with hashish.
MUSIC AND SUBJECTS
Three male subjects chosen for this explorative experiment reported themselves as experienced smokers of cannabis and tobacco as well. One The Exploration
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female subject was a frequent smoker of cannabis. All of the subjects refrained from smoking cannabis previously on the day of the experiment. None of the subjects was a musician, but they regarded themselves as music lovers with a preferred style of alternative rock music. Musicians differ in their perception of music as EEG studies have shown (Altenmüller & Beisteiner, 1996; Helmut Petsche, 1987). The music used in the current experiment was chosen from a single case study (Fachner et al., 1995) with follow-up (Fachner, 1998). The first piece in the experimental sequence sounds like a piece of classical music. It is string ensemble chamber music with no vocals, drums or electric instruments, the instrumental “Prelude” by King Crimson (1974). The next song, “Obsessed,” was a folk-punk number with vocals, acoustic guitars, drums and bass, recorded by “Dogbowl” (1989). The third piece is a live recording cover version of the Beatles song “We Can Work It Out” performed by “King Missile” (1989). Songs were played in the same order during pre- and post-THC conditions. PRE/POST DESIGN
The NeuroScience BrainImager samples 28 EEG traces with a 12 Bit analogue/digital converter. This offers 4096 dots per second within a dynamic range (DR) of 256 µV, providing a sample accuracy of 1/16th µV. Average maps interpolated between the 28 EEG trace sample points are processed every 2.5 seconds. The Imager is equipped with an isolation transformer and shielded pre-amplification to be used for example in an intensive care unit, as well as a notch filter on 50-60 Hz to reduce the influence of electromagnetic fields in hostile environments. Impedance levels were kept under 11 kohms. Cut-off filters were set to 40 and 0.3 Hz. EOG (electro-oculogram), ECG (electrocardiogram) or EMG (electromyography) traces for artifact control were not applied to The Exploration
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avoid laboratory bias. Artifact control was done visually by a time-coded video protocol. After removing potential artifact maps, (fronto-polar δ threshold at 105 µV on 256 µV DR) Individual (IA) and Group Averages (GA) were processed using the statistics software package of the NeuroScience BrainImager®. More details of data editing can be found in Fachner (2001, 2002b). Pre/post rest and pre/post music listening results were averaged and subjected to a t-Test. Therefore each piece of music and one minute of silence before the music was recorded and individually averaged, subsequently. The investigation included one extended single case study with a follow-up. Research focus for each person was on individual drug and music reactions by comparing the pre/post individual averages (IndAvg) and the total group average (Gavg) of the pre/post rest and music sessions over the sample. Amplitude mapping does not provide dynamical changes of the music but represents average electrophysiological activity while listening as reflected in the maps. Furthermore, we are able to name areas of difference in the pre- and post- conditions.
Results and discussion The colored brain maps and results are published and discussed elsewhere (Fachner, 2001; Fachner, 2002b; Fachner et al., 2001). I would like to summarize and discuss some of the results. PARIETAL AND TEMPORAL EEG CHANGES
Cannabis intensifies processes of sensory perception, and – like almost all psychedelic drugs – seems to hamper access to the upper brain regions (Cytowic, 1993). This is what follows from the literature on EEG and cannabis (Fachner, 2001; Fink et al., 1976; Struve & Straumanis, 1990) and from this pre/post comparison of the data. While listening to music without cannabis, higher amplitudes and frequencies were found over Results and discussion
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almost all regions near the skullcap. With cannabis consumption, however, subjects had weaker amplitudes; an indication that interactions with the cerebrum, the upper brain structures, are inhibited (Fachner, 2002b). Significant change (p<. 025) was to be found with slower frequencies, that is, those that show that more intensive activities take place in the midbrain after consumption. This brain region produces emotions and processes of memory and selection. But the decrease in amplitudes does not occur in all regions near the skullcap, on the contrary; a certain region that coordinates attention and perceptual processes, the parietal lobes, records a distinct increase of amplitudes on the alpha band. The alpha band indicates the various regulations of alertness and the interactions between midbrain and upper brain structures that are supposed to control cognitive functions (E. Basar et al., 1997; Erol Basar & Schürmann, 1996). Increased alpha amplitudes are also found in individuals who are assumed to have a high IQ or specific talents and in persons who find it easier to develop complicated cognitive structures (Jausovec, 1997). ACOUSTICS AND ‘HIGH’ ATTENTION
Might this alpha increase be an indication of the ‘high’ state (Volavka et al., 1973)? A state in which so many complex things appear very easy all of a sudden, when problems just dissolve in front of the inner eye and everything is clear (Baudelaire, 1966; Weil, 1998)? When we interpret EEG data, then the entire process of listening appears intensified and psychopharmacological substances emerge as supporting individual listening strategies. These findings indicate a temporary intensification of auditory perception that processes acoustic perceptual elements more effectively in a temporarily changed metric frame of reference (Fachner, 2000a). This is demonstrated when we look at topographic changes in brain activity. Results and discussion
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In Fachner’s study (2002b), the statistical test revealed, in addition to increased alpha scores, clear and even significant (p<. 025) alterations in the right temporal lobe and the left occipital lobe in all test persons. Auditory sound information and visual information are primarily processed in the right temporal lobe, whereas the left occipital lobe is primarily responsible for vision and the processing of spatial information (Kolb & Whishaw, 1996). The limited literature available on ‘Cannabis and altered auditory perception’ (Fachner, 2000b) reveals that cannabis induces a preference for higher frequencies. Asked for their preferences of higher or lower notes, test persons reported a dose-dependent preference for higher frequencies (de Souza et al., 1974). Higher frequencies convey the localization and distribution of sources of sound in spatial listening. Changes in the occipital lobe indicate that acoustic proportions of sound are associated in a different way. The topographic pattern of music listening remains almost the same compared to rest but is intensified on the alpha band after consumption. On the basis of increased parietal alpha, we may assume that consumption directs specific attention to acoustic perceptual processes. Consequently, cannabis seems to have the effect of psychoacoustic enhancers or exciters as utilised in studio technology that make sound appear more transparent, with clearer contours (Fachner, 2002a). Various statements by members of the Beatles, Cyprus Hill or Fleetwood Mac suggest that for some musicians it is part of the critical process to listen to the mix of a freshly recorded piece of music once again under the influence of cannabis (Boyd, 1992). Another study shows that the feeling of intensity is significantly changed so that a wider scale appears to emerge for the intensity of sound effects. A perception of volume changed in test persons after cannabis consumption. Globus et al. found in their study that a ‘moderate volume in altered Results and discussion
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states of consciousness has a different metric frame of reference from the normal conscious state (Globus et al., 1978) like a rubber ruler that is stretched, and in the stretched state still maintains the measuring function but shows ‘broader’ units. Is this then an experimental indication of a ‘consciousness enhanced by drugs’ and do we observe an altered metric frame of reference (Fachner, 2000a)? In sensory perception, attention serves to curb the complex flood of information (apperception) (Eckel, 1982), and what is ‘unnecessary’ is censored conceptually. Only a specific, individually and situation relevant excerpt of sensory data is accessible to our consciousness. Emrich discusses psychedelic drug effects as states where all concepts of association of sensory data fail since many new or different modes of association emerge and compete with each other (Emrich et al., 1991). Is the psychedelic perceptual process something like an internal neurological dialogue where habitual selection is obstructed and therefore more sensory data are perceived? TIME AND INTENSITY
The altered perception of time might be responsible. A typical effect of cannabis is that time is expanded. Time seems to pass quicker than shown by the clock (Jones & Stone, 1970; Mathew et al., 1998; C. Tart, 1971). This effect is a possible key to understanding the experience of an unobstructed flow of information. Within the ‘broader’ measurement units (Fachner, 2000a) of the above-mentioned ‘auditory rubber ruler’, progressively smaller units seem to become possible. The following quote may serve as an allegoric explanation: “Because the chief effect … is that it lengthens the sense of time, and therefore they could get more grace beats into their music than they could if the simply followed a written copy. … In other
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words, if you are a musician you’re going to play the thing the way it is printed on a sheet. But if you’re using marihuana, you’re going to work in about as twice as much music in-between the first note and the second note. That’s what made jazz musicians. The idea that they could jazz things up, lighten them up...” (Sloman, 1998, p.146/147). There is a feeling of time being stretched or expanded or perceived as slowed down or sped up. 95% of 151 participants of Charles Tart’s study “On Being Stoned” agreed to the following statement: “Time passes very slowly; things go on for the longest time (e.g. one side of a record seems to play for hours)” (C. Tart, 1971). In most experiments, stoned subjects failed to reproduce a correct metric counting of time intervals, and tended to expand the estimated units. Jones reported that a 15 second time interval was expanded to a mean of 16.7 seconds, with deviation up to 19 seconds estimated under the influence of oral THC, while being counted correctly in normal state (Jones & Stone, 1970). A reverse relationship also occurs. Melges declared a speeding-up of the inner clock as responsible for expanded and slowed perception of chronological time and for producing temporal disintegration failures. “A subject becomes less able to integrate past, present and future, his awareness becomes more concentrated on present events; these instances, in turn, are experienced as prolonged or timeless when they appear isolated from the continual progression of time” Melges concluded (Melges et al., 1971, p.566). This reminds of some of the counter-culture focus ideas on the ‘here and now’ feeling. However, all kinds of processes occur in time. We are ‘patterned frequencies in a matrix of time’ improvising our identity in the personal set and setting of situations we’re in, as David Aldridge (1989) has proposed. In the experience of time as kairos, time structures are connected to the personal time. Time as chronos is connected to processes concerned with defined geographical and societal agreements. Kairological time allows a Results and discussion
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variety of time perceptions and refers to the right time to do something, to decide or act directly in the here and now. A talk can seem like hours, even if it lasts only 20 minutes or it can be exciting and feels like only a few minutes. There must be specific moments, situations and interests that interfere with a personal kairological set of emotions, habits and attitudes. We need specific settings and surroundings that make us experiencing an event as acceleration (‘rush’) or a slowing of time. Cannabis influences this personal set of time frames. Consequently, cannabis changes the intensity graduation of sensory data (Fachner, 2002b). This appears plausible if we look at the distribution of the cannabinoid receptors recently detected in the human brain (Joy et al., 1999). In those regions of midbrain and cerebellum that mainly coordinate feelings of intensity, and selective temporal and motor processes, there is a proportionally higher agglomeration of cannabinoid receptors. Another brain imaging study of time perception correlated cannabisinduced changes of cerebral blood flow in the cerebellum (Mathew et al., 1998). Cannabis consumption stimulates the activity of such receptors temporarily, and the functional consequence is a changed graduation of musical parameters. Obviously, these processes are far more complex than described here, but a stimulation of cannabinoid receptors may explain the changes discovered above. RHYTHM
If cannabis induces a subjective time expansion, music, and especially the rhythm must be perceived as expandable. In experiments Aldrich (1944) as well as Reed (1974) reported cannabis-induced changes on the rhythm scale of the ‘Seashore test’. Despite the controverse discussions about the Seashore’s usefulness, after cannabis intoxication rhythm was perceived more distinctly and especially casual users had an obvious improvement in the rhythm task (Reed, 1974). Most of Aldrich’s subjects
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– two of them musicians - said that they had the subjective impression of perceiving tones and rhythm better after cannabis intoxication. Jazz musicians of the 1920s and 1930s had to play contempory tunes the whole night for dancing, so an embellishment of song structures was needed to maintain interest and cannabis seemed to provide a nice inspiration to create a larger vision for doing this. With Marihuana, “The swing musician ascends new peaks of virtuosity” was written in a 40’s Life magazine article (in Aldrich, 1944). Cannabis’ first euphoric level seemed to help them to express vividly, intensive with self-confidence, groove and jive in the music, reported the psychiatrist Winick (C. Winick, 1959; Charles Winick & Nyswander, 1961). Jazz music featured improvisational elements within the structure of songs. Musicians expanded the melodic, harmonic and rhythmic structure of dance songs in their improvisations. ENHANCEMENT AND EXPERIENCE
Expanded metric frames of reference may also explain why ‘typical stoner music’ always has this resounding or echo-like effect, or why reggae-dub music uses resounding effects and rhythmic echo cascades (Fachner, 2002a). According to Böhm (1999), sound, improvisation and ecstasy are stylistic elements of psychedelic rock. Combined with the above-mentioned effects on time perception, intensity and reduced censoring of data, the preference of higher frequencies helps us to understand an increased functional use of sound modulators, resounding and echoing effects in psychedelic rock. The musical time-space of sounds may thus be deliberately changed and we see this in music effect equipment that allows the musician to “produce music that a person under the influence of psychedelic drugs would like to hear” (Böhm, 1999, p.22). Virtual acoustic spaces are overlapped and can be played with if the performer has the musical experience (Becker, 1967; Fachner, 2000a). Is this
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perhaps the idea behind the title of Jimi Hendrix’s album ‘Are you experienced?’ But not only musicians might be attracted by such changes. Improved acoustic perception is also interesting for people with hearing impairment, above all for those with significant impairments in higher frequencies. They might profit from cannabis and with a specific auditory training might compensate deficits from weakened acoustic hair cells with memory patterns (Fachner, 2002b).
Conclusion Significant (p<0.025) changes in temporal and occipital areas and increasing α-signal strength in parietal association cortex seem to represent a neural correlate of altered music perception and hyperfocusing on the musical time-space. This study gives promising insights into quantified EEG changes of pre/post THC music listening as provided by amplitude and significance mapping over averaged EEG epochs of music. Results are not based on a high number of Ss but on ethnographic EEG correlation of “stoned” listening to music. If we accompany this process in the real world we discover naturalistic authenticity of tendencies occurring during those processes. Further laboratory research could compare several issues reported and discussed in this ethnographic intervention.
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Petsche, H. (1987). Gehirnvorgänge beim Musikhören und deren Objektivierung durch das EEG. In K. E. Behne, G. Kleinen & H. de la Motte-Haber (Eds.), Musikpsychologie (Vol. 4, pp. 7-28). Wilhelmshaven: Florian Nötzel. Petsche, H. (1994). The EEG while listening to music. EEG-EMG-Z Elektroenz Elektrom, 25(2), 130-137. Plant, S. (1999). Writing on Drugs. London: Faber and Faber. Plucker, J. A., & Dana, R. Q. (1998). Creativity of undergraduates with and without family history of alcohol and other drug problems. Addict Behav, 23(5), 711-714. Reed, H. B. C. (1974). Cognitive effects of marihuana. In J. H. Mendelson, A. M. Rossi & R. E. Meyer (Eds.), The use of marihuana; a psychological and physiological inquiry (pp. 107-114). New York: Plenum Press. Revonsuo, A. (2001). Can functional brain imaging discover consciousness in the brain? J Conscious Stud, 8(3), 3-23. Risset, J.-C. (1978). Musical acoustics. In E. C. Carterette & M. P. Friedman (Eds.), Handbook of perception - hearing (Vol. IV, pp. 521566). New York: Academic Press. Rodin, E. A., Domino, E. F., & Porzak, J. P. (1970). The marihuanainduced "social high". Neurological and electroencephalographic concomitants. JAMA, 213(8), 1300-1302. Rätsch, C. (1992a). Setting - Der Ort der psychedelischen Erfahrung im ethnographischen Kontext. In H. C. Leuner & M. Schlichting (Eds.), Jahrbuch des Europäischen Collegiums für BewußtseinsstuReferences
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This article can be cited as: Fachner, J. (2006) ‘Set and setting’ in an electrophysiological research paradigm on music perception under the influence of cannabis and correlated brain function. Music Therapy Today (Online) Vol.VII (2) 333-374. available at http://musictherapyworld.net
This article can be cited as:
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AUTHOR INFORMATION
Dr. rer medic. Dipl. Päd Jörg Fachner is Senior Research Fellow at the Chair for Qualitative Research in Medicine at University Witten Herdecke, Germany. He is Manging editor of the music therapy research and service site MusicTherapyWorld.Net and editor of the eJournal MusicTherapyToday.com. He studied social- and education science in Wuppertal and graduated in education science at University Dortmund. Formerly, he worked as research assistant in physiology, involved in sensory and movement research. His research interests, publications and scientific memberships focus on qualitative research aspects of music, therapy and medicine, music physiology, and -psychology, youth und pop culture, altered states of consciousness, transcultural psychiatry and anthropology of the body.
This article can be cited as:
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Music Therapy Today Vol. VII (2) (July) 2006
Glitzernd...pulsierend...eine endlose Zeit lang - Wie verändert sich Musik unter DrogeneinfluĂ&#x;? Holbein, Ulrich
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Editorial notes by Jörg Fachner The article by Ulrich Holbein, a well-known German writer and author, is in German. This is a manuscript written for a radio feature together with the German radiostation WDR and was broadcast in 2004. It describes changes in music perception under the influence of drugs. Ulrich Holbein uses the German language in a very sophisticated way and it is virtually impossible to translate his artistic writings into English. Moreau de Tours invited famous writers and poets of his time, for example Charles Baudelaire (1966) or Théophile Gautier (1877) Victor Hugo, Hector Berlioz, HonorÈ de Balzac, Gustave Flaubert, GÈrard de Nerval, EugËne Sue, and Alexandre Dumas, into the ‚Club de Haschischin’. This circle of musicians, writers, painters, physicians and members of the Parisian establishment frequently met in the Hotel Pimodan on the Ile St. Louis in Paris. De Tours aimed to gather a detailed and sophisticated description of what can be experienced under the influence of psychotropic drugs to study the alienation from the normal grounds of consciousness. He assumed that artists might be able to provide an adequate description of their experiences during Hashish-induced intoxication (Moreau de Tours, 1845). Psychedelic substances have an impact on association and imagination processes, and artists have often used them to alter their perspective on reality as a creative means in order to break down filter system of enculturation and socialisation and to get a new perspective on their topics of interest (Boyd, 1992; Masters & Houston, 1968). Moreau de Tours’ work formed the basis for a psychiatric research topic which was finally established as model psychosis research (H. Leuner et al., 1983; H. C. Leuner, 1962). The aim of this research was to find out what kind of content might be experienced during early stages of psychosis or during a schizophrenic productive stage. Research into model psychosis in the 50s and early 60s of the last century influenced the development of GIM (Bonny & Pahnke, 1972). The use of substances for therapeutic purposes is surely a crucial issue, and today’s music therapy approaches are far away from using them in the sense they were used in the 60s’ psychotherapy research; moreover, most of the work in music therapy is centered on the treatment of addiction (Aldridge & Fachner, 2006). Nevertheless it is of interest to understand state-dependend music cognition of addicts when working with them in therapy.
Editorial notes by Jörg Fachner
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REFERENCES
Aldridge, D., & Fachner, J. (Eds.). (2006). Music and altered states consciousness, transcendence, therapy and addictions. London: Jessica Kingsley. Baudelaire, C. (1966). An exerpt from the seraphic theatre. In D. Solomon (Ed.), The marihuana papers (pp. 179-190). New York: New American Library. Bonny, H. L., & Pahnke, W. N. (1972). The use of music in psychedelic (lsd) psychotherapy. Journal of Music Therapy, IX(Summer), 64-87. Boyd, J. (1992). Musicians in tune (1 ed.). New York: Fireside, a Simon & Schuster imprimateur. Gautier, T. (1877). Le hachich. In åuveres complÈtes (Neudruck Genf 1978 ed., pp. 47-56). Paris. Leuner, H., Horn, G., Klessmann, E., & Richards, W. A. (1983). Guided affective imagery with children and adolescents. New York: Plenum Press. Leuner, H. C. (1962). Die experimentelle Psychose. Berlin Gˆttingen Heidelberg: Springer. Masters, R. E. L., & Houston, J. (1968). Psychedelic art. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Moreau de Tours, J. J. (1845). Du haschisch et de l' aliËnation mentale. Etudes psychologiques (rÈÈdition GenËve, Slatkine 1980 ed.). Paris: Fortin et Masson.
Radiosendung A: Sprecherin (hyperflott, lebendig, quirlig, erotisch, sehr jung) B: Moderatorin (seriös, intellektuell) C: Sprecher D: Sprecher (langsam, uralt, weise, guruhaft)
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A (auf der Basis seltsamen Vogelzwitscherns): Ich stieg auf einen Pflaumenbaum, um Trauben dort zu pflücken. Der Gärtner fuhr mich böse an: C: Was pflückst du meine Walnuß? D: Mögen alle meine Fehler sich auf ihre Plätze begeben und wenig Lärm dabei machen... A: Millionen sehnen sich nach Unendlichkeit! D: Und wissen nicht, was sie mit einem freien Nachmittag anfangen sollen. A: Un-Freiheit ist Scheiße. C: Halbe Freiheit ist doppelte Scheiße.
(Zu den Vogelstimmen gesellen sich Zikaden, und eine Sitar)
D: Ich erinnere mich, daß ich einmal ein ekstatisches Gefühl geistiger Glückseligekeit empfand, als ich für den großen lebenden Heiligen, den Shankaracharya von Kamakoti Peetham, spielte. Wir waren in Madras, im Mangohain neben einem Haus, und ich spielte unter der sengenden Mittagssonne. Der heilige Mann saß auf einer kleinen Matte auf dem Boden; eine andere Matte war für Alla Rakha und mich ausgebreitet worden. Der Elefant des Heiligen stand ganz in der Nähe, und eine Menge Ameisen krabbelten über den Boden. Als ich zu spielen begann, verschwanden all diese Dinge aus meinem Geist, als sei ich in Trance. Zuerst spielte ich Raga Todi, dann mit Alla Rhakas Tabla zusammen eine andere Raga, und wunderbarerweise verloren unsere Instrumente nicht ein einziges Mal die Übereinstimmung -- eine höchst erstaunliche Sache, da wir direkt in der Sonne saßen. Als unser Spiel beendet war, gab es eine lange Stille. Das einzige Geräusch war das Hin- und Herschwingen des
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Elefantenrüssels, der über das Gras strich. Der Shakaracharya blieb in einem tranceähnlichen Zustand verloren.
(Eingeblendet wird: Love Parade 2000, akustischer BreitbandAusschnitt)
A: Ich brauch von O bis Peng! maximal 2,5 Sekunden! B: Die Raver können kaum noch die Kinder der Hippies sein, fast schon die Enkel. C: Statt Stirnband, Sitar und Mähne -- pearcing, Silberfolie, rosafarbene Perücken. B: Kein Wunder, daß unverfälschte Alt-Hippies wie Urban Gwerder aus Zürich, Baujahr 1944, die heutigen Punker, Groover, Raver eher skeptisch glossieren: C: Mit „Love Parades“ ist jetzt die alte Aufforderung „Dancing in the Streets“ überrealisiert -- aber als Wochenendflip und karnevalmäßiger Konsumtrip für Yuppie-Banker und -Bürofräuleins, Freizeit-Exhibitionismus vor dem Weltuntergang, oder sowas? A: Fehlt hippiedesk erweitertes Bewußtsein, wird alles Raven nur ein Frust sein! B: Immerhin folgen sowohl die Raver von 1967 wie die Kurzhaar-Hippies des Jahres 2000 gleichermaßen der guten alten Maxime Christian Morgensterns: C: Laß die Moleküle rasen, was sie auch zusammenknobeln! Laß das Tüfteln, laß das Hobeln! D: Heilig halte die Ekstasen!
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B: Beziehungsweise in ihrer eigenen Sprache heißt der einzige rote Faden beider Massenbewegungen: (Eingeblendet der Kehrreim aus „All you need is Lover!“) Love Love Love! A: John Lennon lebt! Öfter mal was Neues! B: So heißt denn die einzige message der One World Love Parade, auf die sich alle zuckenden Leiber einigen können: A: Feiern, feiern, feiern, bis zum Umfalln! B: Die Hippies hingegen hatten ein ganzes Paket aus Botschaften: A: Jugend contra Roboter! B: Ich grüße die Boys, die das geklaute Feuer weitertragen! A: Make love, not war! Fuck for peace! C: Koitiert auf Bänken, boykottiert die Banken! A: To masturbate is human -- to fuck divine! C: Nicht länger zusehn, wie lügende Schleimer das Universum kontrollieren! A: Und sabbernde, wixende, arrivierte, lahme Präsidenten! D (kurz eingeblendet: Scott McKenzie: „If you'll go to San Francisco...“) Tut das Unnütze, singt die Lieder, die man aus eurem Mund nicht erwartet! A: Wir sind die, vor denen uns unsere Eltern immer gewarnt haben! C: Seid umschlungen, Millionärinnen! D: Tune in, turn on, drop out! C: Hast du Acid in der Blutbahn, fliegst du schöner als ein Truthahn! A: Erst wenn du auf allen Löchern pfeifst, du möglicherweise Gott begreifst! Radiosendung
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B (sachlich): Die Geschichte des Hippietums verlief in Kürze so: Bereits 1924 beschrieb Alfred Döblin in seinem ziemlich angetörnten Roman „Die drei Sprünge des Wang Lun“ vorausgreifend den „Summer of Love“ von 1967: D (hinterlegt mit chinesischer Musik): Sie predigten nicht, suchten niemanden zu bekehren. Vergeblich bemühten sich Literaten, die sich unter sie mischten, ein religiöses Dogma von ihnen zu hören. Viele aßen kein Fleisch, brachen keine Blumen um, schienen Freundschaft mit den Pflanzen, Tieren und Steinen zu halten. Ein Seufzen preßte das Land aus. Man hatte so glückverschleierte Augen nie gesehen. Ein Zittern ging durch die Familien. (Die Chinamusik ist in den Beatle-Song „She's leaving home“ übergegangen) B: Nein, die Hippies kamen noch viel früher in die Gänge! A: Gern saß Mark Twain am Missisippi und paffte wie ein alter Hippie. C (hinterlegt mit der gluckernden Unterwassermusik, die auf beigelegter MC hinter dem Fliegenpilz-Lied kommt): Die frühesten Lebensformen waren faule, amöboide Sauna-Hedonisten mit Appetit. Alles war organisch und natürlich, nichts amoralisch oder illegal. Drunten im Süden, in den lauschigen und bestens ausgestatteten Urwäldern um den Äquator...immerwährende Summertime -- and the living was easy! B: Bevor Dada da war, war Dada da. A: Eindringlich warnte einst Charles Dickens: D: Erst tun's haschen und dann ficken's! B: Der Baum der Erkenntnis trug, laut Dr. Christian Rätsch, einem techno-cyberspace-schamanistisch engagierten Ethnobotaniker, psychedelisch wirksame Früchte und wartet hierbei weiterhin auf seine botanische Bestimmung. A: Am Anfang stand, ihr wißt es ja, zuerst die Drogenrazzia. Auf Übertretung stand für jeden Sofort-Verweis aus Garten Eden. Radiosendung
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B: Weil Eva die Theorie, derzufolge sie von einem männlichen Gott aus Adams Rippe erschaffen worden sei, anzweifelte, beschloß sie, den Verhältnissen auf den Grund zu gehen. Sie folgte dem Rat einer schlangenförmigen Botin der alten Erdgöttin und lud Adam ein, an ihrem Ritual teilzuhaben. Alsdann folgte die offizielle Verleumdung aller psychedelischen Erkenntnisse. A: Wilhelm Busch im Kifferwahn: D: Krischan, laß die Piepen stahn!
