Exploring the Healing Role of Music for Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Karl Li has been volunteering at Torrance Memorial Medical Center, located in the South Bay of Los Angeles, California, for more than 1 year. Karl Li is now a 12th grader at a public high school in Los Angeles. Founded in 1925, Torrance Memorial Medical Center is a large, not-for-profit, private general hospital and one of the best hospitals in the Los Angeles, California area. Every Saturday, the hospital's outpatient lobby is filled with piano music played by Karl. As the beautiful, melodious piano music plays in the lobby, people are constantly stopping by to listen.

One day a young couple came to KarI's piano with an 8 year old child. The child wailed and wailed and kept saying words that Karl couldn't understand. The couple told Karl thattheirautistic childwanted to hear a classical piano piece and wondered if Karl could playsomethingfor him. WhenKarl started playingDebussy's“Moonlight”, the child suddenly quieted down and listened very attentively, seemingly thinking about something in his head.

Karl later learned that this experience led the couple to realize that their autistic child had a special interest in music,andthey hired a piano tutor for their child. Since the child started learning to play the piano, his autism symptoms improved significantly.

There is growing scientific evidence that music can heal, even act as amedicine.Many of us have been in a situation where a familiar tune comes on the radioorour favorite musician appears on stage at a concert.We feel anurge of joy and happiness, which are hard to describe in words.

A newly released report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) shows that 1 in 36 (2.76%) of every 8-year-old child in the U.S. has been identified as having an autism spectrum disorder (ASD), based on analysis of 2020 statistics. This rate is higher than statistics from 2018, when the prevalence among 8-year-olds in the U.S. was 1 in 44 (2.3%).

In May 2024, Karl played piano as a volunteer at a benefit concert for young people with autism in Los Angeles. At this concert, Karlwas impressed by the number ofchildren with autismthat weremusically gifted. Ms. Hexia Chen,president of the Autism Arts Education Foundation of Los Angeles, who organized the concert, said that every autistic child is a unique soul. Music is not only a tool for them to express their emotions, but also a bridge between them and the world. She said,“onmy journey of music education, I have deeply felt how music transcends the barriers of language and body and touches the deepest part of the soul. Those once-silent eyes now shine with hope in the company of music.”Hexia Chen has been engaged in youth autism music education for nearly two decades, and with the power of music, she has enabled countless autistic children to come out of their shadow of loneliness and embrace the light of the world.

Prof.DongKong of Harvard University said that the prevalence of autism spectrum disorder ASD among children in the United States is on the rise year by year. According to the latest data, 1 in every 36 8-year-olds is diagnosed with this disease. The number is alarming.

The prevalence of autism in China should not be ignored either. The 2017 edition of the Report on the Development Status of China's Autism Education and Rehabilitation Industry shows that the prevalence rate of autism in China is about 1%, with the incidence rate among boys significantly higher than that among girls, at about 6:1. Ms. Bing Shi, founder of the China Volunteer Service Foundation's Ignition Action Project Team, said that although there are no authoritative official statistics on autistic patients in China, based on China's huge population base, the number of autistic people in China is conservatively estimated to be more than 14 million, and that number is growing every year.

There are currently no effective medications or treatments for autism in the world. In 2018, a music therapy study was conducted in Spain, which took place in the hospice ward of Hospital Del Mar in Barcelona. The study found that patients who participated in a music therapy trial program not only experienced significant reductions in fatigue, anxiety, and dyspnea, but also an increase in feelings of wellness. A study by another group of researchers found that listening to music before surgery was as effective as taking diazepam in reducing preoperative anxiety. A retrospective study of 400 papers exploring the neurochemistry of music by psychologist and neuroscientist Daniel Leviton of McGill University, Canada, found that playing and listening to music had significant physical and mental health benefits, including boosting immune system and reducing stress.

