Head Trauma and Music (con't)

Since I began teaching I have had quite a few students with different types of head/brain trauma. I will tell you a bit about a couple of them in this post.

One student had only a small portion of their frontal lobe. The last week they were in the womb they  had a stroke that  totally deteriorated a large portion of their frontal lobe, therefore leaving them with limited short-term memory. Having this information I knew that it would take a lot of repetitive teaching of each lesson if I taught a regular piano method, so I chose to create a method that would jump-start the long term memory. In doing this the student began learning to play songs quickly by playing what they heard. Then as they progressed, reading music was easier because they had had the written music of what they were playing in front of them as they played.

Another student was hit by a car and acquired a head injury/brain trauma. They had piano lessons a couple of years before and played saxophone in band at the time. Six months after the accident they came to me for piano lessons. They could no longer play in band because the noise of multiple instruments was too much ( which I totally understood). I have seen this student make strides in so many ways. They remembered all of the basics of piano playing, but they too had a little disconnection with the hand/eye coordination. I began doing eye exercises with them, along with a piano method created for them, and have seen such an improvement. I also spoke with their eye therapist and was told that this students reading has improved very rapidly because  they are taking piano lessons.

The reason music plays such a huge role in head/brain trauma healing is that it makes both sides of the brain work at the same time and they are finding new pathways to "replace" pathways that have been damaged. It helps with reconnecting with things that one could do before the trauma, but not afterwards.

I've taught many students with things like head/brain trauma to strokes, etc. From personal experience and working with others, I can say, without a doubt, that music is a healing tool.