ANDREA SCHULMAN: “Are You Energy Sensitive? 6 Telling Signs”

 

JOE BATTAGLIA: “If You Want To Accelerate Brain Development In Children — Teach Them Music”

Alternative and complementary treatments such as creative art, meditation, and yoga have been proposed to bridge many gaps that conventional medicine cannot. But music, because of its ubiquity in our society as well as its ease of transmission, has perhaps the greatest potential among alternative therapies to reach people in deep and profound ways. Music matters and it heals.

Music instruction appears to accelerate brain development in young children, particularly in the areas of the brain responsible for processing sound, language development, speech perception and reading skills, according to initial results of a five-year study by USC neuroscientists.

We now know through controlled treatment outcome studies that listening to and playing music is a potent treatment for mental health issues. 400 published scientific papers have proven the old adage that “music is medicine.”

Research demonstrates that adding music therapy to treatment improves symptoms and social functioning among schizophrenics. Further, music therapy has demonstrated efficacy as an independent treatment for reducing depression, anxiety and chronic pain.

The Brain and Creativity Institute (BCI) at USC began the five-year study in 2012 in partnership with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association and the Heart of Los Angeles (HOLA) to examine the impact of music instruction on children’s social, emotional and cognitive development.

These initial study results, published recently in the journal Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, provide evidence of the benefits of music education at a time when many schools around the nation have either eliminated or reduced music and arts programs. The study shows music instruction speeds up the maturation of the auditory pathway in the brain and increases its efficiency.

“We are broadly interested in the impact of music training on cognitive, socio-emotional and brain development of children,” said Assal Habibi, the study’s lead author and a senior research associate at the BCI in the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. “These results reflect that children with music training, compared with the two other comparison groups, were more accurate in processing sound.”

For this longitudinal study, the neuroscientists are monitoring brain development and behavior in a group of 37 children from underprivileged neighborhoods of Los Angeles.

Thirteen of the children, at 6 or 7 years old, began to receive music instruction through the Youth Orchestra Los Angeles program at HOLA. The community music training program was inspired by the El Sistema method, one that LA Philharmonic conductor Gustavo Dudamel had been in when he was growing up in Venezuela.

Learning the Violin
The children earn to play instruments, such as the violin, in ensembles and groups, and they practice up to seven hours a week.

The scientists are comparing the budding musicians with peers in two other groups: 11 children in a community soccer program, and 13 children who are not involved in any specific after-school programs.

The neuroscientists are using several tools to monitor changes in them as they grow: MRI to monitor changes through brain scans, EEG to track electrical activity in the brains, behavioral testing and other such techniques.

Within two years of the study, the neuroscientists found the auditory systems of children in the music program were maturing faster in them than in the other children. The fine-tuning of their auditory pathway could accelerate their development of language and reading, as well as other abilities – a potential effect which the scientists are continuing to study.

The enhanced maturity reflects an increase in neuroplasticity – a physiological change in the brain in response to its environment – in this case, exposure to music and music instruction.

“The auditory system is stimulated by music,” Habibi said. “This system is also engaged in general sound processing that is fundamental to language development, reading skills and successful communication.”

Ear to Brain
The auditory system connects our ear to our brain to process sound. When we hear something, our ears receive it in the form of vibrations that it converts into a neural signal. That signal is then sent to the brainstem, up to the thalamus at the center of the brain, and outward to its final destination, the primary auditory cortex, located near the sides of the brain.

The progress of a child’s developing auditory pathway can be measured by EEG, which tracks electrical signals, specifically those referred to as “auditory evoked potentials.”

In this study, the scientists focused on an evoked potential called P1. They tracked amplitude – the number of neurons firing – as well as latency – the speed that the signal is transmitted. Both measures infer the maturity of the brain’s auditory pathways.

As children develop, both amplitude and the latency of P1 tend to decrease. This means that that they are becoming more efficient at processing sound.

At the beginning of the study and again two years later, the children completed a task measuring their abilities to distinguish tone. As the EEG was recording their electrical signals, they listened to violin tones, piano tones and single-frequency (pure) tones played.

The children also competed a tonal and rhythm discrimination task in which they were asked to identify similar and different melodies. Twice, they heard 24 melodies in randomized order and were asked to identify which ones differed in tone and rhythm, and which were the same in tone and rhythm.

Children who were in the youth orchestra program were more accurate at detecting pitch changes in the melodies than the other two groups. All three groups were able to identify easily when the melodies were the same. However, children with music training had smaller P1 potential amplitude compared to the other children, indicating a faster rate of maturation.