(Es erklingt: „Der Fliegenpilz“, von Christof Stählin, siehe beigefügte MC -- und zwar die erste Hälfte, 01:60 Minuten, bis zur Textstelle: „-- kommt herzu, denn es ist alles bereit, beim Fliegenpilz, beim lieben, lieben, lieben Fliegenpilz“)
A: Ohne Hanfdampf kein Gequakel aus dem delphischen Orakel. C: Dem psychedelphischen Orakel! B: Global entstanden Religionen befeuert von den Hanf-Visionen. A: Nur in Eleusis lag man vorn und nahm dort gleich das Mutterkorn. B: Micky Remann hingegen ließ verlauten: C: Je mehr Pilze die Mayas verzehrten, desto präziser wurde ihre Astronomie. Europa hingegen verbrannte seine pilzkundigen Astronominnen und zog dann mit Rachsucht im Herzen aus, um auch den Rest der Welt mit dem eigenen Manko in Einklang zu bringen. Daß die westliche Kultur ihren psychedelischen Schließmuskel mit der ihr eigenen Krampfhaftigkeit geschlossen hält, hat ihr zwar einen gewissen puritanischen Profit beschert - Kontrolle -, jedoch um einen hohen Preis -- Glück. Das Ergebnis läßt sich an Gebäuden, Gesprächen und Gesichtern ablesen. Radiosendung
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B: Rauschforschern, die psychoaktive Gewächse als Panazee jeder Zivilisationsverirrung preisen und Religion und Kultur als Direktprodukt drogendurchfluteter Großhirnrinden, ähneln nicht nur dem LSD-Papst Timothy Leary, der sich nicht vorstellen konnte, daß Hörmän Hesse das „Magische Theater“ im „Steppenwolf“ ohne Drogeneinfluß schreiben konnte, sondern vor allem dem Außerirdischen-Mäzen Erich von Däniken, der der menschlichen Phantasie es ebenfalls nicht zutraut, ganz von allein sieben archaische Weltwunder aufzustellen, sondern Marsmännchen oder gar Engel braucht, um neolithische Rohklotzbauweise hinzulegen, statt gleich ein paar Mammut-Dome von Antoni Gaudi aufzustellen. A: Jeder bekommt den Tim Leary, den er verdient! B: Man könnte die Geschichte der Hippies auch etwas unmetaphorischer erzählen: Am Anfang setzten sich aus nomadischen Urhorden seßhafte Kulturträger ab. Damals hießen die Bildungsbürger Griechen und schimpften auf die damaligen Hippies, die sie mit dem Kraftausdruck „Barbaren“ belegten. Bald jedoch mutierte Hochkultur zu einer hektisch ambitionierten, verkrampften Hochleistungsmaschine, die sich zwecks Selbsterfrischung ein gelegentliches „Zurück zu den Wurzeln“ genehmigte, mit und ohne Rousseau: A: Zurück zur Natur -- aber bitte nicht zu Fuß! B: Urkräftiger Volksmund, Mensch gebliebene Gestalten, schräge Vögel, wilde Männer, Yetis, und schon mischten Ur-Hippies wie Meister Dung Gong oder auch Laotse einen Beamtenstaat auf. Orgiasten, die ungern langweiliger Staatsreligion frönten, tanzten lieber in Sufi-Trance um die Love-Parade-Open-Air-Disco goldener Kälber: A: Willst du wie ein Derwisch tanzen, brauchst du 30 Gramm im Ganzen. C: Willst du abfahrn wie ein Sufi,
hinterlegt mit
kostet dich der Spaß `n Fuffi.
arabischer Musik
D: Hast du Hundert auf der Skala, landest du direkt bei -- Allah! B: Ungekämmte Wanderprediger, Minnesänger und Minengänger wie Buddha... Radiosendung
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A: Orpheus! C: Diogenes von Sinope! D: Und nicht zuletzt Jesus... B: ...inkarnierten sich neu in späteren Früh-Hippies wie Francois Villon... A: Oswald von Wolkenstein! D: Leo Tolstoi... C: ...und nicht zuletzt Rasputin. D: Und eines Donnerstags dann, fast zweitausend Jahre, nachdem ein Mann an einen Baumstamm genagelt worden war, weil er gesagt hatte, wie phantastisch er sich das vorstelle, wenn die Leute zur Abwechslung mal nett zueinander wären -A: Und leise fügte er noch dran: Schau dir nur meine Jünger an! Die fressen Gras doch büschelweise, so wahr ich Jesus Christus heiße! B: Und schon spaltete sich Frau Musica auf, obwohl Wüstensohn Dschieses sicher kein Faible für Bachkantaten gehabt hätte: einerseits in himmlische und irdische Musik, also Engelssang und Menschengeröhr, und andererseits, nämlich auf etwas niedrigerer Ebene: in geistliche und weltliche Musik. Wobei Himmel und Erde aber nie völlig auseinanderdrifteten, ganz im Sinne Papst Gregor des Großen, im 6. Jahrhundert: D (hinterlegt mit ferner Gregorianik): Wer von den Gläubigen möchte daran zweifeln, daß gerade in der Stunde des Opfers die Himmel sich öffnen und die Chöre der Engel zugegen sind? Oben und unten verbinden sich, Himmel und Erde, Sichtbares und Unsichtbares werden eins. B: Dermaßen eins, daß Johann Sebastian Bachs weltliche Kantanten, bloß 20 an der Zahl, nicht völlig anders klingen als seine 197 geistlichen Kantaten. Überirdisch perlendes Saitenspiel und höllisch laute Gerichtsund Kriegsposaunen halten weiterhin die Dichotomie aufrecht, bis hinauf und hinab zu heutigen Klangkörpern und Stadtorchestern, in denen in der Radiosendung
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Person der ersten Geige bzw. des Kapellmeisters fast stets ein engagierter Adornoleser sich kapriziert, während in der Reihe des schweren Blechs bloß Fußballfans hocken, getreu der Unterteilung Luthers in Gottesdienst und Bauchdienst. Bereits in die Liebesmadrigale und Balladen von Francesco Landini, Guillaume de Machaut oder Carlo Gesualdo, dem Fürsten von Venosa -C: -- dessen erste große Biographie von Glenn Watkins im Juni 2000 auf Deutsch erschienen ist, bei Matthes & Seitz, Vorwort: Igor Strawinsky, -B: -- ist praktisch regelmäßig ein viel süßerer Himmel eingeflossen als in die vierstimmigen Messen derselben Landini, de Machaut und Gesualdo (Im Background nach Wahl und Wunsch ein wenig a-capella-Madrigales). Und das konnte sich wie immer nur steigern: Anton Bruckners lieber Gott tönte präsenter und lebendiger aus Bruckner-Symphonien als aus den vorgegebenen Setzkästen heiliger Bruckner-Messen, und eher aus Beethovens späten Quartetten als aus Missa solemnis und „Christus auf dem Ölberg“. D: Und die mittleren Quarette? A: Und die frühen Quartette?
(Im Background ad libitum Orgelmusik, z.B. von Bach)
B: Orgelkompositionen dümpelten immer blässer, konfirmantenmäßiger durch die getrübten Gotteshäuser.
(Die Orgelmusik geht problemlos über in Procul Harums: „A Whiter Shade of Pale“...)
B: Micky Remann hingegen ließ verlauten: C: Was die Kirchen verschweigen, bringen die Pilze an den Tag und fordern nicht einmal, daß du daran glaubst: Religion ist abtrünniger Schamanismus, denn sie hat den heiligen Pilz mit dem dekadenten Dogma vertauscht, dies der Gemeinde aber nicht mitgeteilt.
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B: Unterdessen, nebenan im alten Japan, spaltete sich Frau Musica ebenfalls in konträre Richtungen auf:
(Es erklingen ein paar Takte japanische Gagaku-Musik -- die schrägste, seltsamste, die sich finden läßt)
B: Gagaku-Musik, die älteste notierte Musik, ein halbes Jahrtausend älter als Guido von Arezzo, spaltete sich auf in Links- und Rechtsmusik. Hingegen im taoistischen China spaltete sich Musik auf in hörbare Musik und unhörbare... D (hinterlegt mit chinesischer Laute): Je mehr Meister Dong Gung von der Musik verstand, desto seltener griff er zu seiner Laute. Die unhörbare Musik klingt süßer als die hörbare Musik. A: Und also sprach Konfuzius, natürlich unter Hanfeinfluß: D: Die Welt teilt sich in Yang und Yin, im Hanf jedoch ist beides drin. A: Zu Haschisch haben die Chinesen so gut wie keine Antithesen. B: Doch zurück ins Abendland: Sakralkunst und Volkslied, spätmittelalterlich kulminierend teilweise in Giovanni Palestrina und Oswald von Wolkenstein, wiederholt und steigert bzw. verflacht sich wiedererkennbar ein halbes Jahrtausend später in der säkularisierten Zweiteilung in E und U, genauer: in der Sphärenmusik György Ligetis und im Liedsang Heinos. Wobei die heillos auseinander gegangene Schere sich wohl nie wieder schließen kann. Und die von Papst Gregor dem Großen intendierte Einswerdung von Oben und Unten, Himmel und Erde sich wohl ewiglich bestenfalls wie folgt anhören würde, müßte, könnte, sollte:
(Es erklingt großes Ligeti-Orchester (z.B. Lontano, überblendet mit einem Heino-Song Ihrer Wahl) Radiosendung
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B: Eingedenk aller Hippies, Goa- und Poona-Pilger, die das Hippie-Idol Hermann Hesse bereits 1934 mit dem Wort „Morgenlandfahrer“ umschrieb, um ihre Abgefahrenheit in Sachen Jugend der Seele, Überall und Nirgends, Einswerden aller Zeiten zu preisen. Und indeed, nicht umsonst kann in der Regina coelorum, der christlichen Himmelskönigin, durchaus das „Girl with the sun in her eyes“ wiedererkannt werden, auch wenn Maria oder Galaxia in dem Fall Lucy heißt: Lucy in the Sky with diamonds, the Girl with kaleidoscope eyes -- everyone smiles as you drift past the flowers, (am besten gesungen) that grow so incredibly high: A (euphorisch hingerissen, hinterlegt mit Greogorianik, die in „Lucy in the Sky“ aus der „Sergeant Pepper“-Beatles-LP übergeht): Einstmalen, da war mir in einem Gesicht und Schaugeschehnis, als stünde der Himmel offen, und ich sah die lichten Engel klar auf- und abfahren in lichtem Gewande. Da hörte ich den allerschönsten Gesang, dem es je gefiel, in meinem Geist zu verweilen, in dem himmlischen Hofe vom fröhlichen Ingesinde. D (euphorisch hingerissen, während „Lucy in the Sky“ tönt): Sie sangen insonderheit einen Gesang von Unserer Lieben Frau, der klang so recht süße, daß der Herr meine Seele von großer Wollust zerfließen ließ. B (sachlich): Die Kollektivwoge Pilzköpfe, Blumenkinder, Chaoten, Kiffer, Provos, Stadtindianer, Motherfucker, Runaways, Rainbow-People, Easy Rider, Flippis, Straßenkünstler, Elektro-Blueser, Körperpoeten, Peace-Aktivisten, Anti-Karrieristen, Autoharfisten, Andersdenkende und vor allem wechselnde Schlagzeuger rollte über Beethoven hinweg -- (Es erklingt die Zeile „Roll over Beethoven!“ aus dem gleichnamigen Beatles-Song:) -- ehe man leisere, ja spirituellere Töne fand und mit Maultrommel, Pulsleier, Sprechkrawatte, Lichtharfe und nicht zuletzt Ravi Shankars Sitar (Es erklingt der Anfang von „Whitin whitout you“ von der Beatles-LP „St. Pepper“) gegen Borniwelt und Spießer-Internationale ansang, gegen Zivilisiationsträger, Heinohörer plus Bildungsscheiß. Also auch gegen Ligetihörer, genauer: gegen z.B. den Schönberghörer, Kassengestellträger und Hirnwixer Theodor W. Adorno, der - im Gegensatz zu Leonard Bernstein - in den Beatles „Barbaren“ witterte, also in summa: neue Nomaden contra die etablierten Nachfahren neolithischer Ackerbauern und Troglodyten. A: Sehr weise formuliert Adorno: D: Wer Hanf raucht, der braucht keinen Porno!
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B: Keine Geschichtsfälschungen bitte! Adorno erwähnte in der „Ästhetischen Theorie“ zwar eine Sitar, wollte sich aber ansonsten absolut nicht mit Zen-Buddhismus beschäftigen. Und Ernst Bloch sprach tendenziös von „schäumenden Schamanen“. C: In der letzten Zeit entstand, neben der studentischen Linken, auch die sogenannte „Subkultur“ eines Teils der Jugend; darunter verstehen wir die Philosophie und Lebensweise der Hippies und Gammler, mit dem gemeinsamen Anhören von Musik auf riesigen Popfestivals, vor allem mit dem Gebrauch von Rauschgiften zur „Bewußtseinserweiterung oder „-verlagerung“. Wie schätzen Sie, Herr Bloch, diese Subkultur ein? Ist es eine Möglichkeit, die Hoffnung auf eine „bessere Welt“ real zu verwirklichen? D: Nein, keineswegs! Das ist individueller Luxus, der gemacht wird, und so kann ein besseres Leben nicht gebaut werden. Rauschgifte halten nicht lange vor, und was die Leute sehen, sind ja Phantasmen, und sie verriegeln sogar den Blick zu der einfachsten Wirklichkeit, scheint es: künstliche Paradiese, die hergestellt werden und die nur für das Individuum bestehen, das gerade das Rauschgift eingenommen hat, oder für die Gruppe. Das hat überhaupt nichts mit dieser Welt zu tun. C: Aber diese Subkultur hat auch ganz neue Formen des Gemeinschaftslebens hervorgebracht, die Kommunen... D: Die besseren Kommunen sind vermutlich die, in denen keine Rauschgifte gebraucht werden.
(Es erklingt im Background nochmal ein Schluck Gregorianik:)
B: Die Droge, die im Mittelalter genügte, um das himmlische Jerusalem zu hören, hieß Gebet, Fasten, Askese, Reizentzug. Jetzt brauchte der unspirituellste Brutalo sich bloß 0,03 mg Instant-LSD einwerfen, schon sah er alle für ihn noch nie in Frage gekommenen Himmel in NullKomma-Nix offen und konnte ohne troubles zurückfinden zu Gott. D: Zum umsonst von Thales, Buddha, Voltaire, Feuerbach, Nietzsche, Günther Anders und vielen anderen Geistern abgeschlachteten Gott. A: Voltaire mißbilligte den Brauch,
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doch gab er zu: D: Ich rauch es auch. A: Hanf ist tot! wie Nietzsche sagte, wenn die Hanfknappheit ihn plagte. Kaum tat's wieder Haschisch geben, schrie er: Hanf ist noch am Leben! C: Na also! sprach da Zarathustra: Ohne Hanf wär's zappendusta! B: Schöne synästhetische Farbenspiele stammen aber eher von Vor-Hippies wie Paul Scheerbart, also Jahrzehnte vor Entdeckung des LSD: D (hinterlegt mit irgendwelchem Synthesizer): Der Himmel verändert sich in jedem Augenblick. Die Streifen bleiben allerdings, aber ihre Breite und Farbe wechselt fortwährend. Das Brennende, Funkelnde, Glitzernde und Blendende im Innern der Streifen ist ebenfalls in dauernder Bewegung und zeitigt immer wieder neue Feuer- und Funkenspiele; bald geht das diamantartige Brennen in zitterndes Glitzern über, bald wird ein Glanzstreifen plötzlich stumpf und dann gleich wieder blendend, daß es ins Auge sticht -B: Die psychedelischsten, ausgeflipptesten, hochdosiertesten, schönsten LSD-trips, Sternstunden und Astralreisen stammen von Jean Paul, also Jahrhunderte vor Entdeckung des LSD: A: -- alle Wellen flatterten mit Floßfedern, meinem Schifflein wuchsen breite Flügel, die weiße Welt ging über mich, und der lange Strom riß sich donnernd mit dem Schiffe auf dem Haupte aus seinem trocknen Bette auf und stand auf der Quelle und im Himmel und das blumig Gebirge neben ihm -- und wehend glitt mein Flügel-Schiff durch grünen Rosen-Schein und durch weiches Tönen eines langen Blumen-Duftes in ein glänzendes, unabsehliches Morgenland. D (hinterlegt mit Stück 5, SEA YOU ONE, Part IV, von der beiliegenden CD: KIRIT, LIQUID SOUND): -- wie ein Chaos wollte die unsichtbare Welt auf einmal alles gebären; eine Gestalt keimte auf der anderen, aus Blumen wuchsen Bäume, daraus Wolkensäulen, aus welchen oben Gesichter und Blumen brachen. Plötzlich schwamm hoch im Himmel eine weiße Welt unter
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einem Schleier her, eine einzige glänzende Träne sank vom Himmel in das Meer, und es brauste hoch auf -B: Wozu wurde dann LSD entdeckt und gefeiert, wenn es vorher genauso blumig, farbentief und grenzenloser ging, und dies ganz ohne pharmakologische Sprungbretter? Und wenn die neuen Adepten und psychedelischen Musiktherapeuten und Lyrikabsonderer, trotz potenzierter Hirnbomben und optimal erweiterten Bewußtseins, mit dünn tönenden Hymnen allen Dichterfürsten hinterherhumpeln, die sich - eingesperrt in ihre früheren Jahrhunderte - bloß mit ordinärem Hopfenmalz begnügen mußten? A (hinterlegt mit Umweltgeräuschen): Heute Morgen sang ich ein Duett mit einem Preßluftbohrer sein kräftiges Staccato brach über meinen klaren Raum herein Hoch bäumten sich die weichen Töne der Gitarre der starken Schwingung wundersam vereint. Weit trug mich diese Vibration als sie meinen Körper packte Freudentränen liefen über meine Wangen Die Gedanken versiegten und aus den Tiefen meines Selbst strömte ein summender Urlaut... C: Ach ja, auch beim Transzendieren usw. hört das Dünnbrettbohren nicht auf...und die Flachwichserei... B: Praktisch alle Beatniks und Abenteuerinnen schwadronieren beim Umschreiben des Unbeschreiblichen von Musik, die das tiefe Geheimnis der Bilder in sich berge, von Götterschauspiel, von Illusionärem, das zu reinem Sein erstirbt, von aufgehobener Zeit, goldenem Lächeln, Energie, Manifestationen, dem üblichen Kitsch aus Wellen, Tropfen, Blumen, Lichtjahren, Liebe, anderen Dimensionen, großer Traurigkeit, Radiosendung
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Musik...auch gesamtdeutsche Psychedelik-Prinzessinnen wie Nina Hagen kommen bei ihrer LSD-unterstützten Gotteserfahrung zwar über die nicht-physikalische Welt hinaus, keinen Zentimeter aber über ihren Jargon hinaus: A (im Duktus von Nina Hagen -- falls nicht sie selbst dem WDR ohne Spitzen-Gage ihre Stimme leiht): Was dann kam, ist echt too much: ER saß mir gegenüber!!! Mit einer Liebesaustrahlung in solch einem Ausmaß, wie nur ER lieben kann! Unbeschreiblich!!! Es war so stark, daß ES sogar zitterte, so als ob es ziemlich schwer war, dimensionsdurchbrechungsmäßig diesen einzigartigen Kontakt herzustellen. A: Dem Unbeschreiblichen ist es egal, wer es beschreibt! B: Selten trifft die Erleuchtung auf ein Großhirn, das die Kunst versteht, sich erleuchten zu lassen. D: Das Dao, das beschrieben werden kann, ist nicht das ewige Dao. B: Micky Remann hingegen ließ verlauten: C: Die psychedelische Erfahrung fließt immer über den Rand der Tasse, die irgend jemand zu ihrer Beschreibung hinhält -A: Hauptsache, wir sind uns einig: auch das Unbeschreibliche sucht seinen Dichter. B: Ohne Großhirn keine Musik... C: Und fast vice versa: D: Ohne Musik läge jedes Hirn noch viel bracher. B: Je nach zerebraler Sensibiltät kann ein und dieselbe Musik sehr unterschiedlich tönen, und falls eine dritte Komponente hinzutritt, z.B. eine bewußtseinsverändernde Droge, verwandelt die Musik sich unweigerlich ins nochmal kaum Wiedererkennbare. C: Von Louis Armstrong bis Pink Floyd hamm alle sich am Hanf erfreut. B: Es war einmal ein atypischer Zwitterling zwischen Subkultur und Autogesellschaft, nicht Fleisch, nicht Fisch, und der hieß mehr oder weniger Ulrich Holbein. Und war nicht ganz unidentisch mit dem Autor Radiosendung
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dieser Sendung. Weder mit übertriebener Seriösität und Solidität scheint er viel am Hut zu haben, noch als bekennender Alt-Hippie sich dringend outen zu wollen. Doch lassen wir ihn selber zu Wort kommen. Mit einigen Erlebnisprotokollen und Subjektiv-Reflexionen zu Fragen wie: A: Wieso wird psychedelic music fast ausschließlich von Popfreaks gehört? B: Und wieso nehmen Bildungskonsumenten bzw. E-Musik-Freunde selten bis nie LSD? A: Wie verändert sich Musik unter Drogeneinfluß? B: Und vorher mit Bekenntnissen über seine Sozialisation und Identitätssuche so um 1969: C: Das Sparkassen-Outfit der kurzgeschorenen, kurzgehaltenen, bartfreien, keimfreien, schweinchenfarbenen, spießig bebrillten Banalität von Schule und Elternhaus, dieser Borniwelt, für die ich viel zu ungekämmt herumlief, verhalf mir noch nie so recht zu meiner Identität. Nicht umsonst trug ich schon mit 16 den Titel Edelgammler, und später Hilfsjesus. Als gäbe es nur die Wahl zwischen Bürohengst und Blumenkind. (Im Background Barockoboe, Vivaldi oder so) Einerseits schien mir Eberhard, mein goldbebrillt wohlgescheitelter kleiner Bruder, mit seiner Oboe am Leben vorbeizutröten; andererseits mochte ich mit all den abtörnenden Freak-Visagen, die zwischen Gammlermauer und Königsstraße ihren Shit qualmten und mit denen ich einzig die langen Haare teilte, an möglichst ungeteilter Identität mich kaum freuen. Andere Alternativen gab es nicht, außer vielleicht Snobismus, Smoking, Weste, Krawatte. Doch die karnevalistische Notlösung und Pseudomorphose des geschniegelten Opernballbesuchers und Oberkellners hätte mir nobody abgekauft. Bei mir hing immer irgendwo ein Hemdzipfel raus. Weshalb ich identitätsmäßig eindeutig der widerlichen Popjugend zugeordnet wurde. Von den drei Hauptattributen jedes Popfans - Pop, Drogen, Sex wies ich mindestens zwei davon fast überhaupt nicht auf: Rockkonzerte, auf die ich so zwischen 1968 und 70 zögernd pilgerte, waren für meine zarten Gehörzellen viel zu laut. (Einblendung von Steppenwolf: „Born to be wild“) Schon von meiner Identität her war ich einfach nicht so recht born to be wild. (Nochmal eventuell Vivaldimäßiges) Unsereins tendierte eher an Barockmusik gesittet sich zu delektieren als mit Rock mich zuzudröhnen. Statt Open Air Festivals zog ich mir zunehmend lieber Opus 131 rein, in cis-moll. Und hörte lieber Viola als percussion, und statt Iron Butterfly -- Claude Debussy. Statt Purple Haze -- Charles Ives. Statt (eventuell gesungen) „While my Guitar gently weeps“-- Györgi Ligeti, schon deshalb diesen, weil er 1961 in „Atmosphéres“ und 1967 in Radiosendung
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„Lontano“ die Pauken fortließ. Haschisch hätt ich mir zwar gern gefallen lassen, als Nichtraucher begann ich aber beim geringsten Zug am Joint hochallergisch zu husten. So verstrichen zwei, drei Jahrzehnte. Bis heute wandele ich optisch als durchaus stilechter Alt-Hippie im Schlabberlook durch die resopalbleiche, neutralgraue Welt, in zwitterhafter Mimikry. Und zuckte nur ausnahmsweise auf Heidelberger Tekkno-Partys herum, mit Ringbuchmappe unterm Arm, Ohropax im Gehörgang und sardonischem Grinsen über Ekstasy-Typen, die beim authentischen Ausflippen zwar die Augen zumachten, aber die Brille aufbehielten. Immerhin neigte ich sowohl als Ekstaseforscher wie Ekstatiker, ohne jemals Kiffer zu sein, eher den Drogen der Blumenkindergeneration zu als den Besäufnissen der Glimmstengel- und Bierbauchmenschheit und ihrem ewig unästhetischen: „Noch'n Schnäpschen!“ Ich warf mir Space-cakes ein, doch die hierzu passend aufgelegte Musik funktionierte bei mir nicht als Ferment. Bei den Arrangements von George Martin für die Beatles spielten zwar öfters versöhnliche Streicher mit, doch klangen die mir bei aller Intensivierung des Hörverhaltens immer noch viel zu simpel und popig:
(Es erklingt von: The Beatles. The Psychedelic Years 1966 - 68 B 2 B X 0020, P 1994 made in Italy. CD Nr. 1, Stück Nr. 10 -- ohne die a-capella-Stimmen vor Einsatz der Musik)
C (in die Musik hinein): Ich legte mir die naheliegendsten Einstiegsdrogen auf, zum Teil in den heißen Jahren selber, zum Teil in nachgestellten Nostalgie-Arrangements: „Umma Gumma“ von den Pink Floyd, Grateful Dead, Tangerine Dream und anderen Acid-Rock, also alles, was als ausgesprochene „psychedelische Musik“ sich selber so nennt und sich von nicht-psychedelischer Musik zu unterscheiden strebt durch AkustikTricks und Mätzchen, Verzerrung, Verfremdung, vor allem Hall-Effekte, und aalte und suhlte mich in all den via Hall und Verhallung erzielten Räumlichkeiten, genoß so gläubig wie möglich diese Art von Raumvergrößerung als die architektonische Seite von Bewußtseinserweiterung -und stellte nebenbei als Hirnwixer die These auf: bewußtseinserweiternde Musik knüpft allzu unbewußt an an der obligaten Verhallung der Sakralmusik im Hallraum der Dome und Kirchenschiffe! So entflohen behauptete ich - die Aussteiger ihrer hochtechnisierten Hochkultur und landeten -- ebendort. Mit Schadenfreude besah ich die Verlängerungsschnur, die ihnen nicht aus der Steckdose gezogen werden will. Sonst hätte null Subkultur weiterhin an ihren Kopfhörern baumeln können. Guten Willens legte ich mir schamanische Ritualtänze auf, von
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Axel Brück, dem Rekonstrukteur des Dord, also des keltischen Didgeridoo.
