LE T ’ S LI F T LIVE S
Music Mends Vanderbilt’s Music Cognition Lab Co-Director, Dr. Miriam Lense, highlights the research and valuable programs her team is working on to help uncover the benefits of using music for healing. TEMPO: Just to kick things off, I'd love to
ACM Lifting Lives® has supported the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center since 2012. Learn about the programs and research it helps fund to improve lives through the power of music. BY LIBBY GARDNER
22
acmcountry.com
hear a little bit about you and your history at Vanderbilt and what you do for them. LENSE: I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Otolaryngology — Head & Neck Surgery. I co-direct the Vanderbilt Music Cognition Lab and I’m also a clinical psychologist. The work in my lab is focused on studying the music and rhythm of social engagement and how we can use music to support social and emotional well-being, with a particular emphasis on families of children with autism and other developmental disorders. TEMPO: Wow, that’s awesome. I know
you're working specifically on some research that ACM Lifting Lives has been helping to fund, so what is this music cognition research that you're doing? LENSE: We are thrilled to have support from ACM Lifting Lives as well as from a National Endowment for the Arts Research Lab grant and the National Institute of Mental Health/National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. In one of our research programs we are examining the “active ingredients” of parent-child music interventions. We find that using music games and song is a really great way to support parent-child interactions in families of young children, including parents of young children with autism. We have created programs that use music and song to teach parents evidence-based practices for supporting their social interactions together with their child. One of the things we’re doing with the ACM Lifting Lives support is looking at how we may be changing parents’ behavior through using these music and song activities.
TEMPO: Oh wow. That’s pretty awesome.
And why the music method? LENSE: One of the reasons that we use this music-based approach is because parent-child music activities are a very, very common activity to be doing in early childhood. Many children enjoy musical activities. Many children with autism enjoy musical activities, so it’s a very natural and motivating activity. We also find that when parents engage in musical activities, they naturally use types of parenting behaviors that we know can be helpful for supporting children. These are things that parents don’t necessarily even think about. For example, we tend to smile more when we sing (versus speak) to children. We tend to be very positive when we’re engaging in musical interactions. Musical interactions also provide a familiar and predictable structure to support parents and children in participating in a shared experience. The predictability of musical activities helps us know what and when something may occur so it provides a platform for coordinating with one another and for practicing different skills. We’re looking at how these types of activities are shaping parent and child behavior. TEMPO: Yeah, that sounds really neat.
Aside from the music cognition research how else has Vanderbilt been impacted by ACM Lifting Lives’ contribution? LENSE: We have also developed mindfulnessbased music and songwriting programs. Parents of children with autism and other developmental disabilities often experience higher levels of stress and have increased rates of mental health difficulties. Previous research, including pioneering work done at Vanderbilt, shows how mindfulness-based practices can be helpful for stress reduction in families of children with developmental disabilities. Music is also a very powerful tool for stress reduction and emotion regulation. We’ve now created mindfulness-based music and songwriting programs in which parents learn mindfulness-based principles and apply these principles through musical activities and songwriting activities. Parents create their own personalized mindfulness songs to support them in their practice of learning, applying, and engaging with the stress reduction practices. The songs are all so beautiful. TEMPO: So those songs are just written
specifically for these families? LENSE: Yes, the parents work with a music therapist. We work with a wonderful music therapist, Kate Kelly, MT-BC, here in Nashville