“We observed a decrease in P1 amplitude and latency that was the largest in the music group compared to age-matched control groups after two years of training,” the scientists wrote. “In addition, focusing just on the (second) year data, the music group showed the smallest amplitude of P1 compared to both the control and sports group, in combination with the accelerated development of the N1 component.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

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AIMEE HALPIN: “10 Things You Notice Near an Empath”

I once called the insurance phone number to ask a question.  An hour later, the woman had shared her whole life story with me and I am not sure she ever answered my question, but I made her feel better.  What is an empath anyway and did I just make that up?  There are probably thousands of stories like this for me, but I want you to think about times you have interacted with someone and felt all the same feelings they have…or perhaps they have told you things you just didn’t really need to know. 

My entire life, I have felt different.  I think I have tried really hard to keep a lid on it all until the last 5 years.  Derived from the Greek “em” (in) and “pathos” (feeling), the term empathic means I am able to “feel into” others’ feelings.  At first, I thought I was just using my computer skills to really know what to post on my fan page for the blog.  I always seemed to post just the right quote for my real-life friends, and my page continued to grow that way.

After a while, people began to really identify with my story, and came to me for answers.  I continued to grow my client list in my all-natural supplement business Vitalize You because I could get to the root of what the client needed.  I learned that I felt what my client was saying to me and within a few short conversations, seriously knew what they needed to do whether it was on the phone or through messaging.  I could pick up on vibrations. 

So what does this all mean for you if you are friends with one?  I have a few tips on what you might notice.

10 Things You Notice Near an Empath:

1. Please take what we say seriously.  If you ask us for advice, even if it sounds crazy, there is some truth in it.  We just know things and it bothers the heck out of us when you ask us for advice and don’t listen.  Sometimes things makes sense to us long before they make sense to you…and that includes “coincidences” that aren’t really a coincidence at all.
2. Lies have no place in any conversation with us ever.  The surest way to ruin a friendship with an empath is to continue lying to them.  It’s just sad really because there is no point and it has been really painful for me personally.  I have had to look into the eyes of a close friend and see the hesitation for a split second and I literally felt the lie as it slipped over my skin.  I can’t explain it and I don’t want to.  It is one of my most uncomfortable traits to not be able to turn off.
3. Any national tragedy is unbearable…no matter how far away.  I wrote a post after Sandy Hook Elementary School was in the news and to this day I can’t read about it.  Period.  I become the pain in a way I can’t explain to other people.  Plus, I was also a teacher.  I can’t “unfeel” so the less I know, the better.
4. They always look tired.  I love everyone, I do.  But stop asking me why I have dark circles under my eyes.  They have been there my whole life.  Many empaths get diagnosed with chronic fatigue because they don’t know how to shield themselves properly from energy vampires.  This is a work in progress for many.
5. Healing often becomes their way of life.  My friend called me the bridge the other night.  I was like interesting.  I am the bridge.  I see what needs to be done and I just suggest it for others.  Whether it is tests, home remedies, alternative methods, exercise, nutrition, or holistic therapy suggestions, I just see it.  It is how I approached my own care and came up with my wellness program, and it is how I have helped hundreds of others.  It is my job to bridge the gap between modern medicine and what needs to be done in your body.
6. They might get distracted easily and daydream.  This is really true as I can feel some currents and go off on some other task.  This is one of the reasons I have to stay organized as best I can.
7. Living a lie would be damn near impossible.  If someone asks me to do something I don’t like…I find a way to procrastinate.  However, the procrastination might just be my intuition saying you really have to tell them no.  Likewise, when someone asks me to do anything at all like “covering up for them” or “lie for them” I have a hard time holding in my anger at this type of behavior.
8. No room for narcissism at all. I was asked to be in this group of people who were fawning all over someone.  I thought I was going to lose my shit on all of them because the guy shows how much money he has, what he drives, how many people “love” him, and it is the biggest act I have ever seen.  Things nobody has time for.  THAT.  My BS meter is way too high.
9. The love of animals is strong within us.  Most empaths love their animals as if they are furry children and would do anything for them.  Anything.  So just know that if you don’t like our animals…we know and you won’t last long around us.
10. Empaths need laughter daily.  We are connected to our bodies, sometimes.  Mostly, we are in our heads.  BUT you can help us by asking us to live in the moment with you.  To laugh.  To get out of the house if we are in hermit mood, because sometimes the world is too much for us to take.  We need to remember what it’s like to be connected.

I can’t say that this is your friend…or you, but if you identify with all of these things, then yes, you probably know what it’s like to be an empath.  I unfortunately mean what I say as I utter“I feel your pain.” I always appreciate my close friends understanding this of me and giving me the space to breathe and recharge.