The brain is a vastly complex organ. Its complexity is matched only by the number of possible injuries and disorders it can suffer, as well as the range of possible treatments.
Music can help the brain in many ways, be it aiding with communication or promoting healing. One local, Victoria Lowrie FNMT, MT-BC, is a board-certified musical therapist as well as a fellow neurological music therapist who uses many musical techniques to help her patients all over San Luis Obispo County and northern Santa Barbara County.
Lowrie’s story begins in her childhood, when an insatiable love for music and especially singing drove her to learn many songs, including songs in other languages.
“They used to helicopter me out of school to the embassy so I could sing the national anthems from all these foreign countries when ambassadors would visit,” she recalled.
Her parents were supportive of her music but warned her that musicians didn’t make much money. She went to college with the drive to major in medicine and could be heard in the music department singing medical and biological terms in sing song so as to memorize them better. The techniques helped her along the way because she gained her credentials and worked almost every part of the hospital over the years.
“I did it all,” she said, “from maternity to the morgue.”
Lowrie left the workforce to raise her children. She went back to school at Cuesta in San Luis Obispo, which led to her gaining her board certification as a music therapist. Music therapy, she explained, helps people overcome afflictions and obstacles it would otherwise be more challenging to confront.
Most of this has to do with the complex architecture of the brain. After Lowrie gained her board certification, she continued to earn her fellowship in neurological music therapy, which focuses on ways music can help the brain. When dealing with cerebral palsy, the autism spectrum, or a traumatic brain injury, Lowrie uses several techniques and activities to help people heal or make connections.
[image-2]“We are using components of music for non-musical goals,” she said. “We apply specific interventions that are musical that go in and train the brain.”
One example, she explained, would be to sing to a stroke patient who is having trouble formulating speech. Melodic speech will activate different parts of the brain that regular speech can’t, and will sometimes allow the patient to respond in song when he or she wouldn’t be able to with regular speech.
“Music has one property that nothing else has that happens in the body: It can go to the left or right hemisphere of the brain simultaneously,” she explained. “Every action that we do in our brain is dictated by either the right or left hemisphere, and music has that one thing we haven’t been able to find.”
By using both sides of the brain simultaneously, she explained, patients are actually opening pathways in their brains and making connections or reinforcing those that were already there. It’s this miracle of reconstructing the damaged brain that makes music such a valuable tool.
Lowrie has her own offices in Atascadero called Harmony in Health Neurologic Music Therapy, where she regularly meets one-on-one with patients. She also travels to meet with patients throughout San Luis Obispo county and Northern Santa Barbara County and organizes a yearly event called “Camp Harmony,” a musically therapeutic summer camp for special-needs kids. She even has a few group ensembles made up of mostly elderly patients she visits in care facilities. The Happy Hummers and the Gran Cortina Singers are both therapeutic singing groups that Lowrie directs.
“It keeps them going, let me tell you,” she said. “It is a mixture of wonderful people.”
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The two ensembles and many of Lowrie’s other patients will be performing as part of her bi-yearly concert “Abilities in Harmony.” The event will showcase the talents of her wide array of patients who have all benefited—mentally and emotionally—from the power of music.
Brews and tunes
Patrick Montgomery will be strumming his guitar and singing some favorite songs every Wednesday and Sunday through January from 4 to 9 p.m. each night at the Santa Maria Brewing Company, 112 Cuyama Lane, Nipomo. More info: 354-0219 or davidsnyder561@comcast.net.
Full-fledged folk
Viva el Arte de Santa Barbara is proud to present a special guest ensemble to perform several free community concerts: Los Soneros del Tesechoacan. The group is performing Jan. 20 at 7 p.m. at Isla Vista School, 6875 El Colegio Road, Goleta; Jan. 22 at 7 p.m. at the Marjorie Luke Theatre, Santa Barbara Jr. High, 721 E. Cota St., Santa Barbara; and Jan. 21 at 7:30 p.m., Guadalupe City Hall Auditorium, 918 Obispo St., Guadalupe. Free. More info: 884-4087, Ext. 7, or myspace.com/vivaelartedesantabarbara.
Contact Calendar Editor Joe Payne at jpayne@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jan 19-26, 2012.
