Mozart and other classical music is no longer reserved for fancy concert halls. Now, with the help of one University
professor, it can be heard echoing through more specialized chambers — hospital incubators.
Music professor and Chair of Music Educ-ation Jane Cass-idy is conducting research at Baton Rouge’s Woman’s Hospital to see if playing music to newborn premature infants can stimulate the babies’ brains, so they can go home earlier.
Cassidy, in compliance with other researchers around the country, has found that when music is played to an infant, their heart and respiratory rates improve and their head circumference increases.
“We’ve found that girl babies in music therapy go home 11 days earlier than girl babies with no therapy,” Cassidy said.
She said that boys did not show the same results, which means that girls and boys could be wired differently.
Cassidy, who works only with Dr. Steve Spedale at Woman’s Hospital, uses Mozart string music and the “Rock-a-Bye” collection, a female singer with an orchestral background, played through her personal Walkman CD player and a set of small speakers.
Cassidy uses the music to try to stimulate synapses, nerve cell connections in the brain, and try to encourage feeding reflexes.
Premature infants do not usually have these reflexes because the proper muscles have yet to be properly formed. Cassidy tries to build up these muscles by connecting a touch sensitive pacifier to a CD player.
This will teach the infants to use their mouths to hear the music, building up oral muscles in exchange.
“I only have one baby right now, but I’ve had 60, and hope to end with 120,” Cassidy said.
She said she works with healthy babies between 1 and 4 pounds that were in the womb for strictly 27 to 32 weeks instead, of the usual 40.
Most of her babies are tested in isolettes, or incubators, which provide for an excellent isolated sound environment, Cassidy said.
She said she has been working on this project alone for three years and expects to finish in about three years.
“The study only lasts 17 days,” Cassidy said. “It’s just uncommon to have a baby with all the right conditions.”
She said she usually works with just one baby at a time.
Once Cassidy gets consent from the parents, she starts by measuring the head. Then she will let the baby rest for a week.
After that week, she measures the head again and starts to play the music. The music is introduced very slowly and played at three different decibel levels for three separate groups of babies.
The music is played for 20 minutes a day for four days. The order of which music is played first depends on the study group.
After the four days, Cassidy measures the heads again, testing throughout the babies’ heart rate, respiratory rate and saturation level.
The babies are then able to rest for another week until Cassidy measures their heads one last time.
“So far, nothing seems to be creating stress,” Cassidy said.
Though she currently is not involved in any long-term testing, Cassidy said long-term testing absolutely needs to be done, even though it would be very difficult.
Though Cassidy said she had no medical or scientific background, she does have strong music therapy experience.
Cassidy started her work at Florida State University with Jane Standely, a leading researcher in infant music therapy, and has continued her work at the Woman’s Hospital for 10 years.