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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (AP)
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| By Associated Press January 11, 2006 |
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Ariel Sharon's sons have been playing Mozart and Israeli folk tunes by their ailing father's bedside, hoping he'll show some reaction, however faint.
Music can be an effective tool in stirring patients who've undergone traumas such as the Israeli leader's stroke. some experts say.
Sharon, who suffered a massive stroke last Wednesday, is known to be a lover of classical music. His sons, Omri and Gilad, have been playing it for him at the behest of doctors, said Ron Krumer, an official at Hadassah hospital.
Aside from Mozart, Sharon is listening to one of his favorite Israeli songs, "The King's Bride," an ode to Israel by folk singer Rivka Zohar. In an interview with Channel 2 on Tuesday, Zohar said she was honored and hoped her music would help the prime minister recover.
"I think there is something even in an unconscious man that is still awake. I am not a doctor but I think warmth and goodwill will help a lot. A song can't harm, it can only help," she said.
Experts agreed.
"There is evidence of people emerging from comas and saying they remember the music" played to them, said Dr. Dorit Amir, who directs Israel's only college-level music therapy department, at Bar-Ilan University outside Tel Aviv.
Amir defines music therapy as "the conscious application of music and its elements such as rhythm, melody and harmony in order to achieve therapeutic goals" such as healing the sick.
The music of Mozart is said to be particularly therapeutic. Some researchers have posited that listening to Mozart can actually increase brain development in children under three, a controversial finding dubbed the "Mozart effect."
Amir said music often helps post-comatose patients recover and sometimes is used with those in Sharon's comatose condition as well. She insisted music can enter the soul and "wake one up."
"Of course, we all hope he (Sharon) recovers from this, and if he does it will be very interesting to ask him" if he remembers the music, she said.
Just this week, doctors in West Virginia tried to bring the critically injured sole survivor of a coal mine explosion out of his medically induced coma by playing him his favorite music, including Metallica and Hank Williams Jr.
Yuval Naveh, an Israeli occupational therapist, told Channel 2 that people he had worked with following strokes responded positively to Mozart and also to their personal favorites. The fact that Sharon's favorite composer was Mozart could have a "double effect," he said.
If that doesn't help, Avi Yaffe, a soldier who served under Sharon in the 1973 Yom Kippur war, sent the prime minister's secretary a recording he saved of radio traffic from that war - hoping Sharon would recall one of his finest hours.
"I don't know the state of his brain, but if there is something that can wake him, this is it," he said.
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