Today, the role of sound in science extends beyond the range of audible frequencies: Ultrasonic and other silent acoustic waves have made their way into researchers’ repertoire, helping them push the boundaries of conventional medicine and research. It is known that humans distinguish typically 1400 discrete frequencies and out of these on an equally tempered musical scale there are only 120 discrete frequencies which range from 16 Hz to 16,000 Hz (1) which provide markers for specification of our study. The aim of music is to weave and combine elementary sounds together with combinations and sequences which give pleasure to ear in symphony with notions of harmony and melody. Prior to the study of acoustic loops within the mechanism of sound/music it is also important to know how do we understand the general mechanism of their transfer and cognitive identification of these characteristic frequencies to appreciate how sounds generally may be classed into being musical/unmusical. while we identify conventionally notes being denoted as music and noise as something unmusical, we can say that noise is seen as an irregular disturbance [2] while regular vibrations produce regular musical notes and its further to mention that from variety of notes one obtains approximate noise while no combinations of noise could blend into musical note. The proposed research provides a novel approach for diagnosis of psychiatric disorders using acoustic loop treatment therapy. The proposed work is conducted on 50 patients at NARC who have already be diagnosed for psychiatric ailment by SKIMS. Using various acoustic loop procedures/tests it was observed that only 25 patients/subjects were having psychiatric disorder. This authenticity of diagnosis was also followed by calculating FMTI (Frequency Modulation Treatment Initial Range) and FMTF (Frequency Modulation Treatment Final Range) followed by biochemical evaluation of the subject.
Influence of Music on Human Brain
Through music we can learn much about our human origins and the human brain. Music is a potential method of therapy and a means of accessing and stimulating specific cerebral circuits. There is also an association between musical creativity and psychopathology. Music has been a big part of our species’ development since, well, forever. There are certain parts of the brain that react specifically to music, not just sounds in general. There are regions in the auditory cortex, according to one MIT lab, that show intense activation when listening to music and have little to no activation when you hear, say, a phone ring or someone else’s voice. Our brains are built to listen to music. Music improves brain health and function in many ways. It makes you smarter, happier, and more productive at any age. Listening is
good, playing is better that nourishes your moods and vitalizes one’s brain functions. Music has played an important part in every human culture, both past and present. People around the world respond to music in a universal way. And now, advances in neuroscience enable researchers to measure just how music affects the brain. The interest in the effects of music on the brain has produced a new field of research called neuro-musicology which explores how the nervous system reacts to music.
Studies have shown that when listening to music, specifically your favourite song, your brain has an increased tolerance for pain and can recover from operations quicker. This implies that the brain stimulates the release of endogenous opioids in the brain. So, if you feel invincible during that part of the song where Gerard Way is yelling about being misunderstood, that’s because you kind of are. Different kinds of music affect our brains in different ways. Tempo, rhythm, instruments, they all change how our bodies and brains react to songs.