(Es erklingt von der beiliegenden „Megin-Ritual-Musik“, CD 1, Stück Nr. 3 Zwischenspiel)
C (in die Musik hinein): Statt aber auf solchen Trance-Trommeln in die andere Welt zu reiten, dorthin, wohin modern lifestyle bekanntlich selten gelangt, stellte mich meine unfreiwillige Imagination bloß in eine familiär vorbelastete, nämlich unschön mit dem Maschinenbauingenieur und Fleischwolfkonstrukteur Walter Holbein assoziierte Fabrikhalle, allwo eine Stampfmaschine sich nicht mehr anhalten ließ, und irgendwelche Treibriemen, Schüsselröchler und Schnaufbläser mitgezerrt wurden...ein Albtraum...ein Horrortrip! Viel inhumaner und industrieller als das ungeölt jammernde Maschinentableau György Ligetis im Kammerkonzert für 13 Instrumente. (Ritual-Musik geht über in Satz 3 aus Ligetis Kammerkonzert für 13 Instrumente) Schnell die CD wechseln und Liquid-Sound-Unterwassserkompositionen auflegen, mit einer Einführung des delphinologisch und ozeanosophisch inspirierten LiquidSound-Erfinders Micky Remann:
(Es erklingt von der beiliegenden CD „LIQUID SOUND Kirit, Sea you one, Stück Nr. 1, Intro -- sofort ausblenden nach 01:53 Minuten, nämlich hinter: „neu zu genießen.“)
C (hinterlegt mit Stück 4, Sea you one, Part IV, der beiliegenden Liquid Sound-CD): Ich fuhr nach Bad Sulza, begab mich hinein in Liquid Sound, 3 bis 5 Prozent Salzgehalt, schwamm mit etlichen liebenswerten, wenn auch nur imaginären Delphinen rücklings in offene, trotzdem 32 bis 34 Grad warme Meer, befreit von Schwimmbewegungen, Temperaturschwankungen, Wadenkrampf, Rettungsring, Badekappe und Badehose, und fühlte mich wohl -- nein: das wäre zu wenig...mir war, als wäre ich glücklich, zumindest ziemlich happy, nur eins störte: in meinem Hirn lief die Entgrenzungsmusik auf anderem Kanal als die sonor beigefügte, freundlich anmachende Moderatorenstimme: (nochmal ein kurzer Ausschnitt aus Stück 1, Intro) Und ständig kam mir der durchaus spontan funktionierende, wohlige, ja mystische Auflösungsvorgang meines
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Bewußtseins in die Quere mit dem Angebot der stimmlichen Botschaft, sich von mir entschlüsseln zu lassen. Genauer: Immer, wenn ich mich just im ewigen Ozean entgrenzen wollte, hielt mich meine Entzifferungsmühe auf der Erde zurück. Pitschenaß blieb ich in der Trockenwüste sitzen. Zugleich entging meinem schönberggeschulten Ohr leider nicht, daß die Unterwasser-Komposition von Bernd Kircher, Thomas Ritthoff und Ulrich Reinartz natürlich an einen verwässerten György Ligeti nicht herankam -- eher schwamm mein Ego sowie meine Gesamtpersönlichkeit in den lauen Salzwellen der Liquid-Sound-Therme von hinnen, als daß sich mein kulturgesättigt hochmütiges Qualitätsbewußtsein gemindert hätte. Zu diesen meinen Superioritätsgefühlen hätte vermutlich Micky Remann ungefähr folgendes verlauten lassen:
(Von beigefügter MC wird die Suada von Micky Remann gespielt -- bei unterlegter, weiterlaufender Liquid-Sound-Musik)
C (bei irgendwann ausklingender Liquid-Sound-Musik): Diesem Plädoyer für spirituelle Gleichwertigkeit sowohl des wolkenhaft vorbeiziehenden Hochwertigen wie des Schablonenhaften, nein: des unnötig Hochkomplizierten und des angenehm Einfachen, möchte ich mich vollinhaltlich anschließen. Und mich nie wieder an Bewertungen festkrallen! Zumal sowohl Kunstmusik wie Pop genau derselben Hirnfunktion dienen: der Herstellung von Ekstase, und diese wird so oder so erzielt, hier wie da: wie Ektase das aufgerissene Maul Mick Jaggers gebiert, so zeugt der Schweißtropfen an der Stirnlocke des karajanförmigen Stardirigenten von Ekstase. Und wenn schon Samsara und Nirwana sowohl nirgendwo wie irgendwo identisch sein sollen, jedenfalls im Mahayana-Buddhismus, warum sollen dann in der von mir verpönten Halleffekt-Flächigkeit bzw. flächigen Unendlichkeit gutgemeinter Unterwasser-compositions nicht ebenfalls jene „ewigen Tiefen“ - oder wie ich die nennen könnte - stecken, auf die ich öfter als jederzeit scharf war?! U wie E stampfen und geigen sich am breiten Faden ihrer Lauterzeugung in Regionen hinauf oder hinein, in denen ein betont unekstatisch gebauter Mensch sich außerhalb seiner nüchternen Phasen ebenfalls recht oft befindet. B: Musik als Umweg, an Ekstase heranzukommen. Liquid Sound als Umweg, an ebendiese heranzukommen. Drogen als Umweg. Bildungsdünkel als Fremdkörper und Hemmschwelle auf dem Weg zu ozeanischer Entgrenzung...
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C (hinterlegt mit echtem Walgesang): Nichts gegens Gedudel, womit die Dumpfis in ihrer versalzenen Suppe schwimmen, zwecks FeierabendEntgrenzung und bei bereithängenden Handtüchern, aber irgendwie saß ich fest in meiner Chefetage und Oberschicht -B: -- allwo auch Haschischkonsument Walter Benjamin residierte, der am 29. September 1928 in Marseille notierte: D (hinterlegt mit fernem Golden-Twentie-Jazz und Kneipenlärm): Die Musik, die inzwischen immer wieder aufklang und abnahm, nannte ich die strohernen Ruten des Jazz. Ich habe vergessen, mit welcher Begründung ich mir gestattete, ihren Takt mit dem Fuß zu markieren. Das geht gegen meine Erziehung, und es geschah nicht ohne eine inwendige Auseinandersetzung. B: Also wahrlich kein Früh-Hippie, aber bereits ein Rübergezogener, halbwegs Mitstampfender, dessen Idealismus und Snobismus in Bezug auf richtige französische Akzentuierung auch im bekifften Zustand nicht all-versöhnlich hinwegschmelzen mochte, wohl aufgrund viel zu geringer Dosis. D: Es gab Zeiten, in denen die Intensität der akustischen Eindrücke alle anderen verdrängte. Vor allem in der kleinen Hafenbar ging mit einmal alles, und zwar im Lärm von Stimmen, nicht von Straßen, unter. An diesem Stimmenlärm war nun das Eigentümlichste, daß er ganz und gar nach Dialekt klang. Die Marseiller sprachen mir plötzlich sozusagen nicht gut genug französisch. C: Und mir war die psychedelische Musik nicht psychedelisch genug. Ich wollte herausfinden, was mit Johann Sebastian Bach geschieht, sobald er mit LSD in Berührung kommt. Zwar hatte mir schon ein Psychonaut vorgearbeitet, kein Geringerer als Tempelpriester Tim Leary persönlich -- wie schön, daß er in einem Interview mit „Playboy“ nicht The Doors als Beispiel nahm! Sondern ausgerechnet Bach: B: Ist der Gehörsinn ähnlich intensiviert? D: Ungeheuer. Normalerweise hören wir nur isolierte Geräusche: das Klingeln eines Telefons, den Klang von Worten. Aber wenn man sich mit LSD anturnt, wird das Cortische Organ im inneren Ohr zu einer zitternden Membrane, die unter dem Zapfenstreich der Klangwellen aufschäumt. Die Vibrationen scheinen tief in einen zu dringen, zu schwellen und dort zu platzen. Man hört eine Note aus einer Bachsonate, und sie hängt da, glitzernd, pulsierend, eine endlose Zeit lang, während man sich langsam um sie dreht. Dann, Jahrhunderte später, kommt die zweite Note Radiosendung
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der Sonate, und wieder treibt man jahrhundertelang langsam um die beiden Noten herum, beobachtet ihre Harmonie und Dissonanzen und meditiert über die Musikgeschichte. B: Der Autor dieser Sendung schuf sich ein terminloses Wochenende, zog das Telefon raus, legte sich auf den Teppich, neben bereitgelegte CDs, Wegwerfstift und Papier, Himbeeren, ein Glas Honig, neben Handspiegelchen und Nachttopf, und zwar lauter Musik, die er gut kannte, nämlich um den Wahrnehmungsunterschied ermessen zu können: Bruckner, Mahler, Schubert, Ravi Shankar, György Ligeti, chinesische Musik u.a. Auf dem Papierchen war ein zweifarbiger Chinadrache abgebildet. Zehn bis 14 Stunden würde der Trip dauern. C: Inclusive allerlei zerdehnte Jahrhunderte, alles in allem Zeit und Raum genug, um nun auch mal meinerseits so richtig subtil über die Musikgeschichte zu meditieren. Ich nahm nur einen halben Drachen. Nach einer Stunde tat sich noch nichts. Änderten sich die Lichtverhältnisse vorteilhaft? Nicht im mindesten, will ich nicht sagen. Nach anderthalb Stunden schob ich die andere Drachenhälfte nach. Eventuell gewann jetzt das Licht eine gewisse Bedeutungsqualität. Jedenfalls legte ich feierlich Bruckners 2. Symphonie auf, und zwar den 2. Satz:
(Es erklingt ebendieser)
C: Bruckner klang wie sonst auch. Takt für Takt geradeso wie immer. Halt Bruckner. Um nichts intensiver oder anders. Oder vielleicht doch etwas intensiver und tiefer als vordem? Dieser breite Sound, wie verlangsamt, gedehnt, aber nicht verzerrt, sondern deutlicher, klarer, so, als hätte ich es sonst bloß als LP gehört, auf dem dumpfem Uher-Gerät von 1969, und dem Revox-Gerät von 74, und jetzt...jetzt war erstmals eine CD aufgelegt worden: aber nicht nur digital gereinigter, deutlicher, sondern vor allem ernster, um nicht zu sagen: existenzieller, mehr als Kunst, und mehr als Religion sowieso...dieser Klang...Schichten und Gegenstimmen, die sonst nicht dabeiwaren...also hatte die Wirkung volltönend eingesetzt! Polyphonie, die mir genaugenommen immer entging, ließ sich glasklar durchhören bis in letzte Nuancen hinein, in immer auseinanderhaltbarere Instrumentengruppen, auseinanderfließenderere, nicht länger mehr an ihre Klangquelle gebunden, sondern frei im Raum flutend, nicht nur bei mir in Ohr und Hirn hinein, sondern überall hinein, und hervor aus mir: braungoldene Tiefen und noch tiefere Tiefen, tränenlösende Tiefen, Tränenströme, über alle strahlenden Dome hinaus und hinab, Radiosendung
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räumliches Non plus ultra, nicht nur ozeanischer als Liquid Sound, sondern doppelt so kosmisch, zehnmal feierlicher, tausendmal weiträumiger, raumhafter, weltraumfüllender als der gute alte bescheidene, arglose Anton Bruckner dies ahnen konnte, weit über Bruckners arg ephemeres Christentum hinaus, Bruckners begrenzten, fortgespülten lieben Gott -- Gott selber nur ein Korken, der hinwegschrumpfende Komponist nur ein Atom auf den Kraftwellen solcher Klangströme. Wieso durfte ich das bis dato nie so hören? War das überhaupt noch Musik...oder nicht vielmehr etwas völlig anderes -- aber was? Die Wonnen kamen mir länger vor als mein bisheriges Leben. Um zwischendurch doch mal aufzutauchen, öffnete ich die Augen und sah auf die Digitaluhr: 14 Uhr 35. Bruckner lief weiter, aber die Uhr war stehngeblieben. Ich verlor mich ins seltsam leuchtende 14 Uhr 35, das auch nach Jahren nicht umspringen wollte auf ein 14 Uhr 36. A: Shakespeare schrieb, auf englisch freilich: D: Wer Hanf nimmt, hat's nie wieder eilig... C: Ach ja, bisher hatte ich nur geglotzt statt gesehen, geknipst statt fotografiert, geröchelt statt gesungen -- dies war erstmals das wahre, eigentliche Hören und Tönen, und übrigens ich selber nicht nur der Komponist, sondern auch die Musik: ewige, nie wieder aufhörende Musik, Jahrhundert um Jahrhundert. A: Stundenlang wird ein Minütchen raucht man nur ein kleines Tütchen... C: Und ich hatte immer geglaubt, ich sei so unsteigerbar übersensibel, jedenfalls unabgestumpft, und jetzt zeigte sich: auch ich hatte alles nur rudimentös und abgestorben erlebt, absolut nie bin ich Bruckner gerecht geworden, jetzt aber hör ich ihn zum ersten Mal in diesem Megatheater und kann erstmals aufhorchen, lieben und überfließen in -- da sprang das 14 Uhr 35 auf einmal doch noch um -- wohin? Auf 14 Uhr 36. Ich tastete nach der CD-Hülle, besah im Booklet das Brucknerporträt, merkte gleich: daß ich mich da nicht vertiefen sollte...es verzog sich ins Unfeine, Fratzige, passend zu meiner eigenen ungenügenden Gestalt, die klein und erbärmlich in der Gegend herumlag, neben dem auf einmal ins Leere abrutschenden Gedröhne -C: -- wieso eigentlich eine andere? Denn ich hatte doch die ganze Welt umfaßt, nichts hatte gefehlt -- wozu jetzt noch Hektor Berlioz auflegen? Bruckner hatte doch schon absolut alles gesagt, und mehr als alles! B: Er warf den Finger auf Off, und legte eine andere CD auf -Radiosendung
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(Es erklingt: Gustav Mahler, 7. Sinfonie, 2. Satz (ohne das Hornsolo am Anfang)
C (kurz nach Einsatz des Trauermarschs): Eine Kolonne zog vorwärts, im Gleichschritt, aber weil alle Füße samt ihrer Größenverhältnisse wenig zueinander paßten, lief dieser Stechschritt im vorbeigeschobenen Zerrspiegel sofort aus dem Ruder...vieles stimmte nicht...alles stimmte nicht...nichts stimmte an dieser Nachtmusik -- nirgendwo zeitgemäßes Rollstuhlgeblitze, sondern jeder hinkte, humpelte, mit schadhaften Krücken, in altertümlich bräunliche Lumpen gehüllt, Goldocker dazwischengefetzt, historische Restbestände, Überbleibsel. Statt Körperbehinderte -- Mißgeburten en masse, Wechselbälger, grinsender Abschaum, ein irrwitzig ausschreitender Zwerg schlug eine Riesentrommel...die Krüppelparade hörte nicht mehr auf, jämmerlichste Gestalten, die ich Gustav Mahler kaum zugetraut hätte. Lachzwang kämpfte mit Mitleid und Blasendruck, immer endloser die Invalidenkompanie, immer zelebratorischer der insgesamte Fehlgeburtstag, jede weitere Gestalt und Lumpenkönig sowohl gehandicapter wie lachkrampfverstärkender sowie notdurftgepeitschter...ich krümmte mich auf dem naßgeweinten Teppich in Schüben aus Zwerchfellreizung, wiehernde und weinende Maske ineinandergedrückt, endlich beides in einem: Hochzeit weit auseinanderliegender Hirnfunktionen, bei ansteigendem Pinkeldrang...das Närrische war lustiger als das Schlimme daran traurig war, nein: umgekehrt, das ganze Leid nervensystembehafteter Lebewesen quintessenziell hineingepreßt in diesen kümmerlich aufmarschierenden, durch die Jahrtausende paradierenden Witzfiguren, mit denen ich den Schnulli in den Kollektivtopf der Nacht hängte und jahrtausendelang ozeanisches Strullern produzierte, bei erneut stehngebliebenem 14 Uhr 41, nein, umgekehrt: putziger trug noch niemand seine Bürde als diese Millionen und Abertrillionen -- nein, umgekehrt: schauriger, himmelschreiender, qualzerzerrter mußte noch niemand antreten! Ewige Hölle demjenigen, der hier zu lachen wagt oder weiterzupinkeln -- schnell die CD weg! (Musik und Pinkelgeräusch im Nachttopf bricht ab) B: Und auch hier wieder hatte mehr als die ganze Welt dringelegen. Äonenlang war er fortgewesen, als der experimentierende Ekstatiker zu sich kam, innerhalb merkwürdiger, atmender Raumproportionen. D: Einstein wußte, wenn man kifft, A: -- werden Raum und Zeit umschifft. Radiosendung
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D: Grad wird krumm und früh wird spät... A: Das ist Relativität! B: Er verzehrte eine Himbeere, -C: -- die als freundlich fluidalisches Wesen auf meiner Zunge zitterte und zerging, als Essenz ihrer selbst, und nicht zuungunsten der Himbeere, sondern gleichberechtigt, ebenbürtig, ein hohes Paar: Himbeere und Zunge bzw. ein Ozean aus luftigen, sommerlichen Himbeermolekülen und ein schier genauso uferloser Ozean aus feinziselierten Geschmackspapillen bewegten sich so repräsentativ wie intim ineinander, laß die Moleküle rasen -- und das ganze frühere kulinarische Leben war nur ein Kantinenfraß dagegen, dumpf und taubstummblind runtergeschlungenes Fastfood. Und eine andere Musik legte ich jetzt auf: (Es erklingt von der vierteiligen „The hugo masters, an anthologie of chinese classical musik“, volume 1, bowed strings, Stück Nr. 2: „spring morning in suzhou“, HUGO productions (HK) Ltd. 1992)
C: Nach etwa 20 Sekunden wurde China zum überaus vormaoistischen Land der Mitte. Keine Spur von orchestral mammutösem Tiefgang, Leidensdruck und Krüppelvisite hing mehr in der durch und durch altchinesischen Luft. Die jederzeit im Raum stehende unspendable These, Europa werde asiatische Kultur letzlich nie wirklich verstehen können, zerfloß widerspruchslos. Alles wurde chinesisch eingefärbt, durchspült, nicht aber invasorisch, sondern ganz von selbst: lieblich, elastisch, grazil, liebevoll -- und chinesischer, als Milliarden Chinesen das je mitkriegen, leicht orientalisch angefärbt, vielleicht auch indisch, wohl ein Einfluß des Perserteppichs unter mir. Wodurch sich auch meine Lebensfrage, ob ich im Grunde meines Wesens eher Chinese, Inder oder Araber sei, vollendet sinnvoll erledigte. Alles Schräge, Quäkende, insektenhaft Taumelnde, Krüppelbaumverbogene, Fremde, Exotische, was Asien irgendwann mal an sich hatte, schmolz anmutig von hinnen, und der Frühlingsmorgen in Suzhou wurde zur natürlichsten, eigensten, eigentlichsten Musik der Welt: die Geige, ohne sich als Soloinstrument hervorzudrängen, schwamm wohlig, himbeerartig in sich gerundet, blühend, seelenhaft in einem erblühten Wogenspiel zierlich tanzender, ulkig verfließender Einzelseelen...erstmals war ich kein Outsider mehr, kein Absprengsel und Bruchstück der Gattung, sondern unglaublich lustvoll eingebettet in eine...muß ich sagen: in eine Art Volksgemeinschaft? Nein, in ein Radiosendung
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jubelndes Seelengetümmel: unbeschwert, ohne schattenlos oberflächlich zu bleiben, singend, ohne irgendeinen Mund aufmachen zu müssen...genießend, ohne hierbei speziell ich zu sein oder dieses Ich bleiben zu müssen, das in nicht verebbender, nie mehr verebben könnender Lebenslust dahinfloß, sich ausströmte, seit je und für immer, nirgendwo eine Erinnerung an Probleme oder eine Vorausahnung von Eintrübung oder unangenehmen Möglichkeiten...im Gegenteil: dieser Frühlingstanz feierte sich selbst als derart pure Lust, gepaart mit reiner Wonne, daß es wohl auch Wollust war, das wahre Leben, der nie erreichte Zustand, um den ich bis dato lebenslang betrogen wurde, nie erlebt, aber seltsam bekannt, als der eigentlich mir angemessenste, naheliegendste, heimatlichste Zustand, x-mal besser als alles, was man Reigen seliger Geister, Massenorgie oder Sexualität nennen könnte, jenseits aller Beimengung von Anstrengung, Verschwitztheit, Aktionsabläufen, Koordination, Manipulation -- innerhalb dieser jauchzenden Gesamterregung glaubte ich sogar reell erregt zu sein, mir war, als wolle ich auf einmal irgendwas Untengelegenes einbeziehen. Doch fand sich da nur ein unbeteiligtes, fremd herumhängendes Schrumpelwürstchen, ohne jede Tendenz, sich auf der Höhe der insgesamten Ekstase zu bewegen. Selbst wenn ich - geiler denn je - probeweise das Präputium zurückgerollt hätte, schien dergleichen eher von meinem ganz anderswo entfesselten Sexus abzulenken. Desorientiert packte ich den Schnulli wieder ein und sank gierig zurück ins jubelnde Volksfest, das sich auf 3 mm Großhirnrinde austobte und zum Kosmos ausbeutelte und nun aber etwas verdünnter jubelte (ab hier das Musikbeispiel wesentlich leiser drehen) -- der Teppich unter mir drückte jetzt etwas stärker und störender, ich wachte sozusagen auf, guckte ins Handspiegelchen, aus dem mir ein absurder Chinese unschön entgegenglotzte, mit sibirischen Schlupfaugen, spillerigem Spitzbart aus Drahtgewöll, sowie mitten im eindeutigen Gelbstich einem Schuß mitteleuropäischer Anatomie, der als Alibiprozentsatz beiläufig aufrechterhalten wurde, samt Gigant-Poren und Hautunregelmäßigkeiten weltfüllenden Ausmaßes. Ewig seltsam, daß diese unhaltbar zerlaufende Fratze vor wenigen Sekunden noch aus der schönsten aller Musiken und Seligkeiten nicht als Fremdkörper herausfiel. Sondern superharmonisch mittanzen und mitschwelgen durfte -- nun aber ging die Musik ohne mich zu Ende. (Musik klingt aus) B: Und ließ einen einsamen Chinesen fassungslos zurück. Der sich auf seinem ab sofort liegenden, statt fliegenden Teppich bewußt wurde, nach diesem ultimativen Meta-Erlebnis nie wieder eine andere CD hören zu dürfen. Schon allein, um China treuzubleiben und um nicht als Torero, Neger, Dudelsackbläser oder Rokokotänzer auszuscheren. Er tastete nach seinem Wegwerfstift, der als harte, kühle, unsympathische, leblose, sinnlose Plastikröhre in seiner nur wenig sinnmachenderen Hand lag. Und den er gleich wieder unbenutzt von sich warf. Minutenlang blieb er Radiosendung
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ohne Außenreize liegen -- und es geschah nichts. Von selbst kam -nichts. (Kunstpause von soundsoviel Sekunden.) Und auch danach kam nichts. Restlos nichts. Aber auch nicht die Spur. Kein tiefes Innenleben wölbte sich hervor. Alles blieb leer -- aber nicht angefüllt mit schöner meditativer Leere, sondern alles blieb -- unangenehm leer. Um nichts schöner als Musik klang diese unhörbare Musik. Das verwaiste Bewußtsein gierte nach Reizen, nach einem Quentlein Akustik, als Mittel, als Instrument, um sich irgendwie heraufzuranken, Seele zu produzieren, am Faden der Vorgaben, der hörenswerten CDs. Ein paar aussagelose, unwichtige Regentropfen plätscherten am Fenster herum, liiert drei Welträume weiter mit einem homöopathisch aufschwellenden Mini-Millimum diffusen Verkehrslärms -- die ausgehungerte Wahrnehmung stürzte sich drauf, mit dem Durst eines Löschblatts, das seit Jahrhunderten keinen Fleck fand. Doch die Minimalismus-Tropfen gaben nichts Besonderes her. Gaben überhaupt nichts her. Das leichte Rauschen ging quer durch die brachliegende, ausgehöhlte, kaum noch vorhandene, fast erloschene Psyche alias Seele hindurch, Individualität im Ruhestand, der Ex-Mann ohne Eigenschaften, der nichts-nichts-nichts beizusteuern hatte zum einstmals blühenden, nie wieder rekonstruierbaren Leben -- nie war irgendwas so blöd und erbärmlich hohl und leer gewesen wie diese Hohlform einer durchsichtigen, klanglosen, bescheuert herumliegenden Hülse, grenzenlos ausgewaschene Niete und Null: entseelt, entgeistert, entkörpert, enthirnt, sprachlos, saftlos, tonlos und vor allem musiklos. Restlos definierbar als Reizverarbeitungssystem und flüchtige Durchgangsstation für Zufallsfutter von außen. Irgendein wesenloser, bescheuerter Schwundrest sandte einen Impuls in die Hand, die hierbei ein wenig fühlbar wurde und sogar gehorchte, dies aber nur rein pro forma. Und legte mit allerletzter Kraft eine weitere CD auf -- György Ligeti.
