Activate Your Brain

How Sound Therapy improves Memory and Learning

Memory is improved by brain stimulation

It happens to all of us. You go into a room to get something, then you stop dead in your tracks and realise you have no idea why you came into that room. You rack your brains but can't remember. So you go back to what you were doing before, and the memory comes flashing back.

When I tell this story, particularly to older people, they really relate to it. Memory, especially short term memory is a big issue as we get older. The above example occurs more frequently as the system deteriorates and our synapses are not firing as effectively.

Sound Therapy is so effective for memory because it stimulates our neurons to fire and actually builds new brain connections. Our neurons, the unique cells that make up the brain, are connected by tiny branching filaments called dendrites, and longer ones called axons which link more distant parts of the brain. These connections use both electrical and chemical energy. New connections may be formed each time a neuron fires, so stimulating the neurons to fire actually builds and increases our neural network. Just to give you an idea of the immense intricacy of this network in your brain, let me give you some stats. There are as many neurons in your brain as there are trees in the Amazon rainforest. There are as many axons and dendrites connecting those neurons as there are leaves, on the trees in the Amazon rainforest.

Check out our testimonials on memory and learning to read quotes from Sound Therapy listeners telling how the therapy has helped their memory.

Communication gets easier with Sound Therapy

There are many aspects to verbal communication and social interaction with others. To communicate well on a verbal level a person must be able to:

Hear well
Translate thoughts into words with fluency
Speak well
Feel confident in themselves
Desire to make contact

Difficulties in any one of these areas restrict the subtle exchanges needed for easy conversation.

Click Here for Product Information

Active listening

Early in his research, Dr Tomatis discovered that the results of hearing tests varied greatly depending on the subject's motivation to demonstrate a good or bad level of hearing. He discovered a voluntary, though unconscious element to our ability to hear. Listening means that we direct our ears to actively tune in to selected sounds. A person who cannot tune in some sounds and tune out others will be unable to follow a conversation in a noisy environment and may therefore appear standoffish or anti-social. This is sometimes called the Cocktail Party Syndrome.

Sound Therapy re-educates the selective ability of the ear, enabling listening to become a focused, motivated response to sound.

Hearing and speech

When hearing is impaired, speech is also affected. Dr Tomatis demonstrated that if certain sound frequencies are missing from the hearing, those same frequencies will be missing from the voice. The voice cannot produce a sound that we cannot hear, because self-listening is integral to voice production. (This relationship has been named "The Tomatis Effect").

Therefore when hearing is impaired the voice becomes monotone and lifeless and lacks the qualities to inspire active listening in others. As Sound Therapy repairs distortions in the listening curve, the range and quality of the voice is also enhanced. Stuttering is another failure of the self-listening cycle.

Poor lateralization, meaning the co-ordination of the right and left ears with the cerebral hemispheres, causes a delay in the speaking and self listening cycle. A transcerebral delay time in the order of .15 seconds will result in a stutter. Sound Therapy encourages right laterality by feeding more sound into the right ear. The right ear, as opposed to the left, is more directly linked to the left hemisphere of the brain, which is the language centre. Therefore, when the right ear becomes the directing ear, the delay is removed, and the stutter can be overcome.

Studies with stutterers have indicated the effectiveness of Sound Therapy in between 82% and 100% of cases. (Sound Therapy: Manual for Practitioners 2003)

Click Here for Product Information

Psychological opening

The evolution of our listening ability plays a vital role in our social and psychological development from an early age. Psychological blocks are often accompanied by a closing down of some elements of the listening process.

As the ear is reintroduced, through Sound Therapy, to high frequency sound, an opening can happen simultaneously on both an auditory and psychological level. This frequently leads to the resolution of chronic emotional patterns and increases people's willingness to reach out and connect with others. Sound Therapy also improves the efficiency of the brain in interpreting auditory information. People often notice an improved ability to express their thoughts and an increase in memory and concentration.

Adult learning made easier

Sound Therapy helps adults who are returning to study by improving concentration and memory, reducing stress and stimulating the brain to function as efficiently as possible. Music can stimulate pathways in the brain, enabling information to pass more easily. Students have used the tapes throughout their study and found it makes an enormous difference to their ability and their results.

Learning difficulties

Numerous adults suffer from learning difficulties which may or may not have been identified in their school years. Others may have developed problems later in life due to stress, poor diet, brain injury or environmental factors. In either case, there is a good chance that Sound Therapy will help.

A wide range of learning difficulties relate to poor auditory processing, and these include dyslexia, poor short term memory, poor concentration and difficulty speaking, spelling, pronouncing words, expressing or understanding concepts. Sound Therapy may help the majority of people who have these problems and will make study and learning much easier.

Click Here for Product Information

Listening

Sound Therapy improves our auditory processing and therefore all our language abilities by making listening easy. Listening is the most basic element of communication and is a pre-requisite for other skills such as speaking, reading, and writing. It is through the ear and our capacity to interpret sound that we develop a relationship with our environment and with those around us. Interruption in the development of the listening function at an early age can result in emotional withdrawal or maladjustment and may produce severe learning or behavioural problems. If you were a child who had low self esteem and took a position of resignation about school work, you may have missed out on much of your education and find the thought of further study quite daunting. Sound Therapy can make this process easier because it is able to restore some of the basic auditory and neurological function required for learning.

Closing the ear

Children may withdraw from communication because of early emotional trauma, repeated ear infections or other unknown causes. They close down their listening ability by involuntarily choosing more indirect brain circuits which makes their processing of sound inefficient. The ears do not have lids the way the eyes do but they have ways of closing off internally to protect us from disturbing input or loud noise. The immature psyche may shut down as a defence mechanism which then becomes habitual and slows normal development.

Re-opening the ear

Even if used as an adult, Sound Therapy retrains your ability to listen and concentrate by working on the motivation to listen as well as improving the ability of the ear to 'tune in' to sound. High frequency sounds (high tones rather than low tones) are emphasised because these sounds stimulate and re-awaken the ear's full hearing capacity. Tomatis discovered that as the embryonic ear develops in the womb, the first sounds which the child hears are high frequency sounds. For this reason, the high frequency sounds of Sound Therapy have a soothing and reassuring effect on the listener.

Sensory integration

Efficient learning depends on integration of all sensory input, auditory, visual and tactile, in a part of the brain called the cerebellum. Sound Therapy improves cerebellar integration and this improves the speed and efficiency of the brain for comprehending, sorting and remembering data. Balance and co-ordination are improved as well as short term memory, spelling, language fluency and concentration.

Information Sheet on how Sound Therapy can assist with Memory

Information Sheet on how Sound Therapy can assist with Active Listening, Hearing and Speech, and Communication

Buy Sound Therapy: Music to Recharge your Brain Book

What you need to get started with Sound Therapy

Return to top