Music could be new frontier in epilepsy treatment

But the brain waves of people with epilepsy lined up more strongly with the music than those of people without epilepsy.

Since seizures are triggered by stress, she says – lack of sleep, too much alcohol, the harried moments of everyday life – music is a promising new tool that might help people with epilepsy to gain control, relax, possibly become more mindful.

In a new research, scientists have found that brains of epileptic patients react to music in a “different” way from the ones who don’t have the disorder. This is when the seizures appears in the temporal lobe of the brain, which is also the same region of the brain where music is processed by the auditory cortex. But Charyton said that music can bring novel ways to help tone down seizures for patients.

The researchers recorded brain wave patterns while patients listened to 10 minutes of silence, followed by either Mozart’s “Sonata for Two Pianos in D major”, andante movement (K. 448), or John Coltrane’s rendition of “My Favorite Things“, a second 10-minute period of silence, the other of the two musical pieces and finally a third 10-minute period of silence.

For the study, the research team compared the musical processing abilities of the brains of people with and without epilepsy using an electroencephalogram by attaching electrodes to the scalp to detect and record brainwave patterns. In epilepsy, seizures tend to recur, and have no immediate underlying cause while seizures that occur due to a specific cause are not deemed to represent epilepsy.

From 2012 to 2014, Charyton collected data of twenty one people: six epilepsy in-patients at the Wexner Medical Centre, five people with nonepileptic seizures and nine normal controls. Whereas, in the participants with epilepsy, the electrical impulses of the brain actually synchronized to the music while the song was playing.

Approximately 2.9 million children and adults in the US have epilepsy – a neurological condition characterized by the occurrence of seizures. “We hypothesized that music would be processed in the brain differently than silence”, she said in a press release.

Charyton indicated she was stunned by the findings.

It was hence concluded through this experiment that a slow rhythm within music could be used for proving a calming sensation to a person with epilepsy.

A new research paper presented at the American Psychological Association’s 123rd Annual Convention in Toronto this Sunday (August 9) suggests that music therapy could have numerous benefits for epilepsy sufferers. “Like two balls bouncing at the same rate”.