His pa­tient Frances D. suf­fered from Park­in­son’s Dis­ease. The com­mon drugs did not help, but Dr. Sacks found an ex­traor­di­nar­ily ef­fec­tive treat­ment method for Mrs. D.’s symp­toms: mu­sic.

The in­ves­ti­ga­tions with chil­dren born with se­vere hear­ing im­pair­ments (17, 18) state, that these chil­dren show sig­nifi­cantly dis­turbed motor skills, par­ticu­larly in the co-or­di­na­tion of their move­ments and in fine mo­torics. This shows that not only the mo­toric in­for­ma­tion of our mus­cles but also the acous­tic in­for­ma­tion of the ear is read by the sys­tem of bal­ance and is even nec­es­sary for its full un­fold­ment.

This is sup­ported by the ex­peri­ence that we have a de­sire to move ac­cord­ing to mu­sic. In all cul­tures of the world peo­ple dance to mu­sic; danc­ing and mu­sic nec­es­sar­ily be­long to­gether.
Prof. Tomatis docu­ments in his stud­ies (28) the close in­ter­con­nec­tion be­tween ear, acous­tic in­for­ma­tion, pos­ture and move­ment. For him the “pos­ture pro­file“ sits in the ear and ac­cord­ing to his in­ves­ti­ga­tions eve­ry mus­cle in the or­gan­ism is con­nected to the sys­tem of bal­ance – not only those mus­cles that help us move.

As the poor de­vel­op­ment of fine mo­torics in chil­dren born with hear­ing prob­lems in­di­cates, it could par­ticu­larly be the fine mu­si­cal move­ments in the melody of speak­ing and mu­sic, and their com­plex co-or­di­na­tion, which per­haps cre­ate in the brain very subtle mo­toric im­pulses, and which – even if they are not trans­formed into move­ment – leave be­hind a fine stimu­la­tion of the mo­toric sys­tem. How else can the poor mo­toric de­vel­op­ment of hear­ing im­paired chil­dren be ex­plained? Ob­vi­ously acous­tic move­ments are also es­sen­tial for de­vel­op­ing fine mo­torics and co-or­di­na­tion of move­ment.

And here, im­me­di­ately again the ques­tion arises con­cern­ing the qual­ity of the mu­sic. Which pat­terns of body move­ments are stimu­lated by mu­si­cal move­ments: more jerky, fixed, mono­tone, ma­chine like ones, or move­ments that are mani­foldly flow­ing and natu­rally woven into each other?

Prof. Tomatis (26) de­scribes a cy­ber­netic regu­la­tion cir­cle of move­ment: the brain gives the or­der for move­ment, the mus­cle per­forms the or­der and the sys­tem of bal­ance checks the move­ment, and, if nec­es­sary, for­mu­lates a cor­rec­tion or­der. Into this cir­cle of regu­la­tion mu­sic is able to in­ter­fere as we have seen in the above men­tioned ex­am­ples of Mr S. and Mrs D. and it is able, ac­cord­ing to the struc­ture of mu­sic, to strengthen har­mo­ni­ous mo­torics or to dis­turb it.

Let us take an­other ex­ample of how mu­sic ef­fects the mus­cle sys­tem. The prob­lem of a ten­sion head­ache is, that this kind of head­ache nor­mally gen­er­ates from a very tense neck, where the mus­cles of this part of the body are un­der con­stant ten­sion. This con­stant ten­sion re­ports to the brain and is felt as pain.

Who now is the medi­cal “ref­er­ence per­son“ in the or­gan­ism for this neck, “ar­mour plated“ with tense mus­cles?

On the one hand, for sure, the sys­tem of bal­ance, which also checks the mus­cles of the neck and ac­tu­ally should have given a cor­rec­tion or­der to relax long ago.
But on the other hand there is still the world of our emo­tions, which acts in this case su­pe­rior to the sys­tem of bal­ance. Be­cause if the tense neck has not, for ex­ample, come from a harm­ful work­ing po­si­tion, then it is mostly the ten­sion in our world of feel­ing (the hectic con­cerns, the pres­sure of prob­lems, the fear) which sit in our neck, and which, as time goes by, lead to chronic ten­sion of the neck mus­cles and in con­se­quence to a ten­sion head­ache.

To both, to the sys­tem of bal­ance as well as to the world of emo­tions the ear, and thus mu­sic, has the best con­nec­tions.

Seen purely physio­logi­cally one can un­der­stand the ac­tivi­ties of our feel­ings as a com­plex ex­change of bio­elec­tro­chemi­cal sig­nals in the brain, which be­come ac­tive within cer­tain ner­val net­works. In such a ma­te­ri­alis­tic view our feel­ings of be­ing at home with har­mony, in­ner se­cu­rity and re­laxa­tion cor­re­spond to such spe­cial ac­tiv­ity pat­terns of neu­ro­trans­mit­ters, hor­mones and elec­tri­cal im­pulses in the com­plex net­work of our brain nerves.

Many in­di­ca­tions sug­gest (22), that mu­sic of natu­ral har­monic or­der par­ticu­larly stimu­lates the cere­bral net­works of these feel­ings and through a regu­lar train­ing and the ex­peri­ence of deep natu­ral har­mony, the or­der to “ar­mour plate“ the neck with tense mus­cles is drawn back – this may ex­plain why in ten­sion head­aches MRT-Mu­sic^® shows up to 80% treat­ment suc­cess (23).

And as the stud­ies show, an­other mus­cle com­po­nent is added here too. Dr. Shemagonov docu­mented in ul­tra­sound meas­ure­ments (24), how un­der MRT-Mu­sic^® the slow spon­ta­ne­ous os­cil­la­tions (SSO) of the brain ar­ter­ies nor­mal­ize, whose rhythms change un­der ten­sion head­ache.
These os­cil­la­tions in the speed of blood flow are gen­er­ated by con­trac­tion and ex­pan­sion of the ar­te­rial ves­sels and are regu­lated by the auto­no­mous nerv­ous sys­tem. Ob­vi­ously MRT-Mu­sic^® has ac­cess to this regu­la­tion, since the con­trac­tion rhythms har­mo­nise un­der lis­ten­ing to this mu­sic and ten­sion head­ache van­ishes.

Has the audi­tory-ves­ti­bu­lar sys­tem also ac­cess to the con­trac­tions of the vas­cu­lar sys­tem? And why at­tune the rhythms of breath and heart to the rhythm of mu­sic? A de­tailed an­swer to such ques­tions could open up new im­por­tant ho­ri­zons to the treat­ment of hy­per­ten­sion, rhyth­mi­cal dis­or­ders of the heart and asthma.

Fi­nally let us point out one of the most sig­nifi­cant re­sults with the Medi­cal Reso­nance Ther­apy Mu­sic^®, which docu­ments the enor­mous power of acous­tic struc­tures on the ac­tiv­ity of the brain. It is well known, that cer­tain vis­ual and acous­tic im­pulse se­quences can ini­ti­ate an epi­lep­tic sei­zure. MRT-Mu­sic^® cre­ates the op­po­site ef­fect: as Dr. Sidorenko could show, the rate of epi­lep­tic sei­zures re­duced by 75% (!) in se­verely ill epi­lep­tic pa­tients when treated with MRT-Mu­sic^® (25).
Ac­cord­ing to Dr. Sidorenko proba­bly the highly com­plex and natu­rally flow­ing or­gani­sa­tion of time within MRT-Mu­sic^® plays a par­ticu­larly im­por­tant role, which coun­ter­acts the fixed ner­val rhyth­mic of be­gin­ning epi­lep­tic sei­zures.