(Es erklingt: Ligeti: Doppelkonzert für Flöte Oboe und Orchester, 2. Satz: Allegro corrente, Dirigent: Elgar Howarth, wergo)
C: Zuerst kamen bloß ein paar Dauertöne, die mir zunächst nichts sagten, sondern eigentlich nur meine Total-Entseelung bestätigten. Dann aber begannen sie mir doch etwas zu sagen, färbten sich hörenswert ein, und sofort kam wieder Leben in die Bude. Die schlafende Schlange und tote Hose klinkte sich in Sekunden problemlos wieder ein ins Dasein, zwar diesmal nicht in Bude und Lebenslust, dafür aber in hohe Himmelsräume, farbig sich drehende, verschiebende Universen... Bei geschlossenen Augen durchschritt, nein: durchflog, nein: durchschwebte ich - oder wer das sein sollte - luzide Welten, in immer noch leuchtendere Radiosendung
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hinein, deutlich, doch fern; hell -- aber oh! wie kalt! Irgendwo ein raschelndes Flügelschlagen von Myriaden leicht abschilfernder Vögelflügel oder Engelsflügel...Nichts störte, auch nicht der vorbeigleitende, ungemein friedlich in die Himmelssphären hineinbrummende LKW. Binnen einer Minute war ich in der esoterikerseits sogenannten „anderen Welt“ angekommen, im begehrten, berühmten „weißen Licht“, das wahrlich-wahrlich alles hinter sich ließ, was mir sonst so als Himmel und Überhimmel immer nur ausblieb. Das ist's, und weiter kann's keinesfalls gehen, das ist das Höchste und Letzte, woran Psychonauten und Sterbende inkompetent zu nuckeln wähnen, und dann ging's doch weiter, und ich glitt sehr transformatorisch in ein noch weißeres Weiß hinein und noch eins, eine ganze Kette, irgendwie gekoppelt an das Nachmittagslicht vor meinen Augenlidern. Wenn ich jetzt gestorben wäre, wäre das nur eine Randverzierung des Geschehens gewesen. Nie wieder würde ich zurückkehren, um irgendeiner Frau Prof. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross irgendwas Nahtodliches, Superlativisches und Unzutreffendes vorzuschwärmen. (Ab hier die Minutenzahl 2:40 desselben Ligeti-Satzes) Und in der kristallinen Höhenluft schwirrte wie angestochen eine dürre Oboe herum...wie ist die in den Himmel gekommen? Andere Insekten mischten sich vogelhaft quäkend hinzu, wie schön, daß sich der Olymp nicht in Pathetik und Repräsentanz erschöpfte, sondern daß da Schwärme komischer Vögel kein Hausverbot hatten, sondern randalieren, sich summieren, flirren, schwirren, Quäkteppiche bilden durften! Da verdünnte sich die Göttlichkeit, erneut spürte ich den Teppich unter mir, und irgendwen auf ihm liegen, z.B. mich, aber nicht sehr grundsätzlich, sondern als Nebenstimme, gebündelt im Fuß, sobald ich den zufällig bewegte. Nur fror ich jetzt, lag zitternd auf dem Teppich, was aber sehr zu den kalten Himmeln paßte. (Ab hier erklingt Ligeti: San Francisco Polyphony, 01:58 Min., Dirigent: Elgar Howarth, wergo) Und zu den Dissonanzwolken, die jetzt die ohnedies stratosphärisch schwer assimilierbare Atemluft zustaubten; ich schlotterte so für mich hin und rang nach Atem, erstickte mit Staublunge und rausquellender Zunge, schleppte röchelnd mich zum CDPlayer, fand wohl nicht den Knopf. (Es erklingt aus demselben Werk der Passus ab 7:06 Min.) Durchschaute aber plötzlich, mitten in mitzitternden Frequenzen und Vibrationen, den Himmel - oder wie man den nennen könnte - als eine Art Fabrikware, maschinell erzeugt, und sah überall in den kleinsten Zellen und Hohlräumchen Resonanzbündel, Mitarbeiter, Flügelseelchen eingelagert, die sich epileptisch eins runter vibrierten und zitterten, und ich -- ich wurde hineingezogen in diese Bataillone, in diese Legebatterien aus eingezwängt und uniform oszillierenden, bibbernden, mitratternden Belegschaften, in eine eigene Vibrierund Isolierzelle, allwo auch ich mir eins runter zu vibrieren hatte, mit ausgeleierten, galvanisch belebt mitschlenkernden Kiefern und Gliedern -- nichts wie raus hier, nur wie?
Radiosendung
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B: Erneut streckte er die Parkinsonpranke zum Off-Knopf, erwischte wohl die falsche Sensortaste: (Ligeti bricht abrupt ab.)
(Abrupte Ein- und Ausblendung eines beliebigen WerbespotFragments; direkt anschließend abrupte Ein- und Ausblendung eines beliebigen Nachrichten-Fragments, am besten vom heutigen Tag mit einem/einer bekannten WDR-Sprecher/in).
A (sehr sachlich): - Leistungsdruck der modernen Gesellschaft müssen es gleich mehrere Gipfel sein. Vor allem, wenn das Wetter schnell umschlägt, geht das nicht immer gut. Ungeachtet aller Gefahren zieht der große Treck weiter. 400 Personen täglich treten im Gänsemarsch den Aufstieg an. 24 Stunden müssen die Notärzte im Basislager einsatzbereit bleiben. Vor allem der Abstieg kostet wesentlich mehr -B (sehr sachlich): -- unsere pluralistische Welt mit den vielfältigen Lebensinseln Familie Freizeit, Beruf, Kirche und der Fülle an unterschiedlichen Wertvorstellungen und Sinnabgeboten dem einzelnen Bürger eine hohe Flexibilität bei großer Eigenständigkeit ab. Identitätsschwache Personen freilich wehren sich gegen solche Offenheit -D: Tot ist nun, die mich erzog und stillte, Tot ist nun die jugendliche Welt, Diese Brust, die einst ein Himmel füllte, Tot und dürftig wie ein Stoppelfeld.
(Abrupt eingeblendet, erklingen die letzten zwei Minuten des 1. Satz aus dem Schubertquartett: „Der Tod und das Mädchen“)
C: Das ist ja eigentlich bloß Schubert...klingt aber moderner, einsamer, dissonanter, kälter, leerer, schrecklicher als jede Musik des 20. Jahrhunderts, zehnmal zeitgenössischer als der vergleichsweise märchenhafte, warm blühende György Ligeti...kurz vorm absoluten Torschluß war irgendwas getötet worden, wurde zu Grabe getragen, ich weinte, und die
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Bratschen taten grinsend so, als trauerten sie, jaulten scheinheilig drüber hinweg -- ich rief immer wieder einen Satz: „Das könnt ihr doch nicht machen!“ B (mit allerlei Hintergrundsverschnitt): Um sich zu erholen, und auch, um eventuell an weitere und andere Wahrheiten oder wenigstens Evidenzen zu gelangen, legte der unersättliche Drogen- und Musikkonsument sich weitere CDs auf: Mozart-Quartette, die aber die leere Kälte von Schuberts Kosmos nicht mehr übertünchen konnten und die er sowieso umgehend als flitzende Zwirnmaschinchen entlarvte. Dann flüssige Architekturen Maurice Ravels, der als untief oder auch oberflächlich Verschrieene, der neulich, beim vorigen Trip, alle Tiefen und Untiefen tiefsinniger Schönheit bereitgehalten hatte, nicht im mindesten zu tändeln oder bloß zu französeln oder apart oder sinnlich zu bleiben pflegte, sondern zuständig für zarteste Seelenhaftigkeit und Seele, und behutsame Liebe, nichts als Liebe, und hummeligen Vogelflug über blitzende Landschaften aus Wolken, Daunen und Watte -- (Aus Ravels „Ma mère l'Oye“, Orchesterfassung, der 2. Satz, das 1er Tableau: „Danse du rouet et scéne“) -- doch diesmal mußte die Musik zugeben, daß sie auch nur ein luftig nachzitterndes Trostpflästerchen aus Schönheit und sommerlichen Flöten wie aus Tschaikowsky zu bieten hatte, über unversöhnlichsten Abgründen, und der arabische Tanz der Nußknacker-Suite und die kuriose dudelige Holzbläser- und Englischhorn-Passage aus dem 4. Satz der „Rapsodie espagnole“, die neulich so närrisch flennend als butterweich durchgenudelte Dali-Spieluhr zerflossen war, eingelegt in weltumplätschernde Heiterkeit, mutierten jetzt zum Zuckerüberzug auf einem Ozean aus Blut und Flüssigmetall, über den sich auch der kurz angetestete Bolero eher sehr roh und ungehobelt sowie der Sopran aus Schönbergs „Luft von anderem Planeten“ oberflächlich, nämlich bloß ästhetisch hinwegbegab, von hinnen ringelte, pflanzenhaft, lianenhaft mit irgendeiner Bratschenlinie um die Wette -- alles bloß Kunst...alles bloß Musik... C: An Alban Bergs drei düstere, Orchesterstücke wagte ich mich nicht heran, wegen deren Auslösetauglichkeit und Umkippqualität in Richtung Horrortrip. Beim 2. Satz von Beethovens Opus 130 rief ich plötzlich: „Ein Wahnsinniger!“ Lustloses Runterfiedeln -- wozu? B: Auch das Brahms-Reqiem erwies sich als eher unangenehm, als katzensilbriger Pseudo-Dom. Auch Bach outete sich, jedenfalls im Italienischen Konzert, als vergleichsweise farbloser Mechaniker und Biedermann, der über graues rituelles Hochzeitsgetue nicht hinauskam. Auch eine angeknipste Mozart-Sinfonie wollte partout nicht herausgucken, aus ihrem 18. Jahrhundert-Korsett, aus ihrer unpsychedelischen Bewußtseinsverengung. Radiosendung
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C: Oder fand ich in neu Aufgelegtes nicht mehr hinein? Entweder tönte solcher Mozart schwächer als alles Vorhergehende, oder allmählich ließ die psychedelische Wirkung nach, zugunsten des vor Jahrtausenden verklungenen, gnostisch versunkenen, unsagbar legendären Anton Bruckner? Fiebernd kramte ich die herumfliegenden CDs nach Bruckner ab, legte den 4. Satz der 6. Sinfonie von Gustav Mahler auf, der aber überschwül dräuend aus allen Nähten platze, alptraummäßig würgend und dröhnend. B: In La Sacre steckte schon in der ersten Minute soviel Fieses, Vorstadt-Kriminelles, bösartig-piratenhaft sich Verziehendes, daß auch in diesem Fall umgehend die CD gewechselt werden mußte, und schon röhrte im „Lied der Erde“ im endlosen Zug leidender, jüdisch jaulender Menschheit Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau als überartikulierender Platzhirsch, vor allem bei: D: -- auf Wegen, die von Gräsern schwellen. C: Nirgendwo eine Spur des schönen alten China. Druckstellen und Kopfschmerzen kamen durch. Plötzlich spürte ich wie im „Tod und dem Mädchen“ Blut, eine unnennbare Untat zwischen den Zeilen der Musik. Aufgeschreckt aus meinem muffigen Dusel, lauschte ich hin, aber es ging bloß um die Zeile: D: Der Bach fließt voller Wohllaut durch das Dunkel. C: Beim späteren Kontrollieren fand ich die Blutstelle nicht wieder. Nein, das alles war allzu abendländisch -- reines unschuldiges Märchenchina mußte her, Dschuang Dsi, Li Tai Bo; dann würde alles-alles gut. Hinweg mit den Problemen des verirrten Europa! Ich legte eine chinesische Laute auf, von der Hugo Masters-CD „plucked strings“, durch deren spillerige Enge mal wieder die ganze verblassende Welt hindurchmußte. Sie führte nicht weit, also wühlte ich Ravi Shankar herbei, der aber ebenfalls nur noch ein ziemlich ausgeblichenes Indien draufhatte, also die arme Menschheit auch nicht mehr weiterbrachte und den ich teilweise verdöste. Daß so ferne dir die Heimat liegt, D: Das erfuhrst du nicht in frohen Tagen, Armes Herz, du wirst sie nie erfragen, Wenn dir nicht ein Traum von ihr genügt. C: Irgendeine Flöte breitete ihr Schicksal aus, ging in die Knie, richtete sich immer wieder auf, hoch, runter, hoch, runter, und wurde regelmäßig Radiosendung
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vom einfallenden Kehrreim-Orchester plattgedröhnt. Ich sehnte mich romantisch zurück zum chinesischen Streichinstrument, damals, vorhin, die schöne harmonische Volksgemeinschaft...ich verfrachtete mich vom Teppich ins Bett, riß mir die Kleider vom Leib -A: ...hoch, runter...hoch, runter... C: -- und legte jene wunderbare chinesische Klassik auf, diesmal allerdings wind instruments:
(Es erklingt von der CD „the hugo masters, an anthology of chinese classical music, Stück 3, san wu qi)
C: -- seltsame Mundorgeln und Flöten, die aber ebenfalls stets sehr lieb und geeignet gewesen waren, und unschuldig, zierlich behagliches Zwitschern, und siehe, es gelang doch noch mal: ich versank einigermaßen darin und mochte kaum noch auftauchen, als ich auf einmal, in eher dumpfe Oberflächen-Trance eingepackt, gewahr wurde: da ist etwas Ungutes drin, ein knallendes Holz als Rhythmusinstrument, eine Peitsche, und bisher stets durchgehend niedlich gebliebenes Getänzel, wunderfarbig und schön, wandelte sich auf einmal deutlich in atavistischen Opfertanz, fernab schamanistischer Folklore, an der man sich auf Kunst-Ebene musisch ergötzen könnte. Diese Musik hatte etwas noch Heilloseres an sich als Schubert und Mahler; mit Gewalt raffte ich mich auf warf den Finger auf Off.
(Abrupte Ein- und Ausblendung einer beliebigen ReklameSpots, eines ganz anderen als vorhin)
A: -- wir recht herzlich gratulieren: Sie haben einen Geschenkkorb gewonnen! Und sind somit unter den ersten 100 Einsendern, denen wir heute -C: Die gequetscht zerfratzte Näsel-Oboe war sofort weg, doch ich war in irgendwas hineingerutscht. Was sich auch durch harmlose Coca-ColaSpots nicht überspielen ließ, blanken Schrecken, Panik-Attacke, wozu ich als Kontrollmensch eigentlich nie neige, und was sich mit dem
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Brahms-Trio für Klarinette, Cello und Klavier nicht mehr überspielen ließ. Hinter dem klassischen Wohllaut spürte ich die angetippten, umsonst ungeglaubten Quasi-Schamanismusgeister, die immer nur nette durchschaubare Poesie gewesen waren, übel hervordrücken. Ich machte Brahms aus, was aber auch nichts mehr nützte. Ich sprang auf, warf mir Kleider über, fraß Gegenmittel, löffelweise Honig, was aber auch nichts mehr aufhielt. Etwas Gehetztes preschte aus mir hervor. Sobald ich die Augen schloß, quirlten ungeheure Welten über mich weg, in summa: die andere Welt, so schrecklich und derart präsent, weit und breit das einzig Vorhandende, daß ich nur als fortgeblasener Schnittpunkt am Rand stand, als Hülse, derweilen alles, was sonst die Welt und mich konstituiert, Sprache, Fühlen, Denken, Sex, Ich, alles-alles entwertet wurde, ausgemustert. Ich lief auf die Straße, um mich am offiziellen Leben zu erden, zu stabilisieren, zu normalisieren -- dort sah ich in 20 m Entfernung Frau Laabs im Vorgarten hantieren. Die ich vor lauter schlapper laabsartiger Deformiertheit praktisch nicht wiedererkannte. Lediglich an irgendeiner Formalie der bläulichen Textilien identifizierte ich Frau Laabs als ebendiese Frau Laabs. Frau Laabs, dieses Musterbild gemütlicher, harmloser Menschheit, Brille, brettharte Dauerwelle, camembertfarbenes „Gesicht“, gehörte in die wesenlose Masse des dalihaft Verzerrten und Liquidierten hinein, nichts tröstete oder milderte, auch nicht die durchaus mich balsamisch umschmeichelnden, wundersam spürbaren Luftlamellen. Das Grauen tröpfelte von allen Enden her durch die eigentlich tröstliche Kulisse aus Frischluft und Lichtglanz. Ich lief in den Park, sah betäubt der blauen Laabsfigur hinterher. Spürte zuinnerst: dies war ein Abschied für immer gewesen. Nie würde ich Frau Laabs wiedersehn, und auch sonst keine Frau Laabs. Frau Laabs ging zu ihrer definitiven, streichquartettgepeitschten Beisetzung. Eingebettet in objektiv leuchtende Natur, die mir wenig half. Alles weitere stand unter dem Stichwort Abschied. Von jedem Holzstapel, jedem Himbeerstrauch nahm ich Abschied. Von einem Hochstand oben am Eichenwald sah ich unten im Tal ampelrot ein Mini-Auto hupen. Ich lief auf dem Höhenweg - am Rückersfelder Waldfriedhof vorbei - Richtung Hülsa, immer weiter aufwärts, rundum die Abschiedsszenerie mitleidheischend in Spätlicht getaucht, in verklärt übersonnte Abendlandschaft. Im Baumrauschen hörte ich die einander hetzenden und auslöschenden Welten -- jenseits aller Bildungsreminiszenzen wilde Jagd, apokalyptische Reiter usw. Ich jammerte nur: „Ich kann es nicht steuern“, sah mich als letztes Arschloch, das eigentlich fast eingeweiht worden wäre, aber die falsche Tür geöffnet und diese nicht mehr zugekriegt hatte, unreif fürs Eigentliche, Fehlinitiand, ich, der ich doch eigentlich in allen menschenmöglich erreichbaren Himmeln geschwelgt hatte, nur waren die lang nicht so schön erlösend gewesen wie jetzt das Entsetzliche entsetzlich war und blieb und nicht abebbte. Ich eilte durch Rapsfelder, Schlängelwege, sah Schindeldächer von oben, nahm Abschied von dieser Welt. Ich setzte den Walkman auf. Radiosendung
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Ich stellte Opus 132 ein, a-moll, aus meiner einsamsten Zeit, 1974 in Bad Hersfeld, jetzt war ich wieder so einsam, für immer, und die ersten Schmerz-Akkorde enthüllten sich sofort als musikalische Umrahmung der Trauerfeier. Nicht nur Frau Laabs war nicht mehr unter den Atmenden, sondern alle primären Bezugspersonen: Mutti, Jojo, Antje, Viera, Herbert Müller: alle-alle galt es haltlos zu beweinen, und ihnen nachzusterben. Ich rannte mit Opus 132 den Steinpilzweg hinauf in die Wälder, zu Reni's Ruh, mit erneut hervorstürzenden Tränen, a-moll -- die Klänge wurden schneidender, da merkte ich: die verstellen sich, die trauern gar nicht! Ihr simuliertes Weinen zog sich mit elektronischem Beigeschmack in die Länge -- da erkannte ich die Musiker als die fiesen Fiedler aus Schuberts „Tod und das Mädchen“! Kalt jaulend sich eins runterschrubben, diese Kadaver verscharrenden und hierbei musizierenden Mörder! Leises technisches Schleifen im Apparat, scheinheilig aufgespachtelte Musik, immer blecherner tönend, ich fingerte nach Tempotüchlein, Rotz rann mir in den chinesischen Bart. Jeden Moment konnte der Strom ausgehn, die Musik absaufen. So konnte den Fieslingen das Maul gestopft werden, andererseits bestand die ganze Welt aus diesem verzerrten, höhnischen Opus 132! Jetzt, wo alle meine Lieben bereits komplett unter der Erde lagen, blieb dieser perfide Nekrolog als einziges übrig. (Eventuell ging das verzerrte, halleffektversetzte Opus 132 bzw. Ausschnitte aus L. Berios Beethoven-Quartett-Musik in Y. Xenakis-Elektronik „Orient/Okzident“ irgendwie über.) Ohnedies klang der akustische Mischmasch aus entfernten Autos, Glocken, Vogelrufen, Kinderstimmen leicht metallisch, dosennahrungshaft, zwar digital schaltknacks- und staubbefreit, alles ineinander vermanscht und verhallt, tingiert mit technischem Grundfluidum, alles elektronisch erzeugt, trotz naturidentischer Aromastoffe doch arg synthetisch, so als hätte das was zu bedeuten, daß LSD und kybernetische Musik einigermaßen gleichzeitig entdeckt wurden -- daher auch die cellophan flowers of yellow and green, (eventuell gesungen auf die Beatles-Melodie) towering over your head! Fieberhaft sann ich auf Auswege: nach Kümmerode wandern, mich bei Herbert Müller auszuschluchzen? Doch sind 13 km mit einer Rauschdroge, die 50 m zu ewigkeitsträchtigen Tageswanderungen dehnt, praktisch unüberwindlich. Jogger kamen mir entgegen, genauer: eine Radfahrerin fuhr neben einer Joggerin -- and the Band plays on! Bescheuert muß ich ausgesehen haben: verschleimt, verschwollen; ich versuchte zu grüßen. Ließen sie sich anmerken, daß sie nichts merkten? Womöglich sah ich nur so aus wie immer. Jedenfalls ging oben, auf der Hochebene, der Abschied weiter: Die aufgegangene Sichel stand genau über dem jungen Pferdchen, das ans Gatter seines Freigeheges kam, und auch hier stand ich zum letzten Mal davor, also weinend, denn: Dies war genau jenes Pferd, das ich zum 7. Geburtstag in Gestalt eines 10 cm großen Eselchens aus Kunststoff geschenkt bekam! Zum letzten Mal schritt ich am Ententeich vorbei und dann durchs dämmernde Tal über Radiosendung
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Steindorf langsam zu meinem Haus zurück, wobei mein - frei nach Gustav Mahler - lüstern ausgekostetes Abschiednehmen nur ein Erlebnis auf künstlerischer Ebene blieb; nichts wirklich Schlimmes war geschehen. Auch das vor Durst und Euterentzündung horrormäßig schreiende, blökende, dröhnende Milchvieh auf den dämmernden Weiden kurz vor Steindorf konnte mir jetzt nichts mehr anhaben -- ich hatte jetzt alles im Griff. Ich streichelte Pferdeschnauzen, stellte mich vor einer Krüppelgruppe auf, nun schon im Mondlicht, sonderbar windverdreht neben Kuhweiden: gebückt, zerknirscht, gelähmt und kopflos, Jammergestalten, unlinderbar, versteinerte Veteranen aus Gustav Mahlers chinesischer Krüppelparade, blindtaubstumm, friedlich die Luft anhaltend, gesättigt von Windstille, am asphaltierten Wegrand. Ein Einzelbäumchen mittendrin rauschte heftiglich vor sich hin, so als ginge ein Wind, der sich aber an anderen Bäumen überhaupt nicht ablesen ließ. Da wußte ich: Zittern von Espenlaub! Jedes Blättchen ruderte vor sich hin: in ganz verschiedenen Abstufungen raschelte, fächelte, paddelte, dschunkelte, winkte alles nebeneinander, durcheinander, übereinander, sehr anthropomorph, wundersam beseelt, hier aufgeregt, dort somnambul nachlässig, in gefönten Wechselgruppen und Kleingruppen, jedes Einzelblättchen eine Individualität für sich, manche am Rand schwindelig verbissen in den eigenen Drehwurm, andere um luftbewegte unsichtbare Achsen kreisend, oder nur einen gedachten Kopf taumelig hin und her rollen lassend; die einen staccato, die andern Bauchtanz: orkangepeitscht, angehaucht, sich wegdrehend und zurückfedernd, nicht nachlassend im Strom des allgemeinen Fähnchenschwenkens -A (somnambul): ...wegdrehend, zurückfedernd...wegdrehend, zurückfedernd... C: -- Wimpelschwingens, Winkens, grünen Tempotüchleinflatternlassens, ja, auch hier Abschied: ganz unpathetisch und unverheult und preßwehenlos, nein, kindlich überdreht, flatterhaft, unangewiesen auf Windnachschub, ohne Nachbarbäume anzustecken, angefärbt jedes Blättchen vom Silberlicht -A (noch somnambuler): ...wegdrehend, zurückfedernd...wegdrehend, zurückfedernd... C: Da löste sich mir der angesammelte Krampf meiner Leidensstationen und Abschiede, hier wurden alle meine Begräbnisse umgepolt, hypermotorisch zerraschelt, versöhnt von putziger Botanik, von diesem meinem Lieblingsbäumchen und seinem abendfüllenden, nachtfüllenden, weltumfassenden Winkewinke. Als ich heimkam, sah ich in den Spiegel: an meinem Gesicht war nichts zu sehen, kein Gelbstich, kein Energieverlust,
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kein Funke im Auge, und nicht die Spur Nachhall oder Abglanz meiner verpufften, überaus unbeschreiblichen Wonnen, Taten und Leiden. B (sehr sachlich): Einerseits sind die Anregungen der Hippiebewegung in die widerspenstige, schwerfällige Gesamtgesellschaft durchaus breit eingeflossen, absorbiert, akzeptiert worden: WGs, wilde Ehe, Vegetarismus, Frauenrechte, Bioläden, Naturheilkunde, Meditation. Andererseits begann die Hippieculture bereits beim Entfalten ihrer yellowsubmarinefarbenen Scheinblüte sofort zu verwelken, nach kurzer C & A-Vermarktung. Mächtige DNS rief. Weit vom Baum gefallene Äpfel rollten zum Stamm zurück. Hippies und Yippies verwandelten sich in Ex-Hippies mit Familie, Karriere, Kontoauszügen, oder in T-shirt-Kaufleute. Vom TVSessel aus sahen sie alternd den wenigen unbeirrbaren Alt-Hippies, Veteranen der Rebellion, Oldtime/longtime-Revoluzzern und Ex-Idolen beim Älterwerden zu. Bee Gees, Donovan, Mick Jagger ließen sich wenig anders als Rex Gildo oder Heino - von den dreißig Jahren, die binnen kürzester Zeit verstrichen, nicht weiter stören und tanzten als Dauergäste verjährter Jungbrunnen auf den Gräbern der Frühvollendeten -- Elvis Presley, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Brian Jones. D: Comeback-Versuche in den 70ern scheiterten für McKenzie auf der ganzen Linie - der Troubador der Hippie-Kultur war nicht mehr gefragt ; zu manieriert und altbacken kam er im Blümchenkleide daher, ein Image, von dem er sich bis heute nicht losgelöst hat. A: Trau keinem über 30! D: Lieber 60 und würzig als 20 und ranzig. B: Als ewige Comebackler und Grabflüchter, als lederne Fossilien, Mumien und Nachzügler ihrer selbst, mit 59-jährigen Gesichtern bei weiterhin 23-jährigen Stimmen, mit Frisuren wie am ersten Tag, zeitlose Idealbezahnung inclusive, anachronistisch schillernd zwischen LiftingMessias und Gefrierbrand-Lazarus, frisch aufgetaute Strawberrys forever. D (müde): Der Rock'n Roll der 60-er verabschiedet sich nunmehr langsam ins Altersheim, wie es der Lauf der Welt will, auch wenn es manche nicht wahrhaben wollen. B: -- stand im Juli 2000 in der Festival-Zeitung des Burg HerzbergOpen Air 2000, herausgegeben vom langhaarig reanimierten „Movement of the Hippies“, allwo jährlich 30000 Nonstop-Freaks, Zottelköpfe, Radiosendung
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Dealer, Uralt-Hippies, Feierabend-Hippies, Quasi-Hippies, Zuspät-Hippies, Sympathisanten, Nostalgiker zusammengetrommelt werden, sich bejahrte Stelldicheins geben, mit John Kay & Steppenwolf, deren Bandmitglieder seit über 30 Jahren dieselben Namen tragen, bei wechselnd sich verjüngenden Gesichtern, dauerhaft born to be wild. A: Drum sagen wir es noch mal richtig: B: Der Hanf ist ganz unglaublich wichtig C: -- im Reich der angenehmen Klänge, D: -- Triolen, Noten und Gesänge!
