The Relation Between Bipolar Disorder and Music

Music can be a positive force in mental health. It can calm and give peace, it can impart peace of mind and provide a healthy diversion from the harshness of life. It is important to be selective in one's choices in music.

Music, for some, can be a deeply emotional experience. When one identifies with some particular music, bonds with it, the emotions being imparted are like the flow of electricity, they flow from the singer, to the CD or radio, to you, and become a part of you, deeply affect you.

Music can raise or lower moods. One can see how music could have an impact for some persons, who might already be emotionally inclined, in terms of depression and bipolar disorder.

If a child or teen listens to music most of the day, and if that music is alternatively happy, angry, deeply emotional, harsh, jumpy, you can see how emotions can be affected, and how it might contribute to highs and lows in an adolescent's mood. This seems to be the case for some children and youth who are suffering with depression or bipolar disorder, for some with ADHD.

Charged-up and Intense Music and its Affect on Emotions
Some of today's music in most genres can be intense, some is "drug-charged," cocaine-fueled (type) passion-music. It's energy level is high, and when combined with imagery from music videos, it can be an intense experience and overwhelming for the senses. Disorders of various types might be affected by the intensity of the music-media.

Hours on the ipod going to school, in school and at other times of the day, watching Internet and television music videos can weaken the mind of young girls and leave some more susceptible to mental health disorders such as bipolar disorder.

This can especially be the case for those who do not have strong or stable family ties and emotional attachments. The sexual messages of much of today's music for children and teenagers has an affect, as does the intensity. Another aspect of the retreat into a private musical world at one's fingertips is the emotional and social isolation that it can cause. Some find an escape route from unpleasant family or other situations in the fantasy of captivating music.

Long hours on the ipod can affect the mental health of children and teens.
However, this can weaken the child and teenager's ability to be able to create or imagine without some external stimulation. It weakens a child or teen's coping skills and makes him or her more vulnerable to mental health crises.

Moderation is needed in music, and parents and caregivers need to provide a variety of well-chosen wholesome musical choices to young people and to some children who are musically inclined.

Music, Psychology, Bipolar Disorder: Rage, Anger and Desperation
There can be a "rage" and "desperation" in some of the music that is popular today for young people, including alternative (rock) music, heavy metal, grunge and hard core. The mind then can have little time to rest and may be in a constant state of over stimulation. Dopamine level in the mind is overstimulated, and this can contribute to highs and lows in mood, as well as contribute to, among other things, the rage that can become a part of a child or teen's personality.

When this is combined with an unstable family life or other media influences such as violence orpornography, the combined effects can have a powerful influence on destabilizing the mood of adolescents, children and adults. While this may not be the case in all situations, when combined with other controllable lifestyle issues, the choices and intensity of the music you listen to may affect mood and contribute to bipolar disorder for some.

Conclusion on Music and Bipolar Disorder
One can conclude then, by limiting the time of exposure towards music, as well as the intensity, both in terms of emotional impact, anger level, (rock and roll may be described as an angry genre of music, a sort of protest against everything that's not right and which youthreadily internalize. Some rock takes that anger and desperation to extreme levels), and volume, it can positively impact mental health, especially for teens and young people, whose minds are forming and who are adjusting both physically and to new circumstances in life.

Attention to music can be one effective way that one can improve one's bipolar disorder symptoms profile. This can especially be true for teens, and some children. By being careful in the selection of music, toning down the volume and intensity, and by concentrating on selecting positive and mellower music, it can do much to help to improve the symptoms of many who are diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

Pages Related Bipolar Disorder
Bipolar Disorder Story - Dr. Liz Miller permanently overcomes bipolar disorder through lifestyle changes, writing therapy, and mood mapping.

Dealing with Bipolar Disorder: Self Monitoring for Relapse Prevention

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About Bipolar Disorder Information and Facts

Bipolar Disorder Self Help 50 Natural Ways to Overcome Symptoms of Bipolar Disorder

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Labeling in Psychiatry - The Medical Model of Mental Health and its Shortcomings

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Bipolar Disorder and Children, Sharna Olfman

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Bipolar Self Help (off-site)

Full article:

http://www.winmentalhealth.com/bipolar_disorder_and_music.php

The Musician' Brain

It’s now official: Music is a mind-altering substance. Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis has seen the evidence first hand, in the form of brain scans. So has Charles Limb, who could easily have given his set of cerebral scans tongue-in-cheek titles. This is your brain. This is your brain on bebop.

Limb and Margulis — a saxophonist and a pianist, respectively, who both segued into science — have just published separate studies of music and the brain. Margulis’ paper suggests that the intense training musicians receive literally changes the way their brains function. Limb’s work examines how jazz players get into a trance-like state of pure inventiveness as they improvise.

Together, their work could help lead to a demystification of the creative process, which many people consider the exclusive domain of the gifted few. “We are still married to antiquated, 19th-century notions of genius and creativity,” said Margulis, an assistant professor of music at the University of Arkansas. “The de-freakification of musical talent could be very powerful.”