Role of Acoustics in the treatment of Neuro-Psychiatric disorders
Acoustics are a prototypical environmental stressor, has clear health effects in causing hearing loss but other health effects are less evident. Acoustic exposure may lead to minor emotional symptoms but the evidence of elevated levels of aircraft noise leading to psychiatric hospital admissions and psychiatric disorder in the community is contradictory. Despite this there are well documented associations between acoustic treatments and changes in performance, sleep disturbance and emotional reactions such as annoyance. Moreover, annoyance is associated with both environmental acoustic noise level and psychological and physical symptoms, psychiatric disorder and use of health services. It seems likely that existing psychiatric disorder contributes to high levels of annoyance. However, there is also the possibility that tendency to annoyance may be a risk factor for psychiatric morbidity. Although acoustic noise level explains a significant proportion of the variance in annoyance, the other major factor, confirmed in many studies, is subjective sensitivity to acoustic noise. Noise sensitivity is also related to psychiatric disorder. The evidence for noise sensitivity being a risk factor for psychiatric disorder would be greater if it were a stable personality characteristic, and preceded psychiatric morbidity. The stability of noise sensitivity and whether it is merely secondary to psychiatric disorder or is a risk factor for psychiatric disorder as well as annoyance is examined in two studies in this monograph: a six-year follow-up of a group of highly noise sensitive and low noise sensitive women; and a longitudinal study of depressed patients and matched control subjects examining changes in noise sensitivity with recovery from depression. A further dimension of noise effects concerns the impact of noise on the autonomic nervous system. Most physiological responses to noise habituate rapidly but in some people physiological responses persist. It is not clear whether this sub-sample is also subjectively sensitive to noise and whether failure to habituate to environmental noise may also represent a biological indicator of vulnerability to psychiatric disorder. In these studies, noise sensitivity was found to be moderately
stable and associated with current psychiatric disorder and a disposition to negative affectivity. Noise sensitivity levels did fall with recovery from depression but still remained high, suggesting an underlying high level of noise sensitivity. Noise sensitivity was related to higher tonic skin conductance and heart rate and greater defence/startle responses during noise exposure in the laboratory.
Research mechanism and Methodologies towards Neuro- Acoustic Research
It’s also generally known that Sound and music perceived at acoustic level can explain auditory notes with respect to ear and brain, The psychology which is affected by the sound frequencies implores us to ask what disturbances of air molecules are specifically heard as noise and others as music. Subsequent to that what happens to sound wave in the ear and brain when we perform or listen to those frequencies being classified as sound/music. How do these specific frequencies which are identified as music/sound emerge develop or becomes refined from particular expertise and appreciate the deep emotional significance and its power to influence social behaviour varying across cultures (15).
The psychology and identification of these frequencies can be properly identified which depends on the understanding of branches of psychology (19) visa viz sensation, perception, neuropsychology, development psychology, social psychology and educational psychology. These studies can also be complemented with the physical properties of sound waves their transmission to ear and neural basis of perception and cognition of sound/music within certain range of specific/unspecified frequencies with reference to subjects identified for the desired study. Pertinent to mention is that the identification of sound/music can be further supplemented with the perception of melody, rhythm and musical structure with meanings implied or communicated visa viz, social and emotional (8) functions which can be properly understood and interpreted from the interplay of various sub disciplines (9) like that of neuroscience, musicology, education, philosophy, ethno-musicology. The frequency of source of sound giving rise to aural sensation called pitch which Pythagoras identified with wavelength and other parameters of sound/music waves include frequency, Amplitude and complexity which correspond with psychological properties of pitch, loudness and Timbre.
The regulation of sound waves from different parts of ear towards auditory canal (6,16) with role of cochlea as a device to detect and transduce relevant properties of wave trains into neural impulses with the specificity of wavelengths which could be modulated externally in the entire process of hearing is very important. The cognitive task of brain to analyse the incoming sound waves with musically relevant properties and the role of primary auditory cortex (4) to distinguish sounds within relevant frequency ranges or pitch relations associated with the neuro acoustic processes is also significant.
The culmination of different techniques whether PET, MRI, to nail cognitive (7) neuroscience as a discipline with reference to perception of melody and rhythm to track the specific frequencies which effect those changes are very important for us. Surveying the literature, it is seen that cognitive characteristic (11) regarding pitch perception can be traced to neural tissues with certain location for example the auditory cortex, but the conclusively required to pin down the exact mapping of regions which correspond to music only has not been proved with certainty. Although primary areas associated with hearing is superior temporal lobe with many aspects of musical experience associated with cerebellum but the primary auditory cortex (16) descends into many folds in temporal lobes (Hershel’s gyras) and if we compare the quantitative understanding of accessible visible cortex things cannot be properly formulated as the effects of sound waves recess into deeper layers of consciousness.