(Es erklingt die 2. Hälfte des Fliegenpilz-Liedes von Christof Stählin -- ab der Zeile: „Auf dem Mons veneris als Crem gestrichen wirkt er angenehm“)
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(Fast alle der gereimten Zitate stammen aus dem Zweitausendeins-Buch: „Hanf im Glück. Das Hohe Lied vom hehren Hanf“, 1996, von Gerhard Seyfried und Mathias Bröckers -- und der Fliegenpilz-Song von Christof Stählin, von 1972.)
This article can be cited as: Holbein, U. (2006) Glitzernd...pulsierend...eine endlose Zeit lang - Wie verändert sich Musik unter Drogeneinfluß? Music Therapy Today (Online) Vol.VII (2) 375-412. available at http://musictherapyworld.net
This article can be cited as:
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Music Therapy Today Vol. VII (2) (July) 2006
The pleasure of being “differently able”: Integration through music therapy in primary schools Esperson, Paola Pecoraro
Abstract This presentation is a review on how group music therapy can help the integration as well as the development of “differently able” children in regular schools. More specifically, it reports the experience of music therapy in a primary school based in Rome with children aged from 6 to 11. The integration and development process for “differently able” children is carried out through a music therapy workshop (Bi-weekly meetings of approx. 50 minutes, for the duration of one year groups of 6 to 12 children comprising one or two children with special needs – mental and/ or physical.). Music as non-verbal language (games based on music, sound and motion, sound dialogues, etc.) is used to create an “emotional container” and an “integrational background” within which diversity can more easily be accepted and welcomed and relationships encouraged. Emotionally significant relationships motivate children towards participation and commitment.
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Introduction This presentation is a review of how group music therapy can help with the integration as well as the development of “Differently Able” children in regular schools. In Italy since 1977, children with special needs, regardless of the severity, have been allowed to attend regular schools on the basis that they hold the same rights to education as “normal” children. Experimentation and research on handicapped children in regular schools, began in the seventies (Falcucci Commission): The outcome of these studies was that the progress and development of these children is significantly higher when they attend classes formed by “normal” children. With the law no. 517 of 1977 and subsequent explanatory circulars, having children with disabilities, attend compulsory schools takes on a more profound meaning: there is the need to integrate these children and not just make do with their presence. The school is at the service of the formative needs of every child-individual, to promote the development of his/her personality (new programs of the primary schools of 1985). Each child-individual is the center of interest of the educator who operates to promote the harmonic development of their personality, placing particular attention on emphasizing the individual potentials. The philosophical and pedagogic orientation defined by the new programs of the primary schools (1985) and subsequent orientations of maternal schools (1991), stress the importance of diversity as the source of motivation for acquiring knowledge. In Italy, where special needs schools and institutes for rehabilitation are practically non-existent, regular schools are responsible for providing Introduction
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education and training to these children. The Italian National Health Service is responsible for only a few, specific therapies (speech therapy, psychotherapy and physiotherapy) which are undertaken only a couple of hours per week.
Integrative Music Therapy The first great impediment which we have to overcome, to even begin the educational and habilitational route, is that of the integration, and the application of integrative music therapy can be a valid help. The passage from attending to integrating, even to this day creates confusion and is the cause of difficulties. Integration is not a “simple affair”, since it is hard to understand what is actually meant by the word. Many believe that integration means including, being with children of the same age, being in the same place, whereas others think it signifies conforming to norms, where one tries to “make normal” and to adapt “disabled” children’s performance to the parameters of “healthy” ones. Still others think that integration is impossible to attain. They pose the question as to why these “different” children are there, since they are unable to carry out many things their peers are able to. At times this distance appears to be so great that it is impossible to imagine a single point in common between those who are “different” and the others. The present theory of integration emphasizes the specific differences of each individual. The integration of these children in their classes and schools, is not carried out by conforming to the standard “norms” and behaviours, but by contributing to the growth and cohesion of the group, through the development of their abilities and potentials “in learning, communication and in forming relationships, and socializing…” (art 3, par3, Law 104/92). Integrative Music Therapy
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In these years, the value given to the process of integration has changed the focus from the single individual bearing a handicap, to all the diversely able individuals present in a group. Each child is integrated and takes part in the process of integration of the group contributing with his/ her experience and culture. Every single difference is a source of stimulation and proposal, reflection and discovery of one’s identity. Integrating diversity in a group signifies, from and educational strategy point of view, planning a “background” in which this diversity is not emphasized, but to the contrary obtains greater value. The actions of the individual should never be out of context, for this reason in different contexts reality does not have the same meaning. The background in which we move conditions our perception and our thinking modes, changing the background changes the meaning of the situation in which we live. Changing the Background changes the meaning of the situation in which we are living. In other words the relationship between “figure/ subject” and “background/reality”. “The radical and sudden change of background puts personal integration into difficulty, values and abilities, which made existence possible and gave it a meaning, become therefore unusable …A fundamental educational problem will consist in a programme which aims at structuring a context which favours processes of integration, that is, of one so desires, the perception of oneself as an integrated personality, in constructive relationship with reality and the others.” (Zanelli, 1986). Music therapy labs for integration have always held as the prime objective the establishment of “integrative backgrounds”. This background encourages the structuring of integrative contexts, it therefore facilitates the development of the child creating an “environmental container” even from an emotional point of view. The “emotional container” helps the construction of a motivational relational context, which allows the child
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to find a connection between the emotional and cognitive elements and facilitates the emotional development. With music therapy it is possible to create an integrative background by sneaking recognizable material such as dance, music and informal improvisation, which allows children to perceive the cyclic nature of the tasks/ exercises/instructions and to interpret them as elements of the environment in which the activity is taking place. An environment made of people and objects, a recognizable and recognized environment permitting the creation of significant relationships and which motivate the individual, emotional, cognitive and social development. In particular, the type of conduction of the groups suggested by G. Orff (1992), promotes the structuring of the “Backgrounds for Integration”. Orff suggests organizing the meeting following five points, (keeping in mind the elasticity of the intervention): 1. A ritual of sonority and movement so as to create an “environmental climate”, which characterizes the setting emotionally and affectively as “the place where music is played”. 2. A new element (new dance, new musical game…) 3. The development of the situation, accepting the spontaneous creative contributions of the children. 4. Eventual changes and elaboration of ideas. 5. An organic conclusion. The theoretic and methodological references, which sustain the interventions of integrative music therapy, are the result of an integration of various authors as well: K.E. Bruscia (1992) and E.H. Boxill (1991) have been my guides during the phases of observation (verification), of the planning of the intervention (treatment) e the evaluation of the results.
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Bruscia (1992) defines music therapy as “…the systematic process of intervention, in which the therapists aids the client in improving their health utilizing the musical experiences and the relationships which develop through them as dynamic forces of change”. Boxill suggests a model of musical therapeutic evaluation the application of which is particularly effective in an educational and integrative environment as it runs through again the various areas of development, which have generally already been investigated with other grids of observation by the teachers. Through this model, we observe the general characteristics of behaviour, handicap and the physical situation, the emotional, motor, communicational, cognitive and perceptive domains, the specific musical behaviours. Such observations, as suggested by Boxill, are then compared with those of the other utilised grids. In our case the most utilized is the grid of Pellerey. Even the protocol is the one proposed by Boxill. It should be compiled as a “report” of every session and should contain a description of the meeting, its objectives and the musical therapeutic activities, the response from the subject, the degree of participation, the verification of the outcome of the meeting relating to the purpose of the laboratory. Boxill expects moreover monthly an annual reports. Music therapy in its globality of languages of Stefania Guerra Lisi (1977) has guided my observation of the “human potentials” and the psychomotor-sensory behaviours for the translation of each language in music. Gertrud Orff (1982) has inspired the choice and adoption of the many musical therapeutic techniques, and in particular how the groups were
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conducted, which helped with the structuring of the “backgrounds of integration”.
Case studies The specific experience refers to my work carried out in a primary school in the outskirts of Rome with children aged between 6-8 years. The classes involve had two children with grave psychomotor disabilities, which I will call Leo and Theo, who were both unable to communicate verbally and had just began to communicate with gestures spontaneously (Leo had 10 lexical gestures whereas Theo had one gesture). The observation of the work carried out has been done following the musical therapeutic model of evaluation of E. H. Boxill. The activity of group music therapy for integration was organized in the following way: meetings held twice a week lasting 50 minutes; no more than four “normal” children from either Leo’ s (7/8 year-olds) or Theo’ s (6/7 year-olds) plus the special needs teacher. Theo’ s teacher had never attended music therapy sessions. Her task was to try as much as possible to comply with the progress of the work with no verbal interventions, whereas I observed and complied with eventual “interferences” tied to the educational project set to cater for Theo’s specific needs, of whom his teacher was directly responsible. We had both been working together for the first time. The filming was carried out by an apprentice in music therapy, of the triennial course of Music Therapy of Rome, organized by the Cultural Association FO.RI.FO. legally recognized by the Ministry of Public Education. The apprentice had only been employed in April, since we deemed necessary to begin our work in a climate of extreme tranquillity due to the gravity of the cases and the facility with which the group
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tended to become distracted. The labs referred to in these few video images were carried out in the month of October. The setting was in a very spacious class full of light and with inappropriate furnishing comprising three cupboards, containing special educational material, the Vayer (1973, 1976) blocks for psychomotor activity (which we utilized as percussion instruments) and other musical instruments, three desks, some chairs. Our GOS (operational instrumental group, see Benenzon 1997) was composed of a kettle-drum, a pole of templar blocks from the Orff instrumentation, a bag containing simple rhythmic instruments of easy manipulation: wooden blocks, various types of rattles, cymbals and oscillating cymbals, two-tone blocks, guiro, triangles, tambourines, castanets with and without handle, maracas. Italian State schools have very little space, and means, so we were lucky even to have a classroom for our exclusive use, and a good assortment of instruments from the Orff instrumentation. These had been purchased using the State funds destined to the project “Music Therapy for Integration”, which had already begun the preceding year, when he started attending the first year. I met Leo, which is the fictitious name I have given to the first child with special needs, when he arrived in the first year in primary school. He was suffering from a severe cognitive retardation, with a grave language deficit and an accentuated retardation in his motor co-ordination. He could not communicate verbally and used three to four spontaneous gestures (to indicate some people such as his mother, father and his primary physiological needs). The severe handicap of Leo manifested itself in an insecure motor control and walk about, which was not entirely autonomous, in a tendency to isolation and with his lying forward onto
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his desk in a passive manner with no reaction to any stimulation and coaxing from either individuals or groups. He did not allow any visual contact during communication, neither to people nor to things. His entry into the year of elementary school had been very difficult for Leo his classmates and his teachers, the latter had never had a child with such severe handicap, so “difficult to understand”. Moreover his classmates were afraid of him and did not even have the courage to touch him, nor take his hand. The first year of music therapy had been fundamental in aiding Leo and his schoolmates to get to know each other and trust each other. We had worked from October to May, holding 40 group encounters, during which there had been some very important though slow progress. During this period, Leo had developed a good relationship not only with myself, he started to look for both eye and physical contact, but also with the children Leo had allowed to enter into his visual field, during the music therapy labs. Moreover even in the class, he starting to show some preference towards two-three children. His classmates had stopped fearing him and nearly all of them would go near him without showing any anxiety. At the end of the first year of elementary school and at the beginning of the second year (the year in which this video refers to) the music-therapeutic evaluation using Boxill’s method can be synthesized as follows (verification): MOTOR CONTROL
Leo needs to be guided and sustained, he looks for the containing physical contact of the music therapist. It would be advisable to encourage a greater autonomy in his movement and choices. His neurologist however advises us to “be his body” guiding his movements to allow him to internalize the necessary praxis.
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COMMUNICATION CONTROL:
he communicates using eight gestures which he begins to use spontaneously to make requests and to express his needs. The language therapist suggests we utilize his gestures in the songs.
COGNITIVE CONTROL:
he understands simple messages, he carries out exercises only if interested.
EMOTIONAL CONTROL:
he hardly ever expresses his emotional states with facial expressions, during some dances he begins to show some brief smiles of “surprise”, he does not cry, at times he shouts using acute tones with “iiiis” to show his ill ease. The group of therapists considers it useful to work on his choices which could help him become aware of that which pleases him or displeases him.
SOCIAL CONTROL (RELATIONAL):
He always asks for contact and sustain from adults, only in very few situations does he search for contact with his peers, pulling them from the sleeves or making gestures aimed at communicating with them. The communicative and interchange contexts should be increased, to allow Leo to perceive-express his “likes and dislikes”.
SPECIFIC MUSICAL BEHAVIOURS:
Listening . he shows attention during the entire activity, he likes to listen to the recorded music which is offered to him, he is attracted to the sounds made by his classmates contemporaneously. Voice. he rarely utilizes his vocal voice “iii” “aaa” “ooo” “io” are always spontaneous, never on request. Instruments. - he prefers “xylophone” and “idiophonic”, in particular rattles, wood blocks and oscillating cymbals. Rhythm. - the mirror of his rhythm and participation is characterized by the alternation of activity and stasis, rhythmic impetus and silence.
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Following the musical therapeutic evaluation, which has just been illustrated above, we devised the plan of intervention (treatment). The aim of the integrative music therapy laboratory was the following: • Encourage the process of integration of the group The general objectives for Leo were the following: stimulate and motivate Leo to relate both to adults and to his peers. (Notwithstanding his progresses Leo still tended towards isolation) • Stimulate voluntary actions-reactions during musical activities • Encourage individual expression, particularly in expressing his “ability to choose”. • Encourage the development of “rough” movements, particularly by stimulating his gestures on request (e.g. song) and/or through imitation, improving his static and dynamic balance. For his classmates, the general objective was: • Encouraging the development of the relationship amongst peers and accepting diversity. Whereas the specific and most meaningful objectives were: • Encouraging communication/expression and listening amongst peers • Encouraging the development of the spirit of belonging to a group • Developing their skills of attention and memory • Encouraging individual expression • Developing the skills of interaction in musical games while being attentive to the work of the group (e.g. respecting other’s turns, alternating roles) Through these activities, we help children become more aware and to be able to make use of their own physical, expressive and communicative means. The exploration and search for rhythm, sounds, and space to be shared with the group aid children in feeling betters with themselves and with others.
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Amongst the musical and motor activities available we find the following: 1. Activities which facilitate group integration. Games in circles which do not require any adaptation to one’s own rhythm or that of others, conducting a group or a peer or, conversely, allowing others to guide us leaving them the responsibility of this guiding (the concept of “guiding-following” is very important, the continuous passage from one role to another may encourage the skills of expression and comprehension of oneself and others, in children). Emotionally significant relationships motivate children towards participation and commitment. 2. Activities aimed at developing perception and sensoriality. Sensitivity can be developed by allowing one sense to prevail on the others (perceiving by using only the sense of touch without looking, listening with one’s eyes closed, observing in silence, etc.) 3. Activities which stimulate concentration and memory. That is the ability to reproduce shapes, routes, movements, rhythms and/or sounds subsequent to their perception. 4. Activities tied to cognitive development. Games that stimulate the organization of logical thought, where elements of topology are present (internal-external, opening-closure etc.), of evaluation (distance, speed, etc.) of relativity (position in relation to…) of transposition (from symbols to movement and vice-versa), of mathematical logic (classification, series.), of verbal language (breathing, use of nursery rhymes, songs using gestures) These activities encourage the establishment of relationships with various aspects of the personality of the child, with a global approach, and facilitate interdisciplinary work. When utilized in a musical therapeutic environment they can be a valid tool in helping to further the integration of differently able children.Activities which improve fantasy and nonverbal skills of expression. Children are helped to utilize and interchange various languages: sound, vocal, graphic, corporeal mimicking, sounds are transformed in movement and vice-versa, they are transformed in drawings, in shapes, in colours.
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Conclusion As the years went by, I realized how this music-therapeutic work carried out and which I still carry out at school, is useful not only for children bearing a handicap but also for “normal” ones (it is also useful for myself as I continue to “grow” with them). The aspect which struck me the most was the way in which the work organized around the difficulties of the individual, gave everybody the way to put into evidence their differences and necessities. Thanks to “handicap”, the greatest “diversity” of all, which creates the most anxiety and ill-ease, especially amongst adults and, in a different way, amongst children, I discovered that, in the groups that I conducted, the objective became not that of “integrating” the child with a disability, but integrating the differences of all the participants. The 90s moreover a new need became apparent, that of organizing a multicultural school, the problem of children with disabilities became of secondary importance, the “pedagogic” and didactic attention was now on all types of differences, as stimulus and richness. The scholastic population, all the “differently able” children have become the center from which to start planning the school of integration and music therapy in the schools.
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FIGURE 1.
tripartite model
The music therapy interventions at school could not however be included tine the tripartite model (preventive, habilitational -rehabilitational, therapeutic) , but the absence of a definition of ambit did not signify that it did not exist. So we decided to give a new name, to give this ambit a sense of reality. Italy, in the last few years, has started to mention also Integrative Music therapy to indicate all those interventions carried out in the schools in aid of the integration of all those who are “differently able”. Using music therapy in the schools is not so simple, specific training is needed which includes knowledge of the stages of child development and learning, good knowledge of group dynamics and of the laws… and more. For this reason, four years ago we set up a three year Music ther-
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apy course authorized by the Ministry of Education and organized by the cultural association FO.RI.FO. in Rome. Not all of those who are trained in music therapy are automatically able/ ready to work for integration, normally the reference model is that of rehabilitation and/or therapeutic. A music therapist in a school very frequently accepts to work only with the disabled, which then leads to the creation of new “differential” classes (only for the disabled), but this is not our aim. In Italy all children are offered a unique and exceptional experience and our aim is to utilize always and to its best this special opportunity. The encounter with the handicap becomes a stimulus for everybody, we learns to be tolerant, first of all towards ourselves, we faces our fears and discover that diversity is not so dreadful, we discover together that everybody has something to express and teach.. and it is wonderful to discover and know ourselves, just like looking at ourselves in a mirror, but this time we are looking at and listening to others! To work for the development of the person and his/her well being , the starting point is “listening” to “diversity”, originality, the uniqueness of each of us. In music therapy and in life every single emotion and experience are precious goods for the development of human potentials. The pleasure of being differently able is a powerful engine which helps us grow and change for the better.
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Author information Paola Esperson Pecoraro: Music therapist, musician, specialized for teaching children with physical/mental/sensorial disabilities, master in art therapy, since 1998 director of the FORIFO Music Therapy Course , approved by the Ministry of Education, University & Research, Rome, Italy , forifo@libero.it
References Benenzon R.O. (1997) La nuova musicoterapia. (ed. italiana) Roma: Phoenix. Boxill, E. H. (1991) La musicoterapia per bambini disabili. (ed. italiana) Torino: Omega. Bruscia, K.E. (1992) Definire la musicoterapia. (ed .Italiana), Roma: Gli Archetti. Orff, G. (1982) Musicoterapia Orff. (ed italiana), Assisi: Cittadella Guerra Lisi, Stefania & Balzan, Burchi Parrini (1977) La musicoterapia nella globalitá dei linguaggi. (ed. italiana), Bologna: Fuori Tema Vayer, P. (1973) Educazione psicomotoria nell’età prescolare. Roma: A. Armando. Vayer, P. (1976) Educazione psicomotoria nell’età scolare. Roma: A. Armando. Zanelli P. (1986) Uno sfondo per integrare. (ED. Italiana ), Bologna: Cappelli editore.
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This article can be cited as: Pecoraro Esperson, P. (2006) The pleasure of being “differently able”: Integration through music therapy in primary schools. Music Therapy Today (Online) Vol.VII (2) 413-429. available at http://musictherapyworld.net
This article can be cited as:
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Biomedical Music Therapy: Research-Based Foundation of the Effects of Music - An interview with Dale Taylor Kern, Petra
Introduction The idea of doing an interview with Dr. Dale Taylor was born, when I was teaching “Theories in Music Therapy” at the University of Windsor in Canada. My students became very excited about Dr. Taylor’s explanations of the functioning of music on the human brain, as described in Darrow’s textbook Introduction to Approaches to Music Therapy, which we used in class. The content resonated with all of us, as it takes “the myth and magic out of music therapy.” Having known Dale for more than four years through AMTA’s International Relations Committee (IRC), I decided to interview him in order to lift his theory out of the text book, and give it life through his voice, his personal experiences and anecdotes. Dr. Taylor earned his bachelor degree at the University of Kansas, worked in general hospitals and psychiatric institutes during his clinical career, served 35 years as founding Director of the Music Therapy Pro-
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gram at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Clair, served 8 years as Chair of the Department of Allied Health Professions, as well as Editor of the International Journal of Arts Medicine. He served as the Secretary/Treasurer of the International Arts Medicine Association, over two decades on NAMT and AMTA Assembly of Delegates, as AMTA’s CertificationRegistration Committee Chair, as National Coordinator of Student Affairs (USA), and as President and Vice President of AMTA’s Great Lakes Region. He is the originator of the Biomedical Theory of Music Therapy, authored Biomedical Foundations of Music Therapy, and his research is published in Music Therapy Perspectives, the Journal of Music Therapy, and in many books edited by colleagues. During this year’s AMTA Regional Music Therapy conferences, I took the opportunity to meet with Dr. Taylor and his great wife Jennifer at the Sheraton hotel in Detroit to talk about his motivation behind the development of the Biomedical Theory of Music Therapy, as well as his founding principles, applications, and much more. In this interview, Dale tells his story and shares his vision with readers and listeners of Music Therapy Today. Join me in the quest to understand the power of music on the human brain.
Interview Question: What is Biomedical Music Therapy? TAYLOR_TEXT 1.mp3 (1,6 MB)
Question: What was your thought process and motivation behind developing the Biomedical Theory of Music Therapy?