There is now growing scientific evidence that music can be a medicine. The National Institutes of Healtn (NIH) invested $20 million in funding in 2019 to support a research program in music therapy and neuroscience. This program enables customization to meet the needs of a patient on a particular day: if the patient likes classical music, the music therapy will be designed to play classical pieces or jazz; if the goal is to control pain, the speed and volume of the music will be controlled to match the patient's breathing, and the tempo will be gradually slowed down. Some sessions are also designed to help patients manage their emotions to work in sync with the appropriate medication.“We know from a lot of excellent research of the brain that music can evoke memories and touch certain areas of the brain in a way that no other medium can,”says Black, who led the study.

Carol Cameron, another researcher, logs into Zoom from her home once a week to practice drumming with about a dozen other people, led by music therapist Jason Armstrong Baker, sometimes by clapping her hands in time to the beat of the drums, and sometimes by clapping on her own body. Carol Cameron said the study showed significant results for people with Parkinson's disease.

The Johns Hopkins Center for Music and Medicine in Baltimore has a music healing study led by Dr. Alexander Pantelyat, a former violinist and member of the Pennsylvania Symphony Orchestra in Philadelphia, now a neurologist specializing in Parkinson's disease and movement disorders. He brings music into the realm ofPrecisionMedicine. He says it's possible to tailor interventions to a person's genuine love of music. They followed a choircomprised ofpatientsatParkinson toevaluatehow singing affected their speech. After 12 weeks, the choristers' speaking voices were significantly stronger, and many of the patients' mobility improved after weeks of drumming practice.

Breast cancer patients in China formed a Clanging Roses Art Troupe,whichfocuses on singing and dancing. The group employs professional singing and dancing instructors (some of whom are also breast cancer patients) and social volunteers to organize regular activities. The troupe has performed on TV and toured all over the world. Currently, the troupe has 3,000 registered members. Ms. QingjieDu, the founder of this charity organization, said that every cancer patient undergoes a major physical and mental transformation during diagnosis, radiotherapy and chemotherapy, and this experience is difficult for healthy people to understand. Patients often feel lonely and helpless, and long for empathy. Musicevokes empathy in healthy people, enabling them to connect with the patients, and the power it has to sooth the deepest parts of the heart isirreplaceable.The founder said, “many members of the group have rediscovered themselves within the group and that this transformation is due to singing, which is a wonderful process. They can no longer leave the group and they don't want to stop singing.”

A number of hospitals now have music therapists, and Lucy Houston is a music therapist at Ormond Street Hospital in London, England. Ormond Street Hospital is a historic children's hospital in England that sees over 69,000 patients a year. Houston introduced a music therapy program that is designed to give the young patients back some sense of control. For example, she devised drumming, which some of her patients enjoyedfrom the very first time because these children were motivated by a desire to play andplaying the drums was something they were willing to do. There were also frequent cases where they started making sounds because Lucy sang to them and the children sang along because they wanted to hear more songs. Sometimes the parents were invited to join in. “When you start playing music, it's fun to watch the children having fun, and that's often because of the music,” said Lucy. Music not only helps young patients, but also patients of all ages to deal with their diseases with more ease. Sarah Klink, a music therapist at a hospice in Ontario, recalls a brain tumor patient in his thirties. The patient told her that music was like a friend who understood him and communicated with him spiritually to help take his mind off the pain.

A study done by Prof. Dong Kong of Harvard University founda strongcorrelationbetween autism and gut microbiome. Through a series of collaborative studies with Harvard Medical School and Boston Children's Hospital, he has developed lead small molecule compounds for autism using his own proprietary diagnostic tools for the microbial core symptoms and common comorbidityof autism spectrum disorders, and this small molecule compound has been shown to significantly enhance and improve social deficits in three different animal modelswithautism. Social deficits are one of the two core symptoms of autism.

Karl is also conducting a research experiment on the effects of music onthe improvement ofgutmicrobiomeand its relationship to autism. He will be entering college soon, and heplans toto take this research with himontohis collegejourney. He says that if he can continue this research and come up with a medication or treatment, it will make history in the history of autism treatment. Helping more children with autism, Karl says, is hisgreatestgoal in life.