“Music can lift us out of depression or move us to tears – it is a remedy, a tonic, orange juice for the ear. But for many of my neurological patients, music is even more – it can provide access, even when no medication can, to movement, to speech, to life. For them, music is not a luxury, but a necessity.” ― Oliver Sacks
From music to music therapy.
For millennia music has been a mainstay of cultures around the world. Accompanying rituals, events, and special occasions and having certain songs associated with certain times of the year, music can affect listeners’ moods, lift people or make them somber.
Researchers have found that music can boost an athlete’s performance by delaying fatigue and lessening the perception of fatigue. It can also change how people drive. A certain number of beats per minute can make people drive faster. Often, police officers reach the scene of traffic accidents only to find out that the driver has been listening to aggressive music.
Hence, it is no surprise that music is being investigated as a therapeutic intervention. Music therapy is the use of music in clinical settings to help improve a patient’s recovery or response to medication and improve general mood and/or fitness.
What is music therapy, and how can it support patients?
Music therapy can be a form of group therapy to encourage social bonding in various settings, including hospitals, outpatient clinics, and residences such as old folks’ homes or those for people with developmental issues.
What’s more, music therapy is applied across various settings to help with a range of treatments; it has been shown to help with pain management, motor skills development, and stress reduction and to benefit premature infants, the critically ill, and Alzheimer’s patients.
It is thought that listening to music relieves stress, which can abate the stress response, decreasing anxiety and bringing about a more relaxed patient without needing additional medication.
In Alzheimer’s disease, it has been seen that the areas of the brain associated with processing music are the last to show the effects of the condition. Other memories, such as verbal and visual memories, are lost before musical memories are lost. Indeed, implicit musical memory can persist until the very late stages of the disease.
Lucid, a Canadian company, aims to provide an alternative music therapy for people with Alzheimer’s disease by combining neuroscience, artificial intelligence, and music.
Lucid unlocks the full potential of music and turns it into medicine.
Lucid completed its first randomized clinical trial earlier this year and concluded that sound-based treatments effectively reduce somatic and cognitive anxiety.
Lucid has secured over three million Canadian dollars to continue its digital prescription therapy research and development.
Indeed, Lucid isn’t just researching therapy for Alzheimer’s. It is also researching digital therapies for conditions such as Parkinson’s, Tinnitus, pediatric stress, depression, and others in its pipeline.
Why investing in music therapy is a good idea—the Biogen MedRhyms collaboration gets attention.
Αccording to Global Newswire, the music therapy market “is expected to generate revenue of $4.42 billion by 2028”.
One recent example of a pharma seeing this potential and investing in music therapy with an amount we usually see at investments in promising drug-based treatments is Biogen.
Biogen acquired MedRhythms to commercialize an MS music therapy DTx. This acquisition involves a $3m upfront payment to MedRhythms. Should development and commercial milestones be reached, MedRhythms will be eligible to receive potentially $117.5 million in milestone payments. The digital treatment is known as MR-004, and if approved, it could “become the first prescription digital therapeutic for gait deficit in MS“.
Considering the above, the eternal popularity of music and the increasing amount of research on digital health could be fertile ground for those willing to invest in this area.
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Sources:
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0259312
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220602005912/en/LUCID-Partners-With-Japanese-Pharmaceutical-Company-to-Develop-Personalized-Music-Treatment-for-Alzheimer%E2%80%99s-Disease
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20220627/LUCID-music-medicine-and-machine-learning.aspx
https://www.pharmavoice.com/news/2021-11-augmenting-ai-for-music-therapy-could-be-part-of-your-next-marketing-gig/616380/
https://academic.oup.com/brain/article/138/8/2438/330016https://www.thelucidproject.ca/