Margulis’ study, which was conducted at Northwestern University, attempted to answer what has been, up to now, a chicken-and-egg question. “There are lots of studies showing that musicians’ brains have different networks than those of people who haven’t had formal musical training,” she noted. “But is this due to a genetic predisposition or to the effect of practising an instrument for so long?”

To explore that issue, she and her colleagues rounded up nine violinists and seven flutists, all of whom had started playing their instrument by age 12. While sitting in MRI scanners, the musicians listened to very similar compositions by J.S. Bach — a set of pieces for violin, followed by one for flute.

The results: “Violinists’ brains, when they listen to violin music, look like flutists’ brains when they listen to flute music. That extensive experience with their own instrument resulted in the recruitment of this special network.”

In other words, Margulis’ work confirms the wisdom of the old joke “How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice.” The fact that one starts working with an instrument at a young age and continues doing so for many years results in the precise configuration of brain activity needed to produce music, including heightened activity in motor regions and auditory association areas.

“This adds further support to the notion that it is training rather than genetic predisposition (that makes a musician),” she said. “People can get the impression that musicians are alien beings whose brains are wired differently. It plays into cultural notions of music being the domain of experts. (Our study suggests) it’s a matter of the experience you have had in your life. It’s not magic!”

Of course, nothing in music seems more magical than the act of improvisation. Jazz players often describe the experience as otherworldly, insisting that the notes emerge from their instrument faster than their conscious minds can process them.

But this, too, is due to a specific pattern of brain activity, which is captured for the first time in Limb’s study. It took place at the National Institutes of Health in Washington D.C., where Limb — a John Hopkins University faculty member who works both in the medical school and in the world-renowned Peabody Institute — served as a research fellow.

One day, Limb recalled, he was discussing his intense interest in music with Allen Braun, chief of the NIH’s language section. “Simultaneously, we talked about how much we wanted to do an MRI study of improvising,” he said.

Fashioning such a study required a significant amount of creativity itself. It took two years to find a way to allow jazz musicians to perform while their brain activity was being photographed.

“There were a lot of constraints,” Limb said. “Some were ergonomic. The musicians would lie on their back in a tube, which came up to their shoulders. There was a coil around their head. They were looking up at a mirror, which looks at another mirror, which pointed at their thighs, where their keyboard sat. So they were able to see their hands on the plastic keyboard.”

Even for musicians used to playing for drunken nightclub patrons, those are difficult conditions — especially since each stayed in that position for about 75 minutes. But Limb had no problem recruiting six professional players to take part.

First, the musicians performed a very simple set of improvisations, based on a C-major scale. Then they moved on to a more complex task, improvising on a blues melody Limb composed.

The results, as seen on the MRI scans, “were virtually identical,” Limb said. Regardless of the level of musical complexity, the same regions of the brain were being activated, “which made us conclude it was the act of improvisation” that created this particular pattern of brain activity.

And what an interesting pattern. The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex — the region responsible for self-evaluation — shut down completely, while activity increased in the nearby medial prefrontal cortex.

“That’s a very unique combination,” Limb said. “You don’t typically see, in this part of the brain, one part going up and one part going down.
“The medial portion is activated when you do something that’s internally motivated and self-generated — something goal-directed, based on a cognitive understanding of what you need to achieve. When you’re telling a story about yourself, that area is active. That’s very interesting, because in a jazz improvisation, you’re telling your own musical story.

“What makes it really intriguing is that activity is surrounded by a broad expanse of deactivation. (That area is the source of) your inhibitors, your censors — all those inhibitory behaviors. They’re turned off, I think, to encourage the flow of new ideas. You’re not analyzing or judging what’s coming out. You’re just letting it flow.”

Limb and Braun were both cautious about over interpreting their findings. “It’s pretty clear we aren’t looking at creativity per se,” Braun said. “Another part of the creative process is revision and polishing; that’s a part we haven’t looked at. We’re looking at one aspect of creative, spontaneous behavior.”

Nevertheless, as Limb noted, creativity — which is, after all, “fundamental to human advancement” — has traditionally been considered off-limits to scientific study. This study suggests one fundamental part of the creative process can be traced to specific brain activity. Indirectly, it also confirms Margulis’ belief that the development of talent — practice, practice, practice — is crucial to creativity.

“I have no idea how to promote getting into (the jazz musicians’ creatively fertile) state,” Limb said. “But our study suggests that the notion of ‘letting go’ is meaningful. That’s why amateur musicians can’t get there. They can’t let go — they’re far too concerned with the execution of the notes, the mechanics of playing their instruments. That’s too much at the forefront of their consciousness.

“When you’re masterful at what you’re doing, it becomes second nature (and the self-censoring part of the brain can switch off). Then you can focus on ideas.”

http://www.psmag.com/science-environment/the-musician-s-brain-4698/
http://www.psmag.com/