music

            Considering myself to be a fairly cognizant, observant person, I always notice when my heart goes aflutter, or sinks, or starts beating faster. There are several events that make my heart react this way: when I hope for eye contact with someone and then they meet my stare, when someone I like looks me in the eye, when I think of something scary that could happen or something very important that is impending or a deadline that is approaching, when I witness something so nice or so cute that my heart melts in approval. I understand that these reactions are due to the hormonal responses my body has to what my senses perceive in the environment around me.

A few weeks ago I was doing a project on maternal separation anxiety for another course when I came upon a very interesting article that outlined a study conducted with premature infants in neonatal intensive care units (NICU) and their mothers. All mothers participated in kangaroo care, an intervention program for hospital bound infants where mothers and infants have skin-to-skin contact, whereas only half listened to soothing music concurrently. Those mother-infant dyads listening to music reaped great benefits: the mothers’ separation anxiety when leaving her child, as well as general trait anxiety, decreased while the infants had more quiet sleep and cried less (1). Music seemed to help sooth both the mother and child during a very anxious time.