| Did you sing lullabies to soothe your newborn? For moms of preemies, crooning those tunes is proving more important that previously realised. As reported in The New York Times, new research on music and premature babies has revealed that exposure to live music, whether sung or played, can provide significant health benefits for preemies. The Beth Israel Medical Center in New York conducted the study and found that music can calm infants’ breathing, slow heartbeats, aid sleep, improve sucking ability, and more — all of which help the babies spend more of their energy on growing and developing. The researchers concluded that live music, played or sung, helped to slow infants’ heartbeats, calm their breathing, improve sucking behaviours important for feeding, aid sleep and promote states of quiet alertness. Doctors and researchers say that by reducing stress and stabilising vital signs, music can allow infants to devote more energy to normal development. And while the effects may be subtle, small improvements can be significant. Premature births have increased since 1990, to nearly 500,000 a year, one of every nine children born in the United States. The study, published this month in the journal Pediatrics, adds to growing research on music and preterm babies. Some hospitals find music as effective as, and safer than, sedating infants before procedures like heart sonograms and brain monitoring. Some neonatologists say babies receiving music therapy leave hospitals sooner, which can aid development and family bonding and save money. “Sound can be damaging. But meaningful noise is important for a baby’s brain development,” said Helen Shoemark, a music researcher at Murdoch Childrens Research Institute in Melbourne. Scientists are far from done determining music’s impact, and there are certainly those who are sceptical about its medical value. Dr. Manoj Kumar, a neonatologist at Stollery Children’s Hospital in Edmonton, Alberta, said that while “studies have shown a benefit in heart rate and respiratory rate,” it is unclear whether that prompts clinical improvements, like removing oxygen or feeding tubes sooner, questions that the Pediatrics study did not tackle. The two-year study, larger and more systematic than many efforts to scientifically evaluate art’s impact, separated musical elements — rhythm, melody, timbre — to see effects on heartbeat, breathing, sucking, alertness and sleep. Over two weeks, 272 premature babies underwent several sessions of two instruments, singing and no music at all. The instruments and lullaby singing style were intended to approximate womb sounds, said Joanne Loewy, the study’s leader and the director of Beth Israel’s Louis Armstrong Center for Music and Medicine. Two-tone heartbeat rhythms were played on a “gato box,” a rectangular wooden drum. Whooshing sounds came from an “ocean disc,” a cylinder containing shifting metal beads. For melody, parents were asked for a favorite song. If it wasn’t a lullaby (someone chose “I Heard It Through the Grapevine”; another, “Pick Up the Pieces,” by Average White Band), therapists slowed it, changed meters to lilting waltzes and adjusted lyrics. “Lots of times you see parents bopping the baby up and down on their lap, and there’s no purpose to it,” Dr. Loewy said. “You don’t feel the music intention as much as if you have a song that a parent has chosen.” If parents did not specify, researchers used”Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”Tempos were coordinated with babies’ vital signs, indicated not only by monitors but also by eye movements and a chest’s rise and fall. Researchers found that the gato box, the ocean disc and singing all slowed a baby’s heart rate, though singing seemed to be most effective. Singing also increased the time babies stayed quietly alert. Sucking behavior improved most with the gato box. The breathing rate slowed the most and sleeping was the best with the ocean disc. Return to Homepage | 
“Sound can be damaging. But meaningful noise is important for a baby’s brain development,” said Helen Shoemark, a music researcher at Murdoch Childrens Research Institute in Melbourne. |
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