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TAYLOR_TEXT 2.mp3 (4,1 MB)
Question: What are the biomedical foundations of music as therapy? TAYLOR_ TEXT 3.mp3 (2 MB)
Question: What happens when we utilize music therapy interventions? And what is the role of a music therapist? TAYLOR_ TEXT 4.mp3 (1,7 MB)
Question: Where do professionals successfully apply the Biomedical Theory of Music Therapy? TAYLOR_ TEXT 5.mp3 (2,2 MB)
Question: Is there any research regarding what happens in the brain? TAYLOR_TEXT 6.mp3 (1,1 MB)
Question: What does it take to practice Biomedical Music Therapy? TAYLOR_TEXT 7.mp3 (1,2 MB)
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Question: What is the difference between Biomedical and Neurological Music Therapy? TAYLOR_ TEXT 8.mp3 (2,6 MB)
Question: What is the current status of Biomedical Music Therapy in the broader picture of music therapy? TAYLOR_ TEXT 9.mp3 (2,1 MB)
Question: How does the medical field respond to Biomedical Music Therapy? TAYLOR_TEXT 10.mp3 (3,8 MB)
Question: What is your vision? Where do you want to see Biomedical Music Therapy headed in the future? TAYLOR_ TEXT 11.mp3 (1 MB)
Thank you, Dale, for making this interview happen, and for giving the field of music therapy a framework for understanding the effects of music.
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Topic related resources: Altenm端ller, E., Gruhn, W., Parlitz, D., & Kahrs, J. (1997). Music learning produces changes in brain activation patterns: A longitudinal DCEEG study. International Journal of Arts Medicine, 5 (1), 28-33. Darrow, A.-A. (Ed.). (2004). Introduction to approaches in music therapy. Silver Springs, MD: The American Music Therapy Association, Inc. Pratt, R. R. (1999). Listing to music during surgery: A program of intermountain health. International Journal of Arts Medicine, 6 (1), 21-30. Pratt, R. R. (1989). A brief history of music and medicine. In M. H. Lee (Ed.), Rehabilitation, Music and human well-being (pp.1-12). Saint Louis, MO: MMB Music, Inc. Spintge, R. & Droh, R. (1987). Effects of anxiolytic music on plasma levels of stress hormones in different medical specialties. In Pratt (Ed.), The Fourth International Symposium on Music: Rehabilitation and human well-being (pp.88-101), Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Taylor, D. B. (1997). Biomedical foundations of music therapy. Saint Louis, MO: MMB Music, Inc. INTERNET SITES REFERRED BY DR. DALE TAYLOR:
Hope E. Young, MT-BC http://www.centerformusictherapy.com/ Terra E. Rowley, MM. MT-BC http://www.healthandharmonymusic.com/ Rena Zellner Burr, MT-BC
Topic related resources:
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http://members.aol.com/musictherapycc/page4.html
About the Author
Dr. Petra Kern MT-BVM, MT-BC is a member of the Music Therapy Today editorial board. She is currently a faculty member at the School of Music, University of Windsor, Canada. In addition to her research in early childhood, inclusion, and autism, she is interested in developing innovative teaching strategies. Petra can be contacted at PetraKern(at)prodigy.net. THIS ARTICLE CAN BE CITED AS:
Kern, P. (2006) Biomedical Music Therapy: Research-Based Foundation of the Effects of Music - An interview with Dale Taylor. Music Therapy Today (Online) Vol.VII (2) 430-435. available at http://musictherapyworld.net
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Instituto Música, Arte Y Proceso - Music, Art and Process Institute del Campo, Paxti
The Institute The Instituto Música, Arte y Proceso (Music, Art and Process Institute) is celebrating an anniversary this year. This Institute has a lot of experience organizing courses, summer schools and congresses, among them the VII Music Therapy World Congress. But this is a special year since it celebrates the organization of the XX AgrupArte Summer School. During the past 20 years many international music therapists have participated in these Summer Schools, including Tony Wigram (UK & Denmark), Helen Odell (UK), Amelia Oldfield (UK), Gianluigi di Franco (Italy), David Aldridge (Germany), Denise Grocke (Australia), Melisa Mercadal (Spain), Inge Nygaard Pedersen (Denmark), Jaakko Erkillä (Finland), Juha Salo (Finland), Alice Ann Darrow (USA), Daniela Laufer (Germany), etc. It was in July 1987 when the Institute started to hold the Music Therapy Summer School in Vitoria-Gasteiz and we have held it every year since 436
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then. In 1989 we also started to hold the European Music Therapy Seminar due to the interest awaked among the different international associations of professionals. It was during the Third European Music Therapy Seminary in Vitoria-Gasteiz in 1991 when the European Music Therapy Committee was created. Helen Odell, Gianluigi di Franco, Tony Wigram and Patxi del Campo (see figure 1) were the founders. FIGURE 1.
In 2004 XVIII Summer School AgrupArte 2004 held the 30th anniversary of the ISME Commission on Music in Special Education, Music Therapy and Music Medicine. “Rhythm” will be the theme of this XX Summer School, as it will represent the “2 decades we have spent behind the rhythm”. This year we also have various teachers from all around the world who will give conferences and workshops around this theme.
The Institute
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1987 AgrupArte 2006 FIGURE 2.
TABLE 1.
To conclude the celebrations in September, Vitoria-Gasteiz will host the EMTC General Assembly. This assembly, which will take place on 28th and 29th September, will be followed by an International Music Therapy Congress, on 30th September and 1st October. For more information about the Music, Art and Process Institute and the courses and events it organizes see the following website: www.agruparte.com
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Del Campo, P. (2006) Instituto MĂşsica, Arte Y Proceso - Music, Art and Process Institute. Music Therapy Today (Online) Vol.VII (2)436-439. available at http://musictherapyworld.net
This article can be cited as: Del Campo, P. (2006) Instituto MĂşsica, Arte Y Proceso - Music, Art and Process Institute. Music Therapy Today (Online) Vol.VII (2) 436-439. available at http://musictherapyworld.net
This article can be cited as:
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Music Therapy Today Vol. VII (2) (July) 2006
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Permissions for Reuse Information entropy of humpback whale songs Source:
http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServlet?prog=nor-
mal&id=JASMAN000119000003001849000001&idtype=cvips&gifs=Y es Š2006 Acoustical Society of America The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America -- March 2006 -- Volume 119, Issue 3, pp. 1849-1866 The structure of humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) songs was examined using information theory techniques. The song is an ordered sequence of individual sound elements separated by gaps of silence. Song samples were converted into sequences of discrete symbols by both human and automated classifiers.
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This paper analyzes the song structure in these symbol sequences using information entropy estimators and autocorrelation estimators. Both parametric and nonparametric entropy estimators are applied to the symbol sequences representing the songs. The results provide quantitative evidence consistent with the hierarchical structure proposed for these songs by Payne and McVay [Science 173, 587â&#x20AC;&#x201C;597 (1971)]. Specifically, this analysis demonstrates that: (1) There is a strong structural constraint, or syntax, in the generation of the songs, and (2) the structural constraints exhibit periodicities with periods of 6â&#x20AC;&#x201C;8 and 180â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 400 units. This implies that no empirical Markov model is capable of representing the songs' structure. The results are robust to the choice of either human or automated song-to-symbol classifiers. In addition, the entropy estimates indicate that the maximum amount of information that could be communicated by the sequence of sounds made is less than 1 bit per second. OUTDOORLINKS:
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Dartmouth http://www.umassd.edu/engineering/ece/research/ece_research.cfm "Information Theory & Whale Song" Science journalist David Baron reports on new research using information theory to codify the patterns of whale song.
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Musical Healing
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ss/stories/s140922.htm
Musical Healing Source: www.cbsnews.com/ April 16, 2006 http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/04/16/sunday/main1501200.shtml ŠMMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. Glenn Schifano is a music therapist - one of five thousand in the United States. He "performs" at Schneider Children's Hospital in Long Island and his audiences are children with life threatening diseases like cancer and heart disease. He plays not for money, not for fame, but to heal and offer hope. "It seeks to dispel some of the frustrating, suffering that goes on here," Schifano tells CBS Sunday Morning correspondent Dan Rather of his music. "A child that really can non-verbalize some of their angst, some of their pain can really verbally, through music, express that," he says. "It can be very healing." Schifano started his rounds on this day with 5-year-old Jake Brower, who less than two hours earlier had his 10th brain operation. "To put the shaker in his hand and then to get him to shake on his own, I think it was empowering for him and also empowering for parent," Schifano says. Baby Sekura is suffering from a head injury and Schifano is playing for both the baby and her father. "You can just imagine dad feeling overwhelmingly anxious -- they both got into this kind of lull and that is the hope, what you wanna do. That's, you know, the baby to feel that the father is calm, the mother is calm, there is safety there, there is security there," Schifano explains.
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Musical Healing
When it comes to 18-year-old Ashley Crawford, who suffers from leukemia, Schifano doesn't have to figure out what music she needs. She was spelling it out to me: 'I wanna learn 'Ode to Joy.' Teach me 'Ode to Joy.' If it was last thing she did on this planet that is what she wanted to do, that was it. Give her that joy," Schifano says. For sick children well enough to live at home but still needing check ups, Schifano is the first person they meet in the hospital, even before their doctors "Children come in, kids sign in, get blood drawn and go on to treatment area. That finger stick room dictates what happens that day," Schifano says. If music therapy only makes treatment less painful and sickness more bearable, it would seem to be enough. But music therapy does more: it sometimes can save lives. Just ask Dr. Mark Atlas, who heads the hospital's transplant unit, where the survival rate for children is only 40 percent. "The children in transplant tend to have difficulties with high blood pressure, both from medications and from pain. Relaxation, enjoyment, good positive mental state can help decrease blood pressure which actually improves their outcome," Atlas explains. Music can sometimes improve the outcome even with the youngest of the young. Ashton Webster arrived a perilous 10 weeks early, weighing less than one and a half pounds Up is bad; down is good in terms of the baby's breathing. The more Schifano sang, the more Ashton's mother and hospital staff could see "down" All those differences were reason for hope said Dr. Dennis Davidson, chief of the neonatal unit. "These small, premature babies while they are in their hospital stay can develop neurologically," Davidson claims. "The sucking reflex becomes better, they gain weight faster and ultimately they are out of the hospital faster."
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Infants can organise visual information at just four months
Music therapy began not with children, but World Wart II soldiers suffering from battle-induced stress and trauma. Today music is medicine for all ages. At Beth Israel Hospital in New York City, a leading music therapy training center, nurses and aides often join in to help the elderly handle fear or depression. Premature children hear whooshing sounds to sooth their too quick transition from their mother's womb to the real world. Even the therapist handle their own stress with music. Schifano knows that melodies can not forestall the finality of death. Despite all medical and musical efforts, he sees both the old and the young sometimes finally succumb. "I try not to get concerned with that," Schifano says. "I try to keep in here and now, keep the child in here and now and be there for the family, musically and emotionally."
Infants can organise visual information at just four months Source: www.alphagalileo.org/27 Apr 2006 http://www.alphagalileo.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=readrelease&releaseid=511896 Research investigating attention in infancy has revealed that, at just four months old, babies are able to organise visual information in at least three different ways, according to brightness, shape, and how close the visual elements are together (proximity). These new findings mean that very young infants are much more capable of organising their visual world than psychologists had previously thought.
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Infants can organise visual information at just four months
The study also has implications for understanding certain developmental disorders such as Williams syndrome. The findings emerged from Economic and Social Research Council funded research investigating different styles of visual attention in babies from the age of two to eight months. Paying attention to visual stimuli is important in the development of object recognition, and is also needed for the development of memory, motor skills and other key abilities. Led by psychologists Dr Emily Farran at the University of Reading and Dr Janice Brown at London South Bank University, the initial aim of the research was to investigate the underlying reasons why some babies are ‘short-lookers’ and shift visual attention rapidly, while others are ‘longlookers’ who keep their attention fixed for longer. Previously, these categories were thought to be relatively stable traits indicative of individual differences, with links to later cognitive development. However, the research revealed that babies often move between these two categories over the timescale studied. “The literature talks about the short-looking and long-looking categories, and links to later abilities are suggested. Unusually, we looked at this longitudinally, so we were able to pick up that these categories weren’t stable” says Dr Farran. “So these differences can’t be indicative of differential brain development, or predictive of later abilities.”
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Infants can organise visual information at just four months
Some of the research was designed to test whether infants are able to organise visual stimuli into groups based on similar attributes: brightness, shape, and proximity. To take part in the visual grouping experiments, each baby was placed in a car seat facing a screen onto which images were projected. Overhead cameras recorded how long each infant looked at images on the screen. The infants were shown an array where the stimuli were arranged by similarity in either horizontal lines or vertical columns. For example, for grouping by shape, an array of horizontal lines (or vertical columns) made up of squares and circles was used, constructed so that shape discrimination would be needed to â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;seeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; lines or columns in the array. To test if visual grouping had occurred, images of plain bars of horizontal lines and vertical columns were then shown. If the infants looked for a longer time at either the line or column bars on average, this would indicate an effect of the earlier lines or columns made up of squares and circles, indicating grouping. The results showed that grouping by brightness emerges first: it was observed at two months, in line with previous observations that this ability is present in newborn babies. At four months, two further grouping abilities emerged: grouping by shape and by proximity.
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Infants can organise visual information at just four months
Proximity grouping had not been tested in infants prior to this research, and grouping by shape had previously been seen only at six or seven months. Dr Farran argues that it’s important to understand the development of low-level processes such as attention from early on in order to understand how higher-level processes such as object recognition – which requires grouping by several different visual characteristics – develop. But the researchers also have a further interest: having established this pattern of development in normal infants, they intend to turn their attention to what happens in infants affected by developmental disorders. The research group already has a new ESRC-funded project under way with Williams syndrome infants – a condition where attention and visual perception are particularly affected. Visual grouping research, Dr Farran argues, is essential to providing a proper starting point for the new research. “In many atypical disorders, people look at what’s happening in adults and assume that the same patterns of performance would be observed in children”, says Dr Farran. ”But often there are quite different patterns. In cognitive development, small differences can cascade over time, so it’s very important to get a grip on what’s going on at the start and how it develops longitudinally, so we can see how the developmental trajectory grows.” According to Dr Farran, until recently Williams syndrome children were rarely diagnosed at an early enough stage. Now diagnosis is often earlier,
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Nonconscious semantic processing of emotional words modulates conscious
plus there is a genetic test – but interventions are still something for the future. “If we can find out about cognitive development from infancy onwards in today’s Williams syndrome children, the next generation will benefit from this”, she predicts. OUTDOORLINKS:
Economic and Social Research Council http://www.esrc.ac.uk/ESRCInfoCentre/index.aspx Dr Emily Farran http://www.personal.rdg.ac.uk/~sxs01ekf/ Dr Janice Brown at London South http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/psycho/staff/brown.shtml
Nonconscious semantic processing of emotional words modulates conscious access By Raphaël Gaillard, Antoine Del Cul, Lionel Naccache, Fabien Vinckier, Laurent Cohen, and Stanislas Dehaene Source: www.pnas.org/ April 28, 2006 http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/0600584103v1?etoc Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 10.1073/pnas.0600584103
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Nonconscious semantic processing of emotional words modulates conscious
Whether masked words can be processed at a semantic level remains a controversial issue in cognitive psychology. Although recent behavioral studies have demonstrated masked semantic priming for number words, attempts to generalize this finding to other categories of words have failed. Here, as an alternative to subliminal priming, we introduce a sensitive behavioral method to detect nonconscious semantic processing of words. The logic of this method consists of presenting words close to the threshold for conscious perception and examining whether their semantic content modulates performance in objective and subjective tasks. Our results disclose two independent sources of modulation of the threshold for access to consciousness. First, prior conscious perception of words increases the detection rate of the same words when they are subsequently presented with stronger masking. Second, the threshold for conscious access is lower for emotional words than for neutral ones, even for words that have not been previously consciously perceived, thus implying that written words can receive nonconscious semantic processing. OUTDOORLINKS:
RaphaĂŤl Gaillard E-mail: raphael.gaillard(at)normalesup.org Laurent Cohen
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Brain Reader Part 1: Researchers can now see what your brain is doing just by
http://www.ceremade.dauphine.fr/~cohen/ Fabien Vinckier http://cognivence.risc.cnrs.fr/adhesion/member.php?id=275 Stanislas Dehaene http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bios/dehaene.html
Brain Reader Part 1: Researchers can now see what your brain is doing just by shining beams of light into your head Source: www.sciencentral.com/04.28.06 http://www.sciencentral.com/articles/view.php3?article_id=218392782 They still can't read your thoughts just by looking at you, but researchers can now see what your brain is doing just by shining beams of light into your head. A ScienCentral News video explains. Seeing Our Thoughts? It kind of looks like a motorcycle helmet from the future; divided into sections with colored stripes, drilled full of holes, and stuck full of fiber optic cables. But don't be fooled -- it's actually a new brain imaging technique. Cognitive neuroscientists at the Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois,
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Brain Reader Part 1: Researchers can now see what your brain is doing just by
Gabriele Gratton and Monica Fabiani call it EROS and explain that it works by using harmless beams of light. EROS stands for event related optical signal. It's optical because it uses light reflections and it's event-related because the signals it produces mirror events in the brain. So how can light give you an accurate picture of what's happening in the brain? "Even though we are not transparent, light does penetrate into tissue," Fabiani explains. So just like pressing a red laser pointer against your finger makes it glow red, shining light on your scalp also makes your brain give off faint reflections. As reported in "Scientific American Mind" magazine, EROS catches these reflections to create a picture of the activity in brain cells, or neurons. Gratton and Fabiani explain that each fiber optic cable going into the helmet is either a light source or a detector. The helmet holds them in place directly on the scalp so that they touch the skin in between hairs. When the light sources are turned on, the light diffuses through the head and ultimately reflects back, getting picked up by the detectors on the way out. When neurons are active they swell with water, causing the light to travel through them in a very different way when they are firing than when they're resting. "The particles of the light take bounces all around the tisOdds and ends - themes and trends
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Brain Reader Part 1: Researchers can now see what your brain is doing just by
sue and depending on whether the neurons are active or inactive the bounces will change," Fabiani says. Gratton says they can tell whether brain cells are active by how long it takes for the light to travel from the sources back to the detectors. "So light, of course, moves very quickly, but we can, with our instrumentation, detect changes in the time light takes to move through the head," he says. A computer program can then create statistically-generated images of brain activity by mapping these delays. But you can't use just any color of light -- only certain wavelengths produce reflections. If you try pressing a green laser pointer against your finger rather than a red one, you'll see that it doesn't make your finger glow. That's because, green light, which is actually a higher-energy (but shorter wavelength) kind of light than red, gets mostly absorbed by the tissues inside our bodies. Red light and near-infrared light (longer wavelengths), on the other hand, get reflected back out. "Near-infrared light, which is a low-energy light is very useful for imaging because the substances that are in the human body tend to absorb very little light at this particular wavelength," Gratton says. Using such low-energy light, makes EROS particularly safe. Gratton says that in fact, much more light travels through our heads when we're just sitting indoors under normal lighting than during any of their experiments.
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Brain Reader Part 1: Researchers can now see what your brain is doing just by
So what makes EROS special? Science already has multiple other ways to view brain activity, but every method has its own set of limitations. Functional MRI (fMRI) is a brain-imaging method based on showing where blood is flowing in the brain. It's based on the assumption that blood will flow to the areas of the brain where neurons are active. However, it takes much more time for blood to flow than it takes neurons to be active. "So you present a stimulus and you wait one, two, three, four secondsâ&#x20AC;Ś and now you see a response of the brain by using functional MRI," explains Gratton. Fabiani says that although four seconds may not seem like a lot of time, it's ages in terms of brain activity. The brain acts in the range of milliseconds rather than seconds. So although fMRI gives you a very good picture of brain structure, and where in the brain activity is happening, it suffers from a time delay. Other methods of visualizing brain activity do work in the milliseconds range, such as electrical measures like ERPs and electroencephalography. But, unlike fMRI, they don't show very accurately where the activity is happening. The type of images they produce are more like line graphs showing the intensity of activity over time, but that don't tell researchers in which region it's happening.
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Brain Reader Part 1: Researchers can now see what your brain is doing just by
EROS overcomes both of these issues -- where and when activity is happening -- at the same time. As Gratton says, "With EROS we obtain this type of combination of spatial and temporal information, and the advantage is that we can get a single technology to do these two things together." The result is that EROS can generate almost real-time movies of brain activity. "I believe that this may have very beneficial effect in the long run, both in terms of medical and clinical applications, but also in human engineering," says Gratton. For example, he says cars and other everyday machines can eventually be improved based on how our brains process what we see. Nevertheless, EROS does have some limitations. For example, it can't be used to visualize the deepest parts of the brain and the signal it produces is fairly small. Because of the faintness of the signal, readings have to be taken multiple times to produce the statistically-generated images. A recent study done by the researchers used EROS to show how older brains are more easily distracted.However, using it together with other techniques like electrical measurements and fMRI has shown that it is just as accurate in showing what the brain is doing. Gratton and Fabiani are already using it to shed new light on complex brain activities. OUTDOORLINKS:
Beckmann Institute
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Brain Reader Part 2: As we age, our brains start to pay too much attention to
http://www.beckman.uiuc.edu/ A ScienCentral News video http://www.sciencentral.com/articles/view.php3?article_id=218392782 Gabriele Gratton http://www.beckman.uiuc.edu/profiles/faculty/grattong.html Monica Fbiani http://www.beckman.uiuc.edu/profiles/faculty/mfabiani.html
Brain Reader Part 2: As we age, our brains start to pay too much attention to things that might not be important. Source: www.sciencentral.com/04.28.06 http://www.sciencentral.com/articles/view.php3?article_id=218392783 Scientists have found that as we age, our brains start to pay too much attention to things that might not be important. As this ScienCentral News video explains, this hyper-attention can actually make us more distractible. DISTRACTED BRAINS
Staying focused in a world full of ticking clocks, clicking keyboards, and beeping smoke detectors is not as easy as you might think. Our brains have to decide what information is important enough to be introduced into our conscious minds and filter out all the rest.
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Brain Reader Part 2: As we age, our brains start to pay too much attention to
In other words, it has to know to tune out the sound of that crinkling paper and keep streaming in the words you're trying to read. If you've ever tried reading with a dripping faucet in the background, you probably know that sometimes this process doesn't always work perfectly. "All of us can be annoyed by something like that at times, but most of us are able to block such things out," says Monica Fabiani, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Illinois. But Fabiani has shown that how successful we are at ignoring background information might actually be connected to how old we are. In a recent study, she showed that people over seventy years of age have a tougher time tuning out such distractions. (See OutDoorLink above!) Fabiani and her team at the Beckman Institute used a new brain imaging technique known as EROS. Fabiani and her husband Gabriele Gratton are pioneering the use of EROS, which has some distinct advantages over other imaging methods. "EROS is a technique for looking at the brain in action," says Fabiani. "It's based on the diffusion of light into the tissue." Using reflected light patterns to show brain activity, EROS gives the researchers a good idea of both the timing and location of brain events, all in a single technology. Fabiani and her team measured brain activity in sixteen young and sixteen older volunteers who read a book of their choice while distracting tones played in the background. They adjusted the volume of the tones so
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Brain Reader Part 2: As we age, our brains start to pay too much attention to
that all the volunteers heard them at the same level, irrelevant of the quality their hearing. "The tones come in trains of fives, so that you have basically beep beep beep beep beep and then there is a pause," explains Fabiani. The researchers took two different measurements of brain activity -- both EROS and a measurement of electrical activity in the brain.
Both techniques produced similar brain activity patterns -- volunteers in their twenties only responded to the first tone in each sequence and then ignored the rest, but the older adults' brains responded to all five of the tones. "And so presumably that might have an influence on their reading, and on their performance of their main task," Fabiani says. With EROS, the researchers could also see which regions of the older adults' brains kept responding to the sounds. Fabiani describes the electrical measurements as being diffused over the cortex. EROS, on the other hand, allowed them to see where in the brain activity occured - in this case, in the auditory cortex. Without EROS, she says, "We would not have the information that there are clear patterns of this type in auditory cortex, we would know that there are responses of this type, but we wouldn't be sure where they are coming from." It might seem intuitive to guess that the patterns would be found in the auditory cortex, since the responses are directly related to hearing, but
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Brain Reader Part 2: As we age, our brains start to pay too much attention to
Fabiani says this provides validation for using EROS in more complicated experiments where it would be impossible to guess in advance where the brain activity will happen. Fabiani says their study helps to reveal why our mental performance starts to naturally deteriorate as we age. She says there are many different changes in our brains as we age, but this simple experiment shows one of those ground-level changes. "This suggests that older adults may be more distractible and therefore some of their resources might be devoted to things that are not as important," she says. And figuring out what's normal is the first step in being able to diagnose abnormal diseases -- like Alzheimer's disease. Although Fabiani says EROS is not yet suitable as a diagnostic tool, the kind of information it provides about brain activity may one day be very useful in many clinical situations. OUTDOORLINKS:
Newsletter InfoNutrient-Archiv http://www.tomdoch.de/work/newsletter/archiv/index.html Monica Fabiani http://www.beckman.uiuc.edu/profiles/faculty/mfabiani.html Reduced Suppression or Labile Memory? Mechanisms of Inefficient Filtering of Irrelevant Information in Older Adults
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Neurogenesis Not Needed for Environmental Enrichment Effects
http://jocn.mitpress.org/cgi/content/abstract/18/4/637 Beckman Institute http://www.beckman.uiuc.edu/
Neurogenesis Not Needed for Environmental Enrichment Effects By Pat McCaffrey Source: www.alzforum.org/30 April 2006 http://www.alzforum.org/new/detail.asp?id=1385 Happy mice, raised in cages filled with toys and exercise wheels, are better learners and show less anxiety than their less privileged littermates housed in standard bare cage conditions. Happy mice also display more neurogenesis in their hippocampi than standard-caged mice, because exercise and environmental stimulation seems to crank up the birth of new neurons in the subgranular zone of the dentate gyrus. These new neurons have been assumed to contribute to environmental enrichment effects. But do they? A paper in todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Nature Neuroscience online suggests that hippocampal neurogenesis is not required for mice to display better spatial learning and lower anxiety in an enriched environment. The results, from Rene Hen and colleagues at Columbia University in New York, stand in direct contradiction to a study published last year by
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Neurogenesis Not Needed for Environmental Enrichment Effects
French researchers, which found that turning off neurogenesis blocked environment-induced memory enhancement in rats. While differences between studies, or the existence of different pathways to learning, might account for opposite outcomes, the new evidence means the jury must re-evaluate the role of adult neurogenesis in modifying learning and behavior. The verdict is of interest to Alzheimer researchers, because environmental enrichment has been shown to decrease both amyloid pathology and cognitive defects in mouse models of AD. To investigate the role of neurogenesis in environment, joint first authors Dar Meshi, Michael Drew, and their colleagues used targeted radiation to kill off neuronal progenitors in the hippocampus before upgrading their mice to deluxe accommodations. The researchers showed that bromodeoxyuridine and doublecortinâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;neurogenesis markers that otherwise appear in the hippocampus after environmental enrichmentâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;were absent from irradiated animals. Six weeks later, the irradiated and control mice were put through several behavioral tests, including those for anxiety, habituation to a new environment, and for spatial learning in the Morris water maze. In each case, environmental enrichment improved the animalsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; performance, and that improvement was unaffected by previous irradiation. From this the authors concluded that, at least for these tasks, the effects of environment do not require adult neurogenesis.
