Robert Gupta is the speaker of “Between Music and Medicine”, which he informs us about the use of music in therapy and how it could be the best medicine. Congresswoman, Gabrielle Giffords, is currently recovering from a bullet that had struck her left hemisphere, the speech center of her brain. During therapy, she was struggling to form basic words, but was capable to sing a few lines of a song. Proving if words fails, music really can speak. There is a man, by the name of Dr. Gottfried Schlaug, who is studying music and the brain in Harvard, and focuses on merging music with therapy. He’s been working with stroke victims who can’t form three to four word sentences, but have the capability to sing the lyrics to “Happy Birthday.” “And after 70 hours of intensive singing lessons, he found that the music was able to literally rewire the brains of his patients and create a homologous speech center on their right hemisphere to compensate for the left hemisphere’s damage.”
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Ayers went from being a double bassist in Juilliard, to living on the street of Skid Row in LA only thirty years later. Even though he was still faced with mental episodes, Nathaniel used music to pick himself up, and finally get off the streets. To help spread the positive message, Gupta and Ayers formed an organization called Street Symphony, where they perform in front of mentally ill individuals. After one of their shows, a lady came up and told them that she had stopped shaking without her medication, which really inspired them to keep going. “And for those living in the most dehumanizing conditions of mental illness within homelessness and incarceration, the music and the beauty of music offers a chance for them to transcend the world around them, to remember that they still have the capacity to experience something beautiful and that humanity has not forgotten
Ayers went from being a double bassist in Juilliard, to living on the street of Skid Row in LA only thirty years later. Even though he was still faced with mental episodes, Nathaniel used music to pick himself up, and finally get off the streets. To help spread the positive message, Gupta and Ayers formed an organization called Street Symphony, where they perform in front of mentally ill individuals. After one of their shows, a lady came up and told them that she had stopped shaking without her medication, which really inspired them to keep going. “And for those living in the most dehumanizing conditions of mental illness within homelessness and incarceration, the music and the beauty of music offers a chance for them to transcend the world around them, to remember that they still have the capacity to experience something beautiful and that humanity has not forgotten