Let Music Be Your Medicine

"The brain generates rhythms naturally. One way to confirm this is to record the brain's electrical activity. This electrical activity results from the passage of ions (particles with positive or negative charge, such as sodium and chloride, the components of salt) across brain cell membranes. EEG (electroencephalography), a painless and harmless technique using wires (electrodes) placed on the scalp to record this activity, has been around for nearly a century. EEG reveals that much of a healthy brain's electrical activity is rhythmic, not random."

"An EEG measures rhythmic brain waves in cycles per second, called Hertz. In a region of the brain's temporal lobe known as the entorhinal-hippocampal network, slow brain waves (termed theta) 1 and fast brain waves (termed gamma) 2 couple during successful memory performance. The brain's ability to couple these rhythms wanes in Alzheimer's disease. It has been known for several decades that the earliest memory decline in this disorder correlates with pathology in the entorhinal-hippocampal network."

Brain electrical activity arises from ion flow across neuronal membranes and often appears as rhythmic patterns measurable with EEG. EEG records brain waves in Hertz and shows healthy brains display rhythmic activity, while rhythmicity deteriorates with brain disease. In the entorhinal-hippocampal network, slow theta and fast gamma oscillations couple during successful memory performance. Alzheimer's disease is associated with reduced theta-gamma coupling and early pathology in the entorhinal-hippocampal region that correlates with memory decline. Non-invasive external stimulation delivered at theta and gamma frequencies can entrain or compensate for diminished internal rhythms and is being tested as a memory-improvement strategy.

Read at Psychology Today