What "music and well-being" have to do with each other - from goosebumps to cognitive benefits for stroke patients - is the subject of a specialist conference at the university on the second weekend in September. Host Gunter Kreutz in an interview.
QUESTION: Singing makes you happy - you have been advocating this theory for some time. The announcement of the upcoming annual conference of the German Society for Music Psychology talks about other connections between music and well-being. Can you give some examples of this?
KREUTZ: Basically, the conference is intended to fulfil the great purpose of establishing the topic of music and health more broadly - as a scientific topic for experts, but also addressed to the public. After all, millions of people already make music, sing and dance and feel that they are doing something for their well-being. So someone might go dancing because it can be a good prevention against dementia.
QUESTION: So making music to stay fit and as healthy as possible in every respect?
KREUTZ: We don't all have the vision of spending the twilight years of our lives languishing away, but rather want to be able to draw on our own resources and, at best, retire from life at some point - perhaps at 90 on the dance floor or at choir practice? Almost every family has cases of serious illnesses that do not necessarily shorten life expectancy - and making music can significantly improve quality of life and activate people. Nowadays, for example, lung patients are sent to choir and cultural techniques are used to address precisely where health deficits exist.
QUESTION: If music influences physical, mental and social processes, where do you see the limits of what it can achieve? Or are there no limits?
KREUTZ: The limits are just as obscure as the origins of music. And there are limits to scientific proof; studies may not be able to demonstrate absolute causality - we have that in common with other cultural techniques. But if, for example, people find music beneficial and therapists realise that people feel better, we have to decide whether we as a society want to make greater use of it.
QUESTION: What topics are you addressing in this social debate with this year's conference?
KREUTZ: Although this is a snapshot, the conference can pick up on trends from recent years - fields in which a lot is happening. On the one hand, this seems to me to be singing, which is why we have invited the expert Stephen Clift from England, who has launched a dozen major projects on the subject of singing and health in recent years. On the other hand, we invited Teppo Särkämo from Finland, who was able to prove that the music favoured by stroke patients can actually cause cognitive performance to regenerate faster than with audio books, for example.
QUESTION: So music could, for example, help people to regain their speech more quickly after a stroke?
KREUTZ: Exactly, because music and speech processing overlap, as we have also demonstrated in a study of primary school children. And the call for such non-medicinal therapies that are efficient, cost-effective, can help many people and at the same time can be individualised will become ever louder. Similar to the personalised medicines of the future that are tailored to genetic markers, a person's cultural biography, what they have experienced musically, could also become increasingly important for treatment. I see this as an enormous opportunity, and I hope that there will be an exchange of ideas in this regard, even across disciplinary boundaries.
QUESTION: Now you are publishing the anthology "Music and Medicine" together with the Austrian neuroscientist Günther Bernatzky just in time for the conference...
KREUTZ: With this book, we want to initiate a necessary discussion. Music could and should play a much greater role in many areas of medicine, but also in neighbouring fields. In rehabilitation, for example: more and more people are surviving serious illnesses and travelling a long way back into their everyday lives, so we need bridgeheads. And how can we create more stable transitions? Music groups, for example, can be a great help here.
QUESTION: Are there other fields?
KREUTZ: Also in inclusion, for example to activate the speech apparatus more strongly in hearing-impaired children and give them a positive relationship with their voice. There are thousands of medical professionals who make music for their own balance. But they should also remember that music programmes in hospitals, for example, are worth supporting. For example: Tango dancing for Parkinson's patients helps to reduce the number of falls. This could save costs for the care of patients who have fallen.
QUESTION: So you are basically aiming for a rethink of the entire healthcare system?
KREUTZ: Music could be an enormous lever for saving healthcare expenditure. There are already projects of this kind, but they often go unnoticed. This should be utilised for the benefit of society. Politicians are also called upon to incorporate cultural techniques such as music into medical training - at least as a compulsory elective. Every paediatrician should sing! This creates trust and could often make administering injections much easier, for example. In this way, the book is a sign that the role of music, which can have a great effect in many very small everyday situations, is not being recognised.