In hindsight the research in music with the brain has been focussed on whether musical pitch processing is also laterized with regards to left hemisphere associated with language (10) and right hemisphere with music, although from certain studies it is not clear whether music and language (13) are independent or not with the caveat that from MRI and PET scans it is observed that non-musicians process musical pitch (13) in right hemisphere while for musicians (10,14) it is left. It has been known that there is correlation of the particular function within human body (physical/psychological) parameters whose disruption after the injury within brain can be traced to inference that the intact region or portion was the necessary component with regards to the neural resources required for the sound functioning of what was disruptively observed.
This broad identification of loss of a particular function in general sense to different areas of brain and in particular if there is injury, stroke, neurosurgery or extreme cases of epilepsy with the perception and cognition of music(7) is seen to be affected in non-linear and strikingly unknown ways. It’s seen that persistent loss of music (Amusia) or perception of melodies with the loss of ability to discriminate isolated pitches within melodic context there are clear deficiencies observed in patients with regards to them and there have been difficulties in identifying melodies with more than one or different tone. It is also challenging to understand if melodies (3) are simple arrangements of discrete pitches with notable oscillating patterns and how does human mind differentiate and identify (5) as well as remember a distinct arrangement, and if two or more pitches are conjured together and how they are processed in terms of coherent tune. If these questions are addressed in whatever manner, how can we identify sound/music frequencies associated with them to ameliorate various neuropsychiatric disorders with regards to diagnosis or treatment in relation to the intervention of acoustic loops.
The use of EEG to measure changes in the electric activity of whole of the brain by placing electrodes on the scalp informs us that there is transmission of impulses with neurons leading to fluctuations in electric field within the neighbourhood of these neurons. A variable scale has been constructed within certain ranges where we observe and mark each pattern associated with certain cognitive and motor activation with regards to the intervention of electric fields. The classification and identification in the literature with respect to different ranges of electric cycles are 1) Delta Ranges- 3Hz 2) Theta-4-7 Hz, 3) Alpha-8-12Hz 4) Beta-12-30Hz. 5) Gamma-30-100Hz .
Intervention of Acoustic loops and our study in relation to the Neuro-psychiatric Disorders
Our study parallels with this study (17) when we identify the normal state with one of these ranges in particular alpha and theta which are rejuvenating states commonly associated with relaxation, awareness, intuition creativity and most importantly these states allow body to rest and repair. While the Beta states are anxiety prone states with electric waves or brainwaves associated with them in the mentioned ranges are the states we live with. It is a challenging task of how we can identify these states and with the identification of acoustic loops within certain ranges and then find a way and method to make transition from Beta states to relaxed Alpha and theta states.
Although it has to be mentioned the scale varies from different studies available in literature with respect to study in fluctuation of electric fields with regards to the identifiable mental and psychological parameters which are precursors to the changes which can also be affected by sounds/frequencies falling in certain ranges which we observe with regards to subjects/patients under consideration. The Neuro acoustic Audio treatment will primarily be focussing on directing brane wave patterns into calming brain wave states associated with the treatment so that there is a smooth transition into mediative states. The important point to mention is that in our treatment or method in the presence of the intervention of those acoustic loops falling in certain narrow or specific range of frequencies within those mentioned ranges which are loosely classified as alpha, beta, gamma and delta ranges. It is to be mentioned there can be specific/unspecific modes into which patients or subjects are triggered into once they are under the effect of these experimental loops, we induce on the patients which fall into sub frequencies of those general frequencies comparable to the previous scale mentioned.
Once the intervention in these specific loops is triggered, they have the potential of decoupling mind from the environment and internally making the patient/subject to go from unspecified mode to specific mode which makes him sensitive or responsive to those corresponding modes only which have been triggered externally by those specific acoustic loops falling within those frequency ranges. The mode and method of these acoustic loops assumes to induce changes which may be short term to begin with but they can serve also to be diagnostic with regards to how the subject with neuropsychiatric disorders is going to get effected by the intervention of these acoustic loops. These can also serve as a source of identification and stage of disorder regarding patients when the acoustic loops and their corresponding brain wave frequencies which have been mapped and measured with regards to the identified mental states with regards to the neuropsychiatric disorders. The scale identified with regards to intervention of acoustic loops with respect to the different parameters of age, type of identified disorder, nature of mental state, environment, case history of patients can be compared with the normal medical treatment which the patient is subjected or treated.
