Can Music Bring Back Vision Attention?
“My heart, which is so full to overflowing, has often been solaced and refreshed by music when sick and weary.” – Martin Luther
Unilateral neglect occurs in roughly 60% of people who have suffered from a stroke. A person with this condition is not aware of or rather, fail to respond to visual stimuli (like items) to one particular side of space. This condition is fairly common to those who had right hemisphere strokes. It goes without saying that this condition can be debilitating and dangerous to the individual suffering from it. But one research article published in 2013 may be a beacon of hope for suffers from unilateral neglect.
Listening to Classical Music Ameliorates Unilateral Neglect After Stroke by Pei-Luen Tsai; Mei-Ching Chen; Yu-Ting Huang; Keh-Chung Lin; Kuan-Lin Chen; Yung-Wen Hsu; and other affiliated authors examine how music can impact people with unilateral neglect, and their results were quite astonishing. In the study, they took people with unilateral neglect and had them complete a behavioral inattention test while exposed to either classical music, white noise, or nothing at all. The participants who were exposed to classical music scored the highest on the behavioral inattention test.
Subsequent research is still needed to see if listening to classical music does help to improve visual attention so suffers from unilateral neglect. Still, this is definitely a subject worth additional exploration and further examination. The exact causes of why classical music in particular helps is certainly an area of interest. Music has been shown to have a drastic impact on both the brain and the body. Perhaps we are only scratching the tip of the iceberg of the truth of the benefits of music. One day in the future music will do and be so much more to people than merely providing entertainment.