Parkinson's patients: Yes we can Dance
Whilst researching possible articles and theorists relating to dance and Parkinson's disease, I came across Bob Dawson's blog. He is a Parkinson's patient who blogs, in detail, about how dance helps him and other patients, along with researching different theories and journals, giving his own opinions. I found this even more beneficial than if I would have just found the articles alone as I can see and understand first hand how actual patients feel about it and relate the the theories. He says 'if you have Parkinson's, it is my personal, non- scientific opinion that you should find music that you get off on, play it LOUD, and start to move to music. EVERYDAY'. What I found most striking though, was his statement: 'Dance to bother the scientists/ Dance to raise a question'. This was what drew me in to read more and explore his blog further.
Dawson has had the courage to questions scientist Dr Daniel J.Levitin who stated 'Many mental illnesses are now known to undermine the ability to dance or perform rhythmically- Schizophrenia and Parkinson's to name just two.' (page 253 of “This is Your Brain on Music” by Dr. Daniel J. Levitin, neurologist at McGill University, published by Penguin, September 2007). When this award winning scientist was challenged by Dawson, he simply said he should not 'pit against the judgement of experts'. Yet Dawson goes on to present two case studies, (one himself, one another woman), to support that in fact dance is extremely beneficial to help mobilise those with Parkinson's.
He provides this video, showing no mobility and a real struggle to walk yet look what happens once the music begins.
It raised so many questions for me:
- what is it in the brain that stops us from walking, yet allows us to move to music?
- is it purely neurological or are there some emotional connections, which pushes o restrict us?
- how can I apply my skills as a dancer to help those with Parkinson's?
- what funding is put into further research of dance with Parkinson's
The second study on Dr Hu's research into the disease, helped begin to answer these some of these questions:
A single study at the University of Calgary
Striking a chord
By Anthony A. Davis
It’s a short length of masking tape stuck on a floor, but for some reason Sheila McHutchison can’t step over it. She freezes in her tracks, as if the tape were as impassable as a penitentiary wall.
Parkinson’s disease can do strange things to people. The most common symptoms of this incurable brain disease are tremors, usually beginning in one arm or hand, muscular rigidity and slowness of movement. But in some cases – Sheila is one – the disease also causes patients to freeze up at certain sights, making a simple task like walking impossible. For some, the visual stimulus might be the line between a carpet and hardwood flooring or a crack in a sidewalk. In Sheila’s case, it’s the tape.
But then someone puts on Sheila’s favourite song, ABBA’s “Dancing Queen,” and she has a pas-de-deux with her husband, John. A moment later, facing that little stretch of tape, she easily walks across it. Music seems to melt Parkinson’s freezing effect.
Sadly, three or four minutes after the music subsides, Sheila’s hands again begin to tremble and her upper body wobbles. She is led again to the masking tape and, once again, freezes like a statue when she tries to step over it.
That tape was stuck there by Dr. Bin Hu, head of a national Parkinson’s research project centred in Calgary. Dr. Hu and his collaborators are trying to find out why music, at least temporarily, melts the paralyzing effects of Parkinson’s in some patients….
…Sheila emphasizes that Parkinson’s has not taken over her life. “I have Parkinson’s, but Parkinson’s doesn’t have me,” she says. And when the music plays, she feels like her old self. . .
… Dr. Hu explains that scientists have made great strides in studying how the brain reacts to music. For example, Dr. Robert Zatoore’s group at McGill University has found pleasant music activates almost the same brain regions as those that mediate feelings of reward and pleasure. “What is amazing is that these reward pathways also exist in rats,” Dr. Hu says. Recently, Dr. Hu’s laboratory and researchers in Japan have discovered so-called “cue” neurons, the brain cells that apparently only respond to rewarding auditory tunes but not neutral sounds. When researchers gave rats a sweet drink or other pleasurable reward after playing a certain kind of beep – the rodent’s version of a favourite tune – they discovered that cue cells “fired like crazy” whenever the beep was sounded again. In the meantime, the rats moved 30 to 50 per cent faster than without the “music.”
Dr. Hu believes that cue cells are spared from Parkinson’s disease. When these cells respond to music (and it can’t be any music, explains Dr. Hu, “it must be connected to a person’s feelings, connected to recollections of something enjoyable”), they release chemicals that help Parkinson’s patients temporarily get back their control of movements.
Last December, Dr. Hu and his colleagues began studying Parkinson’s patients who exhibited positive musical responses. His team hopes to eventually study about 30 people, and… Dr. Hu hopes to conduct some of their studies in the homes of patients. … Dr. Hu’s team will capture each step of a patient’s movement using a wireless motion detector and high-speed video recording, a computer system specially developed by Ed Block, chief engineer in the group.
“One of our goals is to make the music effect last longer,” explains Dr. Hu. Another is to figure out how we can help train more Parkinson’s patients to use music as an alternative way of treatment. Both of these goals will greatly benefit from our basic research on the brain pathways and chemicals related to the music effect. Extrapolating from those discoveries, the team will try to develop new and more effective treatments for the illness.
When Dr. Hu’s research project was officially announced in Calgary, country-music star Paul Brandt was on hand to explain how Parkinson’s not only robs individuals of control over their bodies, but also takes an immense toll on sufferers’ families. Brandt’s father-in-law, Bernie Peterson, is in the late stages of Parkinson’s.
Brandt, a former registered nurse at the Alberta Children’s Hospital before breaking out into country music, said he felt a “bit cheated” because of Parkinson’s. Shortly after he met his future wife, Elizabeth, her father, Bernie, had a heart attack in 1994. As his arm hung down from a hospital gurney, Bernie noticed an odd trembling in his fingers. “He didn’t know it then,” recounts Brandt, “but Parkinson’s disease had taken a hold of him and his plans and his wife and his family. And I guess, in a way, it kind of took over me, too. You see, I never really got to meet Bernie, the father-in-law that could have taught me how to finally fix my truck on my own, or remodel an old classic or build a deck on my house. He couldn’t do these things anymore by the time I met him.”
Bernie, a once vigorous man who had flown the first fighter-jets used in the United States Air Force…, today can’t sit alone in a chair. Tremors rock him so badly that, unless his wife, Freda, is there to repeatedly prop him up, he eventually slides helplessly out of most chairs. “You learn to suffer in a kind and forgiving nature,” says Bernie of how he copes with Parkinson’s. “There’s no other way to do it.”
Bernie’s singing son-in-law shook his head when he first heard about Dr. Hu’s project. “I’ve always been skeptical of music therapy honestly,” admits Brandt. “But when I saw this video (of Sheila) suddenly being able to move because of music, and heard the doctors talking about it, honestly my first response was that maybe they would try and use my music and it would actually make patients worse.”
But he realizes now the research is no joke. “It’s almost dreamlike that music could be used to be a treatment for a disease like Parkinson’s.” Sure, it’s always been good for healing an aching heart, says Brandt, “but who knew it could be used for an aching mind.”
Anthony A. Davis is a Calgary writer. First published in Apple Magazine
I felt this needed to be included in this review, so you could see just how science and emotional connections are combined to create more effective studies. Working in the social and care sector, even through exercise and entertainment, we must never get bogged down by the science, but concentrate on the people.How their lives are effected. I will continue to follow Dawson's blog and his other posts about dance and Parkinson's. Using this alongside scientific and formal documents and articles, I feel I can really create the right balance in my research to enable me to fully understand the importance of arts within care homes and the social sector.
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