Brain Music: Treat Depression, Anxiety, and Insomnia

At least 60 million Americans suffer from insomnia. Sleeping aids are a growing pharmaceutical business. Millions more are struggling with anxiety, stress, and depression and turning to pharmaceuticals for help with these problems as well. Could the answer lie in a mathematical algorithm? 

A large team of researchers, clinicians, mathematicians and musicians, led by Dr. Iakov Levine, have found a way to translate brain waves into music digitally with this algorithm. Using this computerized formula, researchers can use your brain waves to create a set of music to “activate” or to “relax” your brain. When you play the “relaxing” music on your brain CD, your brain tells your body it is time to relax. And when you cue up the “active” portion of the CD, your brain and your body are more alert. 

And now this treatment is being used world wide to treat depression, anxiety and insomnia. Using music to treat insomnia or anxiety isn’t really new. Music has always been used to “soothe the savage breast.” And researchers at the University of Toronto came up with the idea of individually tailored brain music. They created music that was uniquely suited or matched to a person’s brain waves. That music, when played, would cause that person’s anxiety levels to drop. They were then able to relax and sleep. 

But actually recording a person’s brain waves, and turning them into music is a new, cutting-edge technology. A private practitioner in New York City, Dr. Galina Mindlin, brought this treatment to the United States from Moscow, and holds exclusive rights for now in the United States. She says of this treatment, “Just as the brain is capable of recognizing sound, like a mom’s voice, or a child’s voice, it is capable of recognizing its own brain wave pattern, which is expressed in sounds.” Using an EEG to record the pattern of patients’ brain waves, a computer program then converts them into musical sounds.