Music Leads to Creativity and Innovation

TEDS presentations bring the globes leading thinkers to a platform available to everyone (ted.com). In his TEDS presentation Robert Gupta shares his experience as a symphony violinist as an example of music leading to creativity and innovation. He explains the scientific healing influence with some of the most significant cases where medicine alone comes short. Here are some excerpts from the presentation. The presentation may be heard in entirety here.

The Power of Music Therapy

When Robert Gupta was caught between a career as a doctor and as a violinist, he realized his place was in the middle, with a bow in his hand and a sense of social justice in his heart. He tells a moving story of society's marginalized and the power of music therapy, which can succeed where conventional medicine fails.

“Music is even more than oxygen to me -- it is a passion.”

Music Therapy works within the right hemisphere of the brain to rewire and compensate for damage in the left side of the brain. Just listening to music lights up the brain from prefrontal cortex to the cerebellum. Music is becoming the new psychiatric modality for those with Autism, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and sufferers of sever stress and anxiety.

The romantic composer Robert Schuman said, “to send light into the darkness of men’s hearts such is the duty of the artists.” This is particularly poignant because Schuman suffered from schizophrenia and died in an asylum.

Music Touches the Brain as Medicine

What we are finding with those a lowest point physically and emotionally is that music touches the brain just as medicine, it transcends and connects. Music is the bridge of communication where words fail. Music is about a communication that registers at a fundamental primary level. Music touches what is hard wired into the right hemisphere of the brain.

The famous author John Keats, who also gave up a career in medicine, said, “beauty is truth and truth beauty. That is all you know on earth and all you need to know.”

Half of Orange County's Children Lack a Music Opportunity

The SMART Foundation seeks to both inform our local society and provide opportunity for those that lacking the availability of music and art. We want to help those who will miss out on this critical piece of life education during the formative young years. This need touches many more than you might think. Half of Orange County's children (500,000) come from homes with such significant financial need that they receive the Federal relief for both breakfast and lunch at school. 

Read more about our cause and consider joining our fight with your financial support.

Written for The SMART Foundation by Mike Hatcher