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Neurogenesis Not Needed for Environmental Enrichment Effects
The findings contrast those of Elodie Bruel-Jungerman and colleagues, who reported that ablating neurogenesis by injecting the anti-mitotic drug methylazoxymethanol acetate (MAM) totally blocked the improvement in long-term memory that followed environmental enrichment in rats. The studies use different species, and different ways of knocking out neurogenesis, leading Meshi et al. to speculate that the systemic administration of MAM versus localized irradiation may be one explanation for the discrepancies. The studies also tested the animals on different tasks, raising the possibility that some behavioral changes require neurogenesis while others do not. In support of this, the Cornell group previously showed that hippocampal irradiation blocks the ability of antidepressant drugs to reduce the anxiety response in mice. For the neurogenesis-independent effects, increased levels of growth factors, dendritic branching, or synaptogenesis are all potential explanations for the environmental enrichment observed in irradiated mice. Correspondence should be addressed to RenĂŠ Hen, Email: rh95(at)columbia.edu OUTDOORLINKS:
Rene Hen http://cpmcnet.columbia.edu/dept/neurobeh/Hen_center.html
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Cardiovascular, cerebrovascular, and respiratory changes induced by different
Cardiovascular, cerebrovascular, and respiratory changes induced by different types of music in musicians and non-musicians: the importance of silence Source: Heart 2006;92:445-452; doi:10.1136/hrt.2005.064600 http://heart.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/92/4/445?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&author1=bernardi&andorexactfulltext=and&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&sortspec =relevance&resourcetype=HWCIT Š 2006 by BMJ Publishing Group Ltd & British Cardiac Society OBJECTIVE:
To assess the potential clinical use, particularly in modulating stress, of changes in the cardiovascular and respiratory systems induced by music, specifically tempo, rhythm, melodic structure, pause, individual preference, habituation, order effect of presentation, and previous musical training.
DESIGN:
Measurement of cardiovascular and respiratory variables while patients listened to music.
SETTING:
University research laboratory for the study of cardiorespiratory autonomic function.
PATIENTS:
12 practising musicians and 12 age matched controls.
INTERVENTIONS:
After a five minute baseline, presentation in random order of six different music styles (first for a two minute, then for a four minute track), with a randomly inserted two minute pause, in either sequence.
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Cardiovascular, cerebrovascular, and respiratory changes induced by different
MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES:
Breathing rate, ventilation, carbon dioxide, RR interval, blood pressure,
RESULTS:
Ventilation, blood pressure, and heart rate increased and mid-cerebral
mid-cerebral artery flow velocity, and baroreflex.
artery flow velocity and baroreflex decreased with faster tempi and simpler rhythmic structures compared with baseline. No habituation effect was seen. The pause reduced heart rate, blood pressure, and minute ventilation, even below baseline. An order effect independent of style was evident for mid-cerebral artery flow velocity, indicating a progressive reduction with exposure to music, independent of style. Musicians had greater respiratory sensitivity to the music tempo than did non-musicians. CONCLUSIONS:
Music induces an arousal effect, predominantly related to the tempo. Slow or meditative music can induce a relaxing effect; relaxation is particularly evident during a pause. Music, especially in trained subjects, may first concentrate attention during faster rhythms, then induce relaxation during pauses or slower rhythms. For Fulltext, picts and references please go to <http://heart.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/92/4/445?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&author1=bernardi&andorexactfulltext=and&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&sortspec =relevance&resourcetype=HWCIT> Correspondence to: Dr Luciano Bernardi, Email: lbern1ps@unipv.it or Luciano.Bernardi@ok.rcs.it
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Estrogen-dependent selectivity of genomic responses to birdsong
http://ok.corriere.it/medici/bernardi.shtml
Estrogen-dependent selectivity of genomic responses to birdsong By Donna L. Maney, Ellen Cho and Christopher T. Goode Source: www.blackwell-synergy.com/ Volume 23 Page 1523 - March 2006 http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.14609568.2006.04673.x doi:10.1111/j.1460-9568.2006.04673.x/Volume 23 Issue 6 ABSTRACT
Behavioral responses to sociosexual signals often depend on gonadal steroid hormones, which are thought to modulate behavior by acting on motivational systems in the brain. There is mounting evidence that sex steroids may also modulate perception of sociosexual signals by affecting sensory processing. In seasonally breeding songbirds such as the white-throated sparrow (Zonotrichia albicollis), the female's behavioral response to hearing male song depends on her plasma levels of estradiol (E2). Here, we examined whether plasma E2 also affects the selectivity of the song-induced zenk (egr-1) response in the auditory forebrain, which is known to vary according to the behavioral relevance of song stimuli.
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Power of Placebo
Non-breeding females were held on a winter-like photoperiod and implanted with silastic capsules containing either no hormone or E2. E2-treated birds hearing 42 min of conspecific song had more cells immunoreactive for the protein product of zenk in the auditory forebrain than did those hearing frequency-matched synthetic tones. In birds not treated with E2, however, the zenk response to song did not differ from that to tones. We found similar effects in the avian homolog of the inferior colliculus, indicating that E2 may affect the processing of auditory information upstream of the forebrain. Our data suggest that in females, zenk induction in the auditory system is selective for song only when plasma E2 exceeds non-breeding levels. E2dependent plasticity of auditory pathways and processing centres may promote recognition of and attention to conspecific song during the breeding season. OUTDOORLINKS:
Donna Maney http://psychology.emory.edu/nab/maney/lab/
Power of Placebo By Lindsay Carswel Source: Lindsay Carswel/www.sciencentral.com/ 03.24.06 http://www.sciencentral.com/articles/view.php3?article_id=218392759
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Power of Placebo
In a new example of the power of your mind, researchers have found that just the ritual of medical care could be important to improving your health. This ScienCentral News video has more. PLACEBO VS. PLACEBO
A visit to the doctor might not be your favorite thing, but everything â&#x20AC;&#x201D; from the time you spend talking with the doctor to the diploma on the wall â&#x20AC;&#x201D; could be helping to make you better. "The ritual of medicine, the context of medicine, is important to take into consideration in healthcare," says Harvard Medical School's Ted Kaptchuk. "There's an implication that how you describe your intervention, what you tell patients, has an impact on how that intervention effects their illness and health." Kaptchuk, who studied Chinese medicine in China, has been studying what's known as the placebo effect. "The effect of giving someone a dummy treatment, a treatment that appears like a real treatment, but actually has none of the active ingredients," he explains. So, Kaptchuk and his research team set out to see if different kinds of dummy treatments, or placebos could reduce patients' chronic arm pain. They compared a fake acupuncture procedure to a pill made of nothing but cornstarch. They found that, "A dummy procedure has a bigger impact on reducing pain than an oral dummy pill," he says. As they reported in the British Medical Journal, the study began by testing the effectiveness of two placebo treatments against active treatments at reducing self-assessed arm pain. "You can't give patients placebos without having a comparison with an act of intervention," explains
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Power of Placebo
Kaptchuk. After two weeks, the fake pill and fake acupuncture groups were continued and compared against each other. PLACEBO PILLS
Acupuncture is a part of traditional Chinese medicine that has been shown to be effective in relieving some cases of pain and helping to treat illnesses. Kaptchuk's sham acupuncture used blunt needles that retract and don't pierce the skin. The volunteers receiving twice-weekly, sham acupuncture treatments reported significantly more pain relief than those taking a fake pill every day. He says it was the more elaborate nature of the acupuncture procedure that gave the volunteers more pain relief. "Some rituals have bigger effects than other rituals," Kaptchuk says. The researchers were surprised to find that almost a third of the volunteers claimed to have side effects from their fake treatments. "At the end of the study, 30 percent of the patients, both [in the sham acupuncture and sham pill] arms of the study, reported adverse effects," explains Kaptchuk. "And what was really remarkable is that the adverse effects were completely different depending on, they totally mimicked what we told them in the informed consent." Volunteers who got the sham acupuncture reported feeling pain or irritation from the trick needles, while taking make-believe drug resulted in side effects that included dizziness, restlessness, rashes, headaches, nausea and in four cases nightmares. "That's suggesting very strongly that how you tell people to pay attention to their experiences, their bodily experiences, helps form, in dramatic ways, what they actually experience," he says. "It was one of the nice, unexpected, but very important findings in the study."
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Stress, not "sick" building, may make workers sick
Historically placebos were used to treat patients, but with the development of informed consent in the 1960s that was considered unethical. "Now placebos are only used as controls for an act of intervention in clinical experiments or basic science experiments," he says. So, while Kaptchuk doesn't suggest doctors give out placebos, he says they should consider not only how to treat a patient, but how they treat a patient. Kaptchuk's research was published in the 18 February, 2006 issue of British Medical Journal , and was funded by the National Institutes of Health. OUTDOORLINKS:
Ted Kaptchuk http://hms.harvard.edu/WhitePagesPublic.asp?task=showperson&id=172271375176279374177277&a=hms&r=1&kw= British Medical Journal http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/
Stress, not "sick" building, may make workers sick By Amy Norton Source: news.yahoo.com/s/nm/28.03.1006 Work-related stress, rather than building conditions, may be what's behind the constellation of symptoms known as "sick building syndrome," according to researchers.
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Stress, not "sick" building, may make workers sick
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060328/hl_nm/ stress_sick_dc&printer=1;_ylt=Aj1FrsYQEaFEMQmva3Nd0_0R.3QA; _ylu=X3oDMTA3MXN1bHE0BHNlYwN0bWEIn a study of more than 4,000 UK government employees, researchers found that high job demands and perceptions of poor support were more closely related to sick-building symptoms than were the physical conditions of the workplace. The findings suggest that "sick building syndrome" may in fact be a misnomer, the researchers report in the journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine. That does not mean the symptoms aren't real, but that the physical properties of the workplace may not be a major cause, according to study coauthor Dr. Mai Stafford of University College London Medical School. "The symptoms certainly exist," she told Reuters Health, "and cost millions in lost productivity (and) sickness absence." Sick building syndrome refers to a cluster of symptoms, including headache, nasal congestion, eye irritation and fatigue, that appear to arise when a person is in a particular indoor environment. Studies, however, have failed to find consistent connections between symptoms and specific physical conditions of buildings. On the other hand, Stafford and her colleagues report, there is growing evidence that job stress -- especially the combination of demanding work and little autonomy -- has health effects, and that the physical reactions to stress are similar to the symptoms attributed to sick building syndrome.
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The researchers analyzed data from 4,052 civil servants working in 44 buildings in London. Workers were surveyed about sick-building-type symptoms, as well as job stress and the conditions of their work space. In some buildings, researchers took environmental measurements of temperature, humidity, dust, airborne fungus and bacteria, and other conditions. Overall, there was some evidence that the heat and humidity of the workplace, as well as levels of dust and bacteria, were related to employees' symptoms. But there was a much stronger relationship between symptoms and job stress -- namely, demanding work and a perceived lack of support from superiors and colleagues. In addition, the researchers unexpectedly found a lower prevalence of symptoms at sites with poor air circulation and "unacceptable" levels of carbon dioxide, airborne fungi and chemicals known as volatile organic compounds. None of this means that poor or uncomfortable physical conditions are acceptable in the workplace, the researchers add Problems such as excessive heat and poor ventilation, they write, "can and should be improved even if health outcomes are unchanged." And while building conditions in this study were not closely related to workers' symptoms, Stafford said some work sites may indeed have conditions that affect employees' health.
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Cortex Matures Faster in Youth with Highest IQ
Stafford and her colleagues conclude that the findings suggest that the psychological and social environment of the workplace should be considered when workers are bothered by headaches, fatigue and other symptoms attributed to sick building syndrome. SOURCE: Occupational and Environmental Medicine, April 2006. OUTDOORLINKS:
Mai Stafford http://www.ucl.ac.uk/epidemiology/staff/staffordm.htm
Cortex Matures Faster in Youth with Highest IQ Source: Press Release National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda/ March 29, 2006 http://www.nimh.nih.gov/press/youthcortexiq.cfm Youth with superior IQ are distinguished by how fast the thinking part of their brains thickens and thins as they grow up, researchers at the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) have discovered. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans showed that their brain's outer mantle, or cortex, thickens more rapidly during childhood, reaching its peak later than in their peers â&#x20AC;&#x201D; perhaps reflecting a longer developmental window for high-level thinking circuitry. It also thins faster during the late teens, likely due to the withering of unused neural connections as the brain streamlines its operations. Drs. Philip Shaw, Judith Rapoport, Jay Giedd and colleagues at NIMH and McGill University report on their findings in the March 30, 2006 issue of Nature.
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"Studies of brains have taught us that people with higher IQs do not have larger brains. Thanks to brain imaging technology, we can now see that the difference may be in the way the brain develops," said NIH Director Elias A. Zerhouni, M.D. While most previous MRI studies of brain development compared data from different children at different ages, the NIMH study sought to control for individual variation in brain structure by following the same 307 children and teens, ages 5-19, as they grew up. Most were scanned two or more times, at two-year intervals. The resulting scans were divided into three equal groups and analyzed based on IQ test scores: superior (121145), high (109-120), and average (83-108). The researchers found that the relationship between cortex thickness and IQ varied with age, particularly in the prefrontal cortex, seat of abstract reasoning, planning, and other "executive" functions. The smartest 7year-olds tended to start out with a relatively thinner cortex that thickened rapidly, peaking by age 11 or 12 before thinning. In their peers with average IQ, an initially thicker cortex peaked by age 8, with gradual thinning thereafter. Those in the high range showed an intermediate trajectory (see below). While the cortex was thinning in all groups by the teen years, the superior group showed the highest rates of change. "Brainy children are not cleverer solely by virtue of having more or less gray matter at any one age," explained Rapoport. "Rather, IQ is related to the dynamics of cortex maturation." The observed differences are consistent with findings from functional magnetic resonance imaging, showing that levels of activation in prefrontal areas correlates with IQ, note the researchers. They suggest that Odds and ends - themes and trends
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the prolonged thickening of prefrontal cortex in children with superior IQs might reflect an "extended critical period for development of highlevel cognitive circuits." Although it's not known for certain what underlies the thinning phase, evidence suggests it likely reflects "use-it-orlose-it" pruning of brain cells, neurons, and their connections as the brain matures and becomes more efficient during the teen years. "People with very agile minds tend to have a very agile cortex," said Shaw. The NIMH researchers are following-up with a search for gene variants that might be linked to the newly discovered trajectories. However, Shaw notes mounting evidence suggesting that the effects of genes often depends on interactions with environmental events, so the determinants of intelligence will likely prove to be a very complex mix of nature and nurture. Also participating in the study were Drs. Dede Greenstein, Liv Clasen, Rhoshel Lenroot, and Nitin Gogtay, Child Psychiatry Branch, NIMH; and Drs. Jason Lerch and Alan Evans, Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University.
The developmental trajectory of waxing and waning in cortex thickness differs as the brain matures in different IQ groups. Thickness of the area at the top/front/center, highlighted in MRI brain maps at left, peaks relatively late, at age 12 (blue arrow), in youth with superior intelligence, perhaps reflecting an extended critical period for development of highlevel cognitive circuits. Source: NIMH Child Psychiatry Branch
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Effects of Music Therapy and Counselling: A Case of State Anxiety of a Ca - Hypo
OUTDOOR LINKS
NIMH Child Psychiatry Branch http://intramural.nimh.nih.gov/chp/index.html Judith L. Rapoport http://neuroscience.nih.gov/Lab.asp?Org_ID=134 Jay Giedd http://intramural.nimh.nih.gov/research/pi/pi_giedd_j.html
Effects of Music Therapy and Counselling: A Case of State Anxiety of a Ca - Hypo Pharynx Patient By Sundar, Sumathy Source: http://www.musictherapyworld.de/index_mtt.php?issue=44 Abstract This paper is about a single case study of a Squamous Cell Carcinoma Hypopharynx patient, to find out if receptive music therapy could be combined with comprehensive counseling and also if health information coul be provided as a cognitive beahvioral intervention to address psychological distress and situational anxiety, which are common problems with cancer patients in a hospital environment Baseline data was collected from the patient using Spielberger's StateTrait Anxiety Inventory.
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Music fingerprinting system is fastest yet
Assessments were done for situational anxiety before, during and after the music and counseling interventions. Pre- and Post-test composite anxiety scores were compared, which indicated the efficacy of the treatment. Though the primary endpoint of the study was state anxiety, the unique experiences of listening to music, which could be explained only by the patient listening to music and the self report made by the patient when analysed reflected the spiritual dimensions of the music therapy sessions To read Fulltext please go to http://www.musictherapyworld.de/index_mtt.php?issue=44 More information: Sundar Sumathy Email:sumusundar@yahoo.com
Music fingerprinting system is fastest yet A digital music identification system that can search through 17 million songs in under 1 second has been launched in the US. Source: http://www.newscientisttech.com/0 April 2006 http://www.newscientisttech.com/article/dn8973-music-fingerprintingsystem-is-fastest-yet.html
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MusicIP, based in California, US, announced last week that it had received a US patent for its method of automatically identifying, or "fingerprinting", digital music files. The company already offers software that analyses the music collection on a computer, identifies it, and makes recommendations. But now it will now offer its music identification feature for other companies to include in their products. The system can recognise a song from its audio "fingerprint" in a fraction of a second. This allows users to rapidly organise their music collection, discover more about a particular track or get new recommendations, through connected databases, regardless of the format of the audio file. DOMINANT TONES
Matthew Dunn, chief executive of MusicIP, claims his company's fingerprinting technology is the fastest available and uses the largest commercial database â&#x20AC;&#x201C; containing 17 million songs. To make a fingerprint, MusicIP quickly scans the first 2 minutes of a track and records frequency data every 185 milliseconds, before compressing the results into a 512 byte file. It also measures records the four most dominant tones in the first 30 seconds of the music. The program uses information about these dominant tones to narrow the search before searching the song database using the frequency information. Dunn says this allows the company to perform hundreds of searches each second and that the service is sensitive enough to distinguish between different versions of the same tune, such as live and studio recordings.
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ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
While other companies use digital fingerprints to identify songs, the databases they claim are much smaller. Shazam Entertainment, in London, UK, runs a service that lets users hold their mobile phone up to a music source for 30 seconds, and receive a text message identifying the song and artist. But Shazam has a database of only about 2 million songs. Gracenote, in California, US, is a leading provider of online music identification but claims to have a database of around 7 million songs. However, Jim Hollingsworth, vice president of sales and marketing at Gracenote, argues that existing fingerprinting technologies are fast enough and that it is more important for a company to provide useful additional information, such as song lyrics and album-cover art. An alternative approach is user collaboration. Online services such as Audioscrobbler and Pandora, for example, recognise songs and make recommendations by searching through user-generated playlists. But Dunn hopes the speed and size of MusicIP's database will make it stand out. Companies must pay a license fee to access MusicIPâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Music Digital Naming Service service, but non-profit organisations can access it for free.
OUTDOORLINKS:
MusicIP http://musicip.com/
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Functional Imaging of Numerical Processing in Adults and 4-y-Old Children
Functional Imaging of Numerical Processing in Adults and 4-y-Old Children By Jessica F. Cantlon, Elizabeth M. Brannon, Elizabeth J. Carter, Kevin A. Pelphrey Source: biology.plosjournals.org/ Volume 4 | Issue 5 | MAY 2006 http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0040125 Adult humans, infants, pre-school children, and non-human animals appear to share a system of approximate numerical processing for nonsymbolic stimuli such as arrays of dots or sequences of tones. Behavioral studies of adult humans implicate a link between these nonsymbolic numerical abilities and symbolic numerical processing (e.g., similar distance effects in accuracy and reaction-time for arrays of dots and Arabic numerals). However, neuroimaging studies have remained inconclusive on the neural basis of this link. The intraparietal sulcus (IPS) is known to respond selectively to symbolic numerical stimuli such as Arabic numerals. Recent studies, however, have arrived at conflicting conclusions regarding the role of the IPS in processing non-symbolic, numerosity arrays in adulthood, and very little is known about the brain basis of numerical processing early in development. Addressing the question of whether there is an early-developing neural basis for abstract numerical processing is essential for understanding the Odds and ends - themes and trends
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Functional Imaging of Numerical Processing in Adults and 4-y-Old Children
cognitive origins of our uniquely human capacity for math and science. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) at 4-Tesla and an event-related fMRI adaptation paradigm, we found that adults showed a greater IPS response to visual arrays that deviated from standard stimuli in their number of elements, than to stimuli that deviated in local element shape. These results support previous claims that there is a neurophysiological link between non-symbolic and symbolic numerical processing in adulthood. In parallel, we tested 4-y-old children with the same fMRI adaptation paradigm as adults to determine whether the neural locus of nonsymbolic numerical activity in adults shows continuity in function over development. We found that the IPS responded to numerical deviants similarly in 4-yold children and adults. To our knowledge, this is the first evidence that the neural locus of adult numerical cognition takes form early in development, prior to sophisticated symbolic numerical experience. More broadly, this is also, to our knowledge, the first cognitive fMRI study to test healthy children as young as 4 y, providing new insights into the neurophysiology of human cognitive development. To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: jfc2@duke.edu (JFC), E-mail: kevin.pelphrey@duke.edu (KAP) OUTDOORLINKS:
Jessica F Cantlon http://fds.duke.edu/db/aas/PBS/grad/jessica.cantlon Odds and ends - themes and trends
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Music Therapy in New Orleans
Music Therapy in New Orleans By DAN SADOWSKY Source: DAN SADOWSKY/www.mercycorps.org/ February 23, 2006 http://www.mercycorps.org/topics/hurricanekatrina/1119 Sounds of bass drumbeats, rattling snares, echoing congas and ringing cowbells filled the Dryades YMCA cafeteria in late February, as a class full of seventh graders laughed, danced and thumped their way through Mercy Corps' first New Orleans drum circle. Along the storm-ravaged Gulf Coast, Mercy Corps is supporting programs that help children recover emotionally from Hurricane Katrina and its still-omnipresent impact on their lives. One of the agency's own initiatives is to hold ongoing drum circles for youngsters in New Orleans schools, neighborhoods and community centers. Professional percussionists, led by Mercy Corps' Ken Williams, will introduce kids to New Orleans' unique musical heritage and use music to tap into their emotions about Katrina. "It's total expression, a creative workshop," Williams explains. Encouraging students to drum or rap about various subjects, including Katrina, especially might help those who are reticent to talk about their feelings of loss, displacement and change. Most of the students here at the inner-city Dryades YMCA, home to a K8 charter school, lost everything in the storm.
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At Some Medical Schools, Humanities Join the Curriculum
Many are still separated from family members and adjusting to new surroundings. " You'd be surprised what they go through just to be here every day," says math teacher Nathaniel Lang. But for an hour, at least, these kids found joy in creating music. By the end of the session, what started as a harsh cacophony had evolved into a steady roll of foot-tapping rhythms. "It was fun," says Malkia, one of the more enthusiastic participants. The 12-year-old says she's "just a little bit" over Katrina, and that the drumming helped her get her emotions out. "I felt excited. I felt like a star." OUTDOORLINKS:
Mercy Corps http://www.mercycorps.org/
At Some Medical Schools, Humanities Join the Curriculum By RANDY KENNEDY Source: RANDY KENNEDY/www.nytimes.com/ April 17, 2006 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/17/arts/design/ 17sina.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=login
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Art and medicine have worked hand in hand for a long time. To improve his art, Leonardo dissected bodies. To improve his anatomy treatise, Andreas Vesalius relied on the artistry of Titian's workshop. But the other day, in the European paintings wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a group of seven would-be doctors had a different kind of reason to appreciate the 17th-century Dutch biblical scene before them: course credit. Three years ago, the Mount Sinai School of Medicine began an art-appreciation course for medical students, joining a growing number of medical schools that are adding humanities to the usual forced march of physiology, pathology and microbiology. This year, for the first time, the course is required for third-year students, providing them not only with a blinking-into-the-sun break from medical rotations but also, said Dr. David Muller, the school's chairman of medical education, a lesson about how important, and underrated, the art of looking is to the practice of medicine. "To make a better doctor means to me â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and I can't speak for everyone â&#x20AC;&#x201D; one who sees the person and not just the patient," he said, "not just an organ system that is screwed up." The course is similar to ones established in the last few years at Yale, Stanford, Cornell and a few other medical schools, but traditionalists at Mount Sinai have not always looked favorably on it.