The effect of musical instruments in conjunction with the frequencies which is being played apart from the frequency which is characteristic of the instrument has important role in identifying the principal frequency which is identified as part of different acoustic therapies which we are suitable for different therapeutic interventions. Different musical instruments will have different effects when played upon by the same frequency so that the identification of the principal frequency which is useful for the given session regarding particular acoustic loop can be accounted and it is seen there is addition or alteration of given frequency on the same instrument or different instruments with the same frequencies. The resonant frequencies which are produced in a given instrument have potential of identifying the different sub -frequencies which will lie above or below those principal frequencies associated with different loops which we are going to use as part of intervention. One reason of having different effects from the application of different instruments is the nature of matter and properties of the vibrating instruments and knowledge of these properties can be manipulated and be helpful in the identification of the principal frequency as well as the sub frequencies which will help us in understanding and quantifying their effect in ameliorating neuropsychiatric disorders.
The identification of the frequencies which correspond to specific Acoustic loops proposes also to give us an indirect identification of scale which is going to give us proposed method of identifying disorders like that of anxiety, depression, OCD, Parkinson, BPD, Psyznopheria, Autism etc. The sensitivity and identification of the scale and also the mechanisms identifying the acoustic loops associated with the scale will in long term help us to make our measurements more precise in long term with respect to the prognosis and diagnostic in relation to the disorders of the subjects which we have identified in the first place.
Simultaneously after profiling of subjects /patients with these disorders and after the identification of specific loops which are identified from acoustic scale, various biochemical parameters like serotonin, dopamine, adrenaline, noradrenaline or their metabolites etc. will be analysed with the help of kits and autoanalyzers both in the pre and post intervention state of the subject. The purpose is to develop diagnostic and prognostic tool in terms of biochemical parameters which will not only be helpful in identifying the disorder prior to treatment but also helps us to find the stage of disorder the subject is living with besides evaluating the prognosis. The same would be supplementary to the neuro acoustic loop- based diagnosis and prognosis.
In the first phase we have identified 50 patients and worked with acoustic loops previously identified with certain tests which can be loosely phrased in terms like that of frequency modulated tests (FMTS) which synchronise to the Resonance values of those identified frequencies which has been seen in our case to ameliorate the disorders and potentially curing patients which in case of our study has shown promising signs. The parameters or the observables and the identification of frequencies which corresponding to those acoustic loops can be stage wise graphical parameterized in terms of relevant
variables which can also be compared with the normal medical literature in terms of success or efficacy of treatment. The Preliminary results regarding the intervention of these specific loops regarding diseases in our case has been encouraging which have shown improvements with regards to the identification and treatment of disorders. The bird’s eye analysis of the data regarding for example the patients suffering from anxiety and depression when compared to our treatments in the sessions which were intervened with specific acoustic loops showed positive results of improvements in terms of restoring them to normal behaviour. The various therapies are synonymous with regards to the various loops which have been classified and identified for different patients depending upon varied factors. These parameters and factors shall be elaborated in future studies with an broader aim of not only giving qualitative analysis but supplementing the study with the quantitative correspondence with respect to the variables which have been identified and mapped with respect to intervention of acoustic loops in relation to neuropsychiatric and other disorders.
