Maybe it is the point of view that makes the difference. If you look at music therapy as music psychotherapy, I can't think of anything apparently missing in the heuristic working factor model. But I also remember a slide in a presentation of yours, where you picture music therapy in the middle of 4 major adjacent academic disciplines. They are not equally represented in the working factor model for several good reasons. But I think the part you called "(natural) science" with its subcategories physics, biology and medicine should be represented. 

It is a simple and useful method to use music and instruments as a means of expressing something else, something personal, that can afterwards be talked about. Music as an intermediary object. But to me, this approach seems quite superficial at times, for it doesn't make use of all the possibilities, that sound and music provide to help and heal people. Furthermore, the way we work with musical elements often times ("take whatever instrument you want and play whatever you want"), shows a lack of understanding of how musical parameters (specific intervals, instruments and sounds) work - or that they work (and have distinct effects) at all!

If there is proof that music and sound influence the body immediately, unconsciously, directly and often vegetatively, then I think that alone is a "clinical useful aspect" - albeit a vague and problematic one, for there is a lack of research and an esoteric aura surrounding it. Another problem might be the integration of a physiological aspect into a psycho-therapeutic model. 

But nevertheless, I think a doctor should know what he prescribes and a music therapist should know what effects the music and sounds he uses have on people and their bodies.

Where is the MUSIC in music therapy? 

I thought, in our brain, we developed some specific structures to percieve rhythm and tonality that generate emotion related feeling of well-being or maintaining activites for normal brain function.  

Dear Thonas,

Rats and mice are excellent models for the human brain. An experiment on laboratory rats consisted in placing two boxes, connected by a tube, playing Bach’s Air on the G string in one box, and rock music in the other. Most rats chose to go in the box with Bach’s music, even when the music switched from a box to another. Later, the rats were placed in a maze, and the ones which chose Bach’s music, found the exit before, and more easily than the ones which were exposed to rock music. When scientists then observed the rats’ brains, they could see that the rats being frequently exposed to classical music, had a physically more developed brain than the ones who were not being exposed to the particular music. Experiments on plants proved that plants growing with the 60 beats per minute pattern, grew faster and more efficiently than the ones growing with rock music in the background; the ones being exposed to rock music withered and died. Plants are living but not thinking organisms, therefore what matters for their development is not the melody, but the rhythm of the music. http://www.classicalforums.com/articles/music_brain.html

From my own experiments on the human level: While sitting in a rocking chair breast-feeding my sons I happened to listen to operas all the time. They both love opera as grown ups. We did research at our department how TV violence had a bad impact on children so when I wrote my PhD thesis I put the youngest child in front of a safe TV program with classical music (for hours) (he now earns his living as a critic of classic music). At a time I was stuck in my fascination for requiems (Berlioz) till he  started to complain about this genre. Also an other baby whose mother is a pianist calms down to classical music. You can choose what you "condition" your children to. However if even rat prefer classical music this genre is the genre of choise for music therapy.

I agree with Béatrice. What she describes also points to the fact that we have to closer look at the (Heuristic) Working Factors of MUSIC itself.

The biggest part of current research on the effects of music is probably to be found in psychological studies and research on music therapy and neurobiology.

But I think we need to intensify the search for biological and immediate factors of music and leave the neurocentric and psychocentric path we are currently on. We lack crucial facts, when we narrow our view and look at music therapy merely as a derivative of psychotherapy.

To avoid that, we could look at the relationship between music and biophysics. Zhang and Kapteina (2002) suggest that “music is able to directly influence the physiological state of a living system.”

Another example and growing field of research is Chronobiology and Chronomedicine. There is growing evidence, that the rhythmical structure of musical works stimulates synchronisation processes in biological systems.

Which then leads us to important music-related questions, like what music/intervals/instruments should we use for this specific patient with this specific illness/issue: "Music is clinically recognized to influence biological responses such as heart rate, blood pressure, respiration rate, cardiac output, muscle tone, pupillary responses, skin responses, the immune system, and endorphin production. Music can entrain the body to calm or to accelerate depending on what type of music is used" (Lane 2008)

In sum: There are effects of sound (it doesn't even have to only be sound within the human hearing range!) and music, that operate beyond Attention, Behavior, Emotion, Cognition and Communication. They shouldn't (and in the long term can't be) neglected.

Thanks for interesting answers.

Dear Dominik in fact we (Julian Thayer, Friedrich-Wilhelm Wilker, Stefan Koelsch, Julian Koenig) discussed a lot about physiological reactions to music but until now decided to use the physiological perspective to deliver theoretical arguments for the hypothetical factors. Together these factors represent a psychological model of working ingredients of music therapy.

Heart rate and HRV for example can therapeutically understood as a motor reaction of the heart muscles. And blood pressure as well as immune or endocrine reactions could be an aspect of emotion. But probably if we understand more about the therapeutic use of such data we should start to integrate them into the model.

Our main problem in music therapy is not the empirical research of physiological or psychological reactions to music or sound (basic research; e.g. what is the clinical relevance of changes in pupillary response?) but to build up a link between therapeutic actions and clinically relevant aspects (treatment goals). It seems to me that it is the same with chronobiological research, which is really interesting but we have to identify the clinical relevance of findings in this area as well as associated interventions that lead to clinical significant goals.

But if we could identify clinically useful aspects, we should enhance the model.

Do you have some concrete ideas?

Regards Thomas

Maybe it is the point of view that makes the difference. If you look at music therapy as music psychotherapy, I can't think of anything apparently missing in the heuristic working factor model. But I also remember a slide in a presentation of yours, where you picture music therapy in the middle of 4 major adjacent academic disciplines. They are not equally represented in the working factor model for several good reasons. But I think the part you called "(natural) science" with its subcategories physics, biology and medicine should be represented. 

It is a simple and useful method to use music and instruments as a means of expressing something else, something personal, that can afterwards be talked about. Music as an intermediary object. But to me, this approach seems quite superficial at times, for it doesn't make use of all the possibilities, that sound and music provide to help and heal people. Furthermore, the way we work with musical elements often times ("take whatever instrument you want and play whatever you want"), shows a lack of understanding of how musical parameters (specific intervals, instruments and sounds) work - or that they work (and have distinct effects) at all!

If there is proof that music and sound influence the body immediately, unconsciously, directly and often vegetatively, then I think that alone is a "clinical useful aspect" - albeit a vague and problematic one, for there is a lack of research and an esoteric aura surrounding it. Another problem might be the integration of a physiological aspect into a psycho-therapeutic model. 

But nevertheless, I think a doctor should know what he prescribes and a music therapist should know what effects the music and sounds he uses have on people and their bodies.

Where is the MUSIC in music therapy?