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When asked why, Dr. Muller said, "I think if I answered that question strategically, I would say that in any big medical center there is always a very broad spectrum of opinions." But at least one study, published in The Journal of the American Medical Association in 2001, has found that looking at painting and sculpture can improve medical students' observational abilities. It could also, wrote Dr. Irwin Braverman, a Yale medical professor and an author of the study, eventually help apply some salve to that long suppurating wound, health-care costs. Such utopian hopes seemed a distant concern for the seven students who gathered in the Met's lobby on a sunny afternoon. "With heightened observational skills," he wrote, "physicians can often ask the questions necessary to make correct diagnoses without relying too much on costly blood tests and X-rays." They had other things on their minds: all had survived a grueling surgical rotation but were approaching the time when they would have to pick a specialty. "Not only do we have to learn what we're learning but we have to remember how to write a C.V. again and basically decide what we're going to do with the rest of our lives," explained Risa Small, 24, one of the students, summing up the year. So a few minutes later, standing in front of Nicolaes Maes's "Abraham Dismissing Hagar and Ishmael" (1653), a dark scene of high Baroque drama, they seemed happy to lose themselves in the painting and to wonder aloud what was happening in it. Odds and ends - themes and trends
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Shirley Delaleu, 25, pointed out the brooding late-evening sky in the background and how Ishmael's body awkwardly twisted as he descended a set of stairs away from Abraham, his father. "It just looks like there's this great big world that he has to go out into, and it looks ominous," she said. With the typical ardor of medical students, others pointed out that all three figures wore some red clothing, that they didn't make eye contact with one another, that their figures formed a triangle, that Hagar looked alternately angry and ashamed, that she was the only one who went barefoot and that her hands were rough and manly, making it hard to tell whether she was a man or woman. Rebecca Hirschwerk, an art educator who is the course's instructor and one of its creators along with Dr. Muller, explained that the idea for the course developed while her husband was a resident at Mount Sinai. She began to think about how, in listening and poring over charts, doctors sometimes had little time actually to look at their patients, especially under the pressures of today's managed medical care. "I can't think of many places outside art where you can be in a moment, and just look, for as long as you can take it," she said. "Think about what it would be like if you were with a patient and could freeze the moment to really pay attention to everything that patient was trying to tell you. It's hard to do when you have only 15 minutes with patients, 20 times a day." Partly intended to make better doctors by making better-rounded human beings, such art courses are being joined by other, mostly elective humanities courses â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and in some medical schools, like the one at the Odds and ends - themes and trends
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State University at Stony Brook on Long Island, whole humanities departments â&#x20AC;&#x201D; that bring playwrights, poets, actors, philosophers and other imports from the liberal arts into the world of medicine. Ms. Hirschwerk said that in choosing the eight works that the students see in two visits to the Met, she tried to stay away from blockbuster paintings that might be too well known. Works like the one by Maes, she said, had enough ambiguity, body language and detail to reward long observation. On that particular visit, she next led the students to another Dutch Baroque work, by Gerard ter Borch, of a preening young woman and her maid, and then to Giacometti's spectral "Three Men Walking II" from 1949, before ending at "The Proposal," a light-infused genre painting of a man and woman by Adolphe-William Bouguereau, a 19th-century French painter. Ms. Hirschwerk asked the students to study "The Proposal" for several minutes and then to turn away from it and recall the painting's details, which they did in great detail, from the cat sitting at the woman's feet to the almost invisible strand of thread stretched between her fingers. Dr. Muller said that students were not graded in the class, in part to give them a break from their academic grind, and so it was hard to tell whether their art-appreciation was improving their diagnostic skills. But in anonymous journal entries from previous classes, the students â&#x20AC;&#x201D; who take the course during their geriatric rotation, making home visits to elderly patients â&#x20AC;&#x201D; seem to pay closer, and more empathetic, attention to their patients. Odds and ends - themes and trends
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"It was clearly taking a toll on her, and she was close to tears several times during the interview," one student wrote, of seeing a patient with Alzheimer's disease, and talking to the man's wife. "Her husband sat next to her apparently oblivious to her distress. He was distracted, quietly picking a piece of tape with his name off his cane." For the most part, the students seem relieved to have a chance to leave any thoughts about medicine and disease outside the door of the Met. "It sort of reminds me of life before medical school, back when you were still a regular person," said Komal Kapoor-Katari, 27. But their profession was never far away. In front of the Maes painting of Abraham, Ms. Hirschwerk explained that she had chosen it because it showed a moment of decision, one that â&#x20AC;&#x201D; according to the biblical story â&#x20AC;&#x201D; would be fateful for world history. Then she steered that weighty theme back to the students themselves. "There's a chain of reaction for every decision that you make, and you're part of that chain yourself," she said. The observation was met with a long silence, one possibly filled with thoughts of malpractice. "Well, on that happy note," she said, finally breaking in, "let's go look at the next painting."
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OUTDOORLINKS:
Metropolitan Museum of Art http://www.metmuseum.org/ Mount Sinai School of Medicine http://www.mssm.edu/ David Muller, M.D. http://directory.mssm.edu/faculty/facultyInfo.php?id=22857&deptid=17 The Journal of the American Medical Association http://jama.ama-assn.org/ Irwin M. Braverman, MD http://info.med.yale.edu/dermatology/dept/braverman.html Abraham Dismissing Hagar and Ishmael (picture) http://www.metmuseum.org/Works_Of_Art/viewOneZoom.asp?dep=11&viewmode=1&item=1971.73&zoomFlag=0 State University at Stony Brook http://www.sunysb.edu/ Three Men Walking II (Picture) http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/ho/11/euwcm/ho_1999.363.22.htm The Proposal (Picture)
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Neocortical Connectivity during Episodic Memory Formation
http://www.metmuseum.org/Works_of_Art/viewOne.asp?dep=11&viewmode=1&item=60.122
Neocortical Connectivity during Episodic Memory Formation By Christopher Summerfield, Matthew Greene, Tor Wager, Tobias Egner, Joy Hirsch and Jennifer Mangels Source:
http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-docu-
ment&doi=10%2E1371%2Fjournal%2Epbio%2E0040128 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0040128 During the formation of new episodic memories, a rich array of perceptual information is bound together for long-term storage. However, the brain mechanisms by which sensory representations (such as colors, objects, or individuals) are selected for episodic encoding are currently unknown. We describe a functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment in which participants encoded the association between two classes of visual stimuli that elicit selective responses in the extrastriate visual cortex (faces and houses). Using connectivity analyses, we show that correlation in the hemodynamic signal between face- and place-sensitive voxels and the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is a reliable predictor of successful faceâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;house binding.
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The mood of the Internet
These data support the view that during episodic encoding, â&#x20AC;&#x153;top-downâ&#x20AC;? control signals originating in the prefrontal cortex help determine which perceptual information is fated to be bound into the new episodic memory trace. To whom correspondence should be addressed. Christopher Summerfield, E-mail: summerfd@paradox.columbia.edu To read Fulltext go to http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10%2E1371%2Fjournal%2Epbio%2E0040128
The mood of the Internet Source: www.nwo.nl/14. April 2006 http://www.nwo.nl/nwohome.nsf/pages/NWOA_6NJJ78_Eng Dutch researcher Maarten de Rijke and his co-workers Gilad Mishne and Krisztian Balog have developed a new programme that can trace and explain significant changes in mood patterns on the Internet. MoodViews is a collection of instruments that maps the mood of bloggers as they write their message. Internet diaries, blogs, are an increasingly common phenomenon on the Internet. The opinions and experiences of tens of millions of people can be followed every day.
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The mood of the Internet
Researchers from the Pionier project 'Computing with Meaning' think that subjective aspects of blogs, such as moods, play in important role in determining which people look at and read the blogs. So Gilad Mishne, Krisztian Balog and project leader Maarten de Rijke have developed MoodViews. MoodViews follows the moods of 2 million bloggers from around the world. Each day the programs pick up about 150,000 blog messages. The clearly measurable responses to worldwide events suggest that these instruments pick up the global mood. And not only those of bloggers. De Rijke has already been approached by journalists, marketing specialists, psychologists and bankers. The Moodteam has something interesting to offer to all of these groups. At present MoodViews has three components. Moodgrapher monitors the global mood of bloggers. These data are converted into overview graphs. Moodteller uses language technology to predict the mood on the Web. The latest component, Moodsignals, records unusual peaks in mood levels. After this it uses search engine technology to find an explanation for these mood swings. Various other components of MoodViews are still under development. For example, Moodspotter will be launched this summer. This instrument will be able to search the moods associated with certain persons, locations or products. Maarten de Rijke's research is part of his Pionier project 'Computing with Meaning'. The Pionier programme of NWO ran from 1989 to 2002 and
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Sparse time-frequency representations
was aimed at highly experienced researchers of a professorial level. It is comparable to the present Vici subsidy from NWO. OUTDOORLINKS:
Maarten de Rijke http://staff.science.uva.nl/~mdr/ Gilad Mishne http://staff.science.uva.nl/~gilad/ Krisztian Balog http://staff.science.uva.nl/~kbalog/
Sparse time-frequency representations By Timothy J. Gardner and Marcelo O. Magnasco Source: www.pnas.org/ April 18, 2006 http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/103/16/6094?etoc PNAS | April 18, 2006 | vol. 103 | no. 16 | 6094-6099 Published online before print April 6, 2006, 10.1073/pnas.0601707103 Auditory neurons preserve exquisite temporal information about sound features, but we do not know how the brain uses this information to process the rapidly changing sounds of the natural world.
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Sparse time-frequency representations
Simple arguments for effective use of temporal information led us to consider the reassignment class of time-frequency representations as a model of auditory processing. Reassigned time-frequency representations can track isolated simple signals with accuracy unlimited by the time-frequency uncertainty principle, but lack of a general theory has hampered their application to complex sounds. We describe the reassigned representations for white noise and show that even spectrally dense signals produce sparse reassignments: the representation collapses onto a thin set of lines arranged in a froth-like pattern. Preserving phase information allows reconstruction of the original signal. We define a notion of "consensus," based on stability of reassignment to time-scale changes, which produces sharp spectral estimates for a wide class of complex mixed signals. As the only currently known class of time-frequency representations that is always "in focus" this methodology has general utility in signal analysis. It may also help explain the remarkable acuity of auditory perception. Many details of complex sounds that are virtually undetectable in standard sonograms are readily perceptible and visible in reassignment. To whom correspondence should be addressed. Marcelo O. Magnasco E-mail: magnasco(at)rockefeller.edu
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Why life oscillates – from a topographical towards a functional chronobiology
OUTDOORLINKS:
Timothy J. Gardner http://www.christianacare.org/body.cfm?id=834 Marcelo O. Magnasco http://www.rockefeller.edu/research/abstract.php?id=100
Why life oscillates – from a topographical towards a functional chronobiology By Maximilian Moser,
Matthias Frühwirth, Reiner Penter, Robert
Winker ABSTRACT
Chronobiology has identified a multitude of rhythms within our body as well as within each living cell. Some of these rhythms, such as the circadian and circannual, interact with our environment, while others run on their own, but are often coupled to the circadian or to other body rhythms. Recent evidence shows that these rhythms might be more important for our health than expected: Disturbance of the circadian rhythms by jet lag or shift work not only evokes autonomic disturbances but also increases the incidence of cancer, as shown in this issue of Cancer Causes and Control. The occurrence of rhythms in the organism obviously bears several advantages:
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Why life oscillates – from a topographical towards a functional chronobiology
It increases organismic stability by calibrating the system’s characteristics: Regulation curves in time and space are crucial for controlling physiological long-term stability. To determine its properties continuously the system varies ist parameters slightly over several time scales at different frequencies—akin to what our body does, e.g. in heart-rate variability. Tuning and synchronization of rhythms saves energy: It was Huygens who observed that clocks on a wall tend to synchronize their beats. It turned out later that synchronisation is a very common phenomenon observed in bodies’ rhythms and can be found, for example, when we relax or sleep. At such times energy consumption is minimal, our body working most efficiently. Temporal compartmentalization allows polar events to occur in the same space unit: there are polarities in the universe of our body, which cannot happen simultaneously. Systole and diastole, inspiration and expiration, work and relaxation, wakefulness and sleep, reductive and oxidative states cannot be performed efficiently at the same time and place. Temporal compartmentalization is probably the most efficient way to mediate between these polarities.Chronobiology and chronomedicine are opening a new and very exciting understanding of our bodies’ regulation.
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Neurons in the orbitofrontal cortex encode economic value
The biological time and its oscillations gain more attention and importance as these interrelations are understood. To read Fulltext see attached PDF OUTDOORLINKS:
Prof. Dr. Maximilian Moser http://www.joanneum.at/de/humantechnologie/ kontakte_detail.php?p_iid=IND&p_oid=KONTAKT_694 Matthias Fr端hwirth http://www.joanneum.at/de/humantechnologie/ kontakte_detail.php?p_iid=IND&p_oid=KONTAKT_706
Neurons in the orbitofrontal cortex encode economic value By Camillo Padoa-Schioppa1 and John A. Assad1 Source: www.nature.com/23 April 2006 http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ nature04676.html Nature advance online publication23 April 2006 doi:10.1038/nature04676 ABSTRACT
Economic choice is the behaviour observed when individuals select one among many available options. There is no intrinsically 'correct' answer: economic choice depends on subjective preferences. This behaviour is Odds and ends - themes and trends
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Neurons in the orbitofrontal cortex encode economic value
traditionally the object of economic analysis and is also of primary interest in psychology. However, the underlying mental processes and neuronal mechanisms are not well understood. Theories of human and animal choice have a cornerstone in the concept of 'value'. Consider, for example, a monkey offered one raisin versus one piece of apple: behavioural evidence suggests that the animal chooses by assigning values to the two options. But where and how values are represented in the brain is unclear. Here we show that, during economic choice, neurons in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) encode the value of offered and chosen goods. Notably, OFC neurons encode value independently of visuospatial factors and motor responses. If a monkey chooses between A and B, neurons in the OFC encode the value of the two goods independently of whether A is presented on the right and B on the left, or vice versa. This trait distinguishes the OFC from other brain areas in which value modulates activity related to sensory or motor processes. Our results have broad implications for possible psychological models, suggesting that economic choice is essentially choice between goods rather than choice between actions. In this framework, neurons in the OFC seem to be a good candidate network for value assignment underlying economic choice. To read Fulltext please go to <http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ nature04676.html> Correspondence to: Camillo Padoa-Schioppa, Email: camillo(at)alum.mit.edu)
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Meditating Brains
OUTDOORLINKS:
Camillo Padoa-Schioppa http://ideas.repec.org/e/ppa67.html
Meditating Brains by Lindsay Carswel Source: Lindsay Carswel/www.sciencentral.com/05.08.06 http://www.sciencentral.com/articles/view.php3?article_id=218392787 No one can deny that taking a few minutes out of a busy day to relax is a good thing. But spending that time meditating could mean pumping up your brain, as well as relaxing your body. A ScienCentral News video has more. Just say OM Some people meditate to clear their minds or to relieve the stresses of daily life. Others hope to find enlightenment and reach nirvana. It's estimated that ten million Americans practice some form of meditation regularly. "Meditating is about training the mind in effect, it's a technique, it's a tool, so its training the mind to be more focused and to be more mindful moment to moment," explains George Pitagorsky, a management consultant who practices and teaches meditation at the New York Insight Meditation Centre. "It increases concentration capability â&#x20AC;&#x201D; less spacing out, much more ability to focus on a particular chosen point of reference," he says.
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Meditating Brains
But the benefits of meditation may not be only in the mind. Massachusetts General Hospital's Sara Lazar says she can see physical changes in the brains of people who routinely meditate. "Meditation can have a serious impact on your brain long beyond the time when you're actually sitting and meditating, and this may have a positive impact on your day-to-day living," says Lazar, an assistant in psychology at Massachusetts General Hospital and an instructor at Harvard Medical School. As she reported in the journal NeuroReport, Lazar and her research team used a MRI brain scanner to compare the brains of people who practiced Insight meditation every day, with non-meditators. "These are not monks; these are just people who choose to meditate for about 45 minutes a day every day," she says. Insight Meditation, or Vipassana, is the practice of mindfulness and awareness of yourself and the world around you. The belief is that the practice of mindfulness is highly effective in helping bring calm and clarity to the pressures of daily life, as well as being a spiritual path. "Insight meditation is very user-friendly," says Joseph Schmidt, cofounder and executive director of the New York Insight Centre. "People in west can adopt this if you're a person involved in the church or a nonsecular person or don't believe in religion." Lazar and her research team found that certain areas of the cortex â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the outer layer of the brain that contains our thinking, reasoning and decision-making functions â&#x20AC;&#x201D; were significantly thicker in the meditators.
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Meditating Brains
"One of them is right up in the front of your brain right above your right eye, and this is an area that's involved in decision making and in working memory, working short term memory," she explains. She also saw thickening in another region of the brain, called the insula, that she considers "a central switchboard of the brain," connecting the primitive limbic cortex and the more advanced cortex, which is highly developed in primates and humans. Lazar says this region is thought to be "involved in coordinating the brain and the body and the emotions and thoughts," she explains. "It helps us better make decisions." The researchers think this thickening might help to counteract the natural thinning of the cortex that occurs as we get older. The brain's cortex starts getting thinner from about age 20 and continues to thin throughout life. "It's not a cure-all, but it perhaps can help prevent the loss of some functions," Lazar says. "One small part of the front of the brain does not get thinner with ageâ&#x20AC;Ś and this suggests that this part of the brain is not affected by age. And this part of the cortex is involved in short term working memory and cognitive decision-making." Their results also suggested that continuing to meditate would continue the thickening process. "The thickness is strongly correlated with the amount of experience. So the more they sat, the thicker it was," Lazar says. She says she'd expect a similar effect from other forms of meditation. She plans to further study how meditation might affect mental ability by testing people "at multiple time points and to test their cognitive ability to
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Meditating Brains
see if cognitive ability correlates with thickness and if that changes as the brain gets thicker," Lazar explains. The Dalai Lama advocates that neuroscientists investigate the effect of spiritual traditions, such as meditation, on the brain. People who practice meditation regularly will certainly tell you of the benefits. "I've noticed the benefit, certainly, in my own life in terms of awareness," says New York City writer, Andrea Louie. "The most profound experience I had was just after 9/11. Immediately after the attack here in New York, many, many people were very angry. I found myself really feeling equanimity with myself, I was fully aware that adding to the anger wasn't going to help." OUTDOORLINKS:
ScienCentral News video Meditating Brains http://www.sciencentral.com/articles/view.php3?article_id=218392787 George Pitagorsky http://www.pitagorskyconsulting.com/ New York Insight Meditation Centre http://nyimc.org/ Sara Lazar http://lazar-meditation-research.info/lazar.html
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The GABAB1b Isoform Mediates Long-Lasting Inhibition of Dendritic Ca2+
Harvard Medical School http://hms.harvard.edu/hms/home.asp Insight Meditation (Vipassana) http://www.insightmeditationcenter.org/about-vipassana.html The Dalai Lama http://www.dalailama.com/ Science at the Crossroads This article is based on a talk given by the Dalai Lama at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience on November 12, 2005 in Washington DC http://www.dalailama.com/page.8.htm
The GABAB1b Isoform Mediates Long-Lasting Inhibition of Dendritic Ca2+ Spikes in Layer 5 Somatosensory Pyramidal Neurons By Enrique PĂŠrez-Garci, Martin Gassmann, Bernhard Bettler and Matthew E. Larkum Source: http://www.neuron.org/18 May 2006 http://www.neuron.org/content/article/ abstract?uid=PIIS0896627306003102
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The GABAB1b Isoform Mediates Long-Lasting Inhibition of Dendritic Ca2+
Copyright Š 2006 Cell Press. All rights reserved. Neuron, Vol 50, 603-616, 18 May 2006 The apical tuft of layer 5 pyramidal neurons is innervated by a large number of inhibitory inputs with unknown functions. Here, we studied the functional consequences and underlying molecular mechanisms of apical inhibition on dendritic spike activity. Extracellular stimulation of layer 1, during blockade of glutamatergic transmission, inhibited the dendritic Ca2+ spike for up to 400 ms. Activation of metabotropic GABAB receptors was responsible for a gradual and long-lasting inhibitory effect, whereas GABAA receptors mediated a short-lasting (â&#x2C6;ź150 ms) inhibition. Our results suggest that the mechanism underlying the GABAB inhibition of Ca2+ spikes involves direct blockade of dendritic Ca2+ channels. By using knockout mice for the two predominant GABAB1 isoforms, GABAB1a and GABAB1b, we showed that postsynaptic inhibition of Ca2+ spikes is mediated by GABAB1b, whereas presynaptic inhibition of GABA release is mediated by GABAB1a. We conclude that the molecular subtypes of GABAB receptors play strategically different physiological roles in neocortical neurons. Correspondence: Matthew E. Larkum, Email: larkum(at)pyl.unibe.ch
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Listening to music can reduce chronic pain and depression by up to a quarter
OUTDOORLINKS:
Matthew Larkum http://pylwww.unibe.ch/~larkum/ Hans-Rudolf L端scher http://pylwww.unibe.ch/~luescher/
Listening to music can reduce chronic pain and depression by up to a quarter Source: www.alphagalileo.org/24 May 2006 http://www.alphagalileo.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=readrelease&releaseid=512402 Listening to music can reduce chronic pain by up to 21 per cent and depression by up to 25 per cent, according to a paper in the latest UKbased Journal of Advanced Nursing. It can also make people feel more in control of their pain and less disabled by their condition. Researchers carried out a controlled clinical trial with sixty people, dividing them into two music groups and a control group. They found that people who listened to music for an hour every day for a week reported improved physical and psychological symptoms compared to the control group. The participants, who had an average age of 50, were recruited from pain and chiropractic clinics in Ohio, USA. They had been suffering from a Odds and ends - themes and trends
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Listening to music can reduce chronic pain and depression by up to a quarter
range of painful conditions, including osteoarthritis, disc problems and rheumatoid arthritis, for an average of six and a half years. 90 per cent said the pain affected more than one part of their body and 95 per cent said it was continuous. Before the music study, participants reported that their usual pain averaged just under six on a zero to ten pain scale and their worst pain exceeded nine out of ten. “The people who took part in the music groups listened to music on a headset for an hour a day and everyone who took part, including the control group, kept a pain diary” explains nurse researcher Dr Sandra L Siedlecki from the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Ohio. “Forty people were assigned to the two music groups and the other 20 formed the control group. “The first group were invited to choose their own favourite music and this included everything from pop and rock to slow and melodious tunes and nature sounds traditionally used to promote sleep or relaxation. “The second group chose from five relaxing tapes selected by us. These featured piano, jazz, orchestra, harp and synthesizer and had been used in previous pain studies by co-author Professor Marion Good from the Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing at Case Western Reserve University, Ohio.” At the end of the trial: •
The music groups reported that their pain had fallen by between 12 and 21 per cent, when measured by two different pain measurement
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Listening to music can reduce chronic pain and depression by up to a quarter
scales. The control group reported that pain increased by between one and two per cent. • People in the music groups reported 19 to 25 per cent less depression than the control group. • The music groups reported feeling nine to 18 per cent less disabled than those who hadn’t listened to music and said they had between five and eight per cent more power over their pain than the control group. “Our results show that listening to music had a statistically significant effect on the two experimental groups, reducing pain, depression and disability and increasing feelings of power” says Dr Siedlecki. “There were some small differences between the two music groups, but they both showed consistent improvements in each category when compared to the control group. “Non-malignant pain remains a major health problem and sufferers continue to report high levels of unrelieved pain despite using medication. So anything that can provide relief is to be welcomed.” “Listening to music has already been shown to promote a number of positive benefits and this research adds to the growing body of evidence that it has an important role to play in modern healthcare” adds co-author Professor Marion Good. Previous research by Professor Good and Hui-Ling Lai, published in the Journal of Advanced Nursing in 2005 and republished in journal’s 30th Anniversary issue in 2006, showed that listening to 45 minutes of soft music before bedtime can improve sleep by more than a third. OUTDOORLINKS:
Sandra L Siedlecki
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Music improves sleep quality in older adults
http://cms.clevelandclinic.org/nursing/body.cfm?id=517 Marion Good http://fpb.case.edu/Faculty/Good.shtm Journal of Advanced Nursing http://www.journalofadvancednursing.com
Music improves sleep quality in older adults By Hui-Ling Lai PhD RN and Marion Good PhD FAAN http://www.tomdoch.de/work/newsletter/archiv/05_02_04_01.html
Manilow to drive out 'hooligans' Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/5047610.stm A council in the Australian city of Sydney is taking radical measures against car-revving youths - the calming tones of singer Barry Manilow. Officials in Rockdale say that local youths have been hanging around in car parks, revving their engines and generally annoying residents. So the council has decided to strike back. From July, Barry Manilow's greatest hits will be piped into one car park in a bid to drive the youths away. Deputy mayor Bill Saravinovski said the decision was taken because the youths were intimidating local people. "They are just hanging out and causing a nuisance to the general public," he told the AFP news agency. The music will be played for a six-month trial period at a car park in the
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Manilow to drive out 'hooligans'
suburb of Brighton-le-Sands. Mr Saravinovski said it should not annoy residents, but would will be loud enough for the youths to hear it. "Daggy music is one way to make the hoons leave an area, because they can't stand the music," he told Australian newspaper The Daily Telegraph. Daggy is Australian slang for unfashionable or uncool. The music would not be limited to Barry Manilow, he said. "It will be all types of classical music and music that doesn't appeal to these people." Rockdale Council is not the first to employ such measures. In 1999, the Warrawong Westfield shopping mall in Wollongong played Bing Crosby hits over and over again to drive away loitering teenagers. OUTDOORLINKS:
Barry Manilow http://www.manilow.com/
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