Treatment Process based on Neuro Acoustic Loops
This treatment is carried out under the project on Neuro Acoustic Research having collaboration with Sheri Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences (SKIMS), J&K, India. The said treatment is done based on various phases of acoustic implementation. The treatment is mainly composed of two phases.
i) Registration of Patients
This phase involves registering of patients who wish to get checked for any Psychiatric disorder. The information regrinding the patient is kept hidden so that the real identity of the patient is not disclosed. The data is collected solely for research purpose. The complete and accurate patient registration is crucial phase of this research. As the circumstances and policies change often there is a dire need to update patient demographics at each visit.
ii) Case History Formulation
In this phase the case history of the patient taken by the concerned psychiatrist and all the test reading of past are also recorded including various important vitals. The phase provides an environment to ask open-ended questions that require a full response, so as to get the most up-to-date information regarding the patient which could aid in better diagnosis and treatment.
iii) Therapies Awareness
Based on the case history information the patient/subject is made aware of all the therapies that he/she has to undergo so as to bring clarity in the diagnosis. As we are dealing with patients with psychiatric disorders a proper counselling is being done so that the patients become emotionally and psychologically ready for these acoustic therapies.
iv) Loop Selection (in Active Mode)
In this phase a set of acoustic loop stack has already been identified for various ailments. These loops are mostly sound frequencies which are provided to patient in Active or Passive mode. Normally in this phase loop selection for the patient is done in active mode. These loops sensitize the patient’s neuro systems and accordingly provide an adequate output which enables the therapist to depict the level of psychiatric disorder
v) Frequency Modulation Test (FMT/EEG)
An electroencephalogram (EEG) is a test is performed for the detection of electrical activity in the brain using small, metal discs (electrodes) attached to the patients scalp. The brain cells communicate via electrical impulses and are active all the time, even when asleep. This activity shows up as wavy lines on an EEG recording. This test is provides a key information regarding any neuro psychiatric disorder.
vi) Comparing Resonance Value
The value of resonance are compared which provides a qualitative mechanism for diagnosing psychiatric disorder.
vii) Checking for Psychiatric Disorder & Treatment Provisions
It is followed by conclusion of any sort of psychiatric disorder and accordingly acoustic loop based treatment provisions are being determined on patient to patient basis.
In the first phase the patient is registered and is made exposed to various acoustic loops which involve therapy awareness, loop selection and based on that perform Frequency Modulation Tests which make patient ready for going to the next phase after determining any neuro psychiatric disorder. The flow diagram is shown below:
Comparative Data Analysis between NARC & SKIMS
The data has been gathered and tabulated from around 50 random patients/subjects who have been already diagnosed with psychiatric disorders by Sheri Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences (SKIMS). These patients have been re-assessed using Acoustic Loop Therapy for any psychiatric disorder. Data has been collaborated on a excel sheet and analysed using python data frames in a standardised template. Duplicate data, any outlier from the same study samples and reported has been identified and removed. As the results are being gathers from two sources (SKIMS & NARC), accordingly two separate collaboration has been made whose confusion matrix is shown as under:
Confusion matrix for the data shows that around 50% patients who have been diagnosed for an psychiatric disorder at SKIMS have been wrongly diagnosed as per NARC. These tests which accumulated for the diagnosis have been conducted using Acoustic Loops, FMT followed by bio-chemical analysis and are shown in the chart below:
The chart clearly tabulates the value of FMTI and FMTF and the variation of data has been identified wherein 50% of cases have been diagnosed as psychiatric disorder. The neuro acoustic based study variability in prevalence of these psychiatric disorder when these tests on the subjects were conducted. The comparative results between (SKIMS & NARC) like sensitivity, precision, F1 Score etc. are shown in the table below:
1. | Sensitivity | 0.5 |
2. | Precision | 1.0 |
3. | False Discovery Rate | 0.0 |
4. | False Negative Rate | 0.5 |
5. | Accuracy | 0.5 |
6. | F1 Score | 0.6667 |
The proposed research could also aid in qualitative scaling of these neuro psychiatric disorders. Presently these disorder are being purely diagnosed on observation and patient behaviour and a concrete methodology is missing. The proposed research can aid in formulating a standard scaling mechanism which could quantify a neuro psychiatric disorder.