Music therapy, in general, entails the use of music to restore, maintain, and improve emotional, physical, and spiritual health and well-being. The goals and objectives of music therapy include improving communicative, emotional, social, academic, and motor skills. Dr. Clive Robbins , of the Nordoff-Robbins Center for Music Therapy at New York University, applies the principles related to music therapy to treat many of his patients. Music is an open-sesame and if you can use it carefully and appropriately, you can reach into that child s potential development.
Music has a lot of universality.
You bypass so many barriers to communication, and it seems to reach more of the child than anything else. Further, Dr. Oliver Sacks, a world-renowned clinical professor of neurology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, explains the benefits of music therapy in treating his patients. The use of language alone only activates the left-hemisphere of the brain, the language center of the brain. However, when music is played, both the right and left hemispheres light up and react. It is language which symbolizes reality.