‘Heal­ing via the senses’ is the pre­domi­nant theme of the day. There­fore, in the first part of my talk, I would like to try to give you an un­der­stand­ing of the po­ten­tial of our sen­sory or­gan, the ear, as a ma­jor medi­cal in­flu­ence. In the sec­ond part, I will then con­cen­trate on the spe­cial theme of the first half of the morn­ing: the ap­pli­ca­tion of Medi­cal Reso­nance Ther­apy Mu­sic in sci­en­tific medi­cine.


First, we will take the ex­tent of the ear’s medi­cal in­flu­ence,

for which I would like to cite a prac­ti­cal ex­ample which oc­curs daily. A doc­tor is called to an emer­gency in a dis­co­theque, and di­ag­no­ses an acute cir­cu­la­tory dis­or­der: dis­tur­bances of the blood sup­ply in toes and fin­gers, pale skin, high blood pres­sure and dis­tur­bances of the car­diac rhythm – the cause: over­load­ing the brain with too loud and un­natu­rally struc­tured mu­sic. The brain has not been able to with­stand the mas­sive as­sault of cha­otic bio­elec­tro­mag­netic sig­nals from the ear, its own func­tions are im­paired and, as a re­sult, it is un­able to main­tain regu­la­tion of the or­gan­ism: the disco-goer be­comes an emer­gency medi­cal case.

The ex­ample clearly shows: via the ear and its neu­ral con­nec­tions to the brain, mu­sic has an im­me­di­ate physio­logi­cal ef­fect on our en­tire or­gan­ism. The ear and the mu­sic can be abused from a health point of view – as in the case above – or, how­ever, ex­ploited for re­in­forc­ing the health, as in the case of Medi­cal Reso­nance Ther­apy Mu­sic.

Our ear as­sumes a spe­cial status in our or­gan­ism in nu­mer­ous re­spects. Of all the or­gans in our body, it is the first to de­velop to its full size: still within the mother’s womb, our in­ner ear has reached its full size by the time it is four months old and, by this time, it has al­ready be­gun to func­tion, be­com­ing for the foe­tus the first bridge for ex­peri­ences from the out­side world.

The ear con­verts in­com­ing sound waves into bio­elec­tro­mag­netic sig­nals, which it trans­mits to the cere­bral cor­tex.

Thus, whilst still in the womb, the ear al­ready sup­plies the brain with bio­elec­tro­mag­netic en­ergy and or­ders of im­pulse se­ries, and to­day some re­search­ers say that this has a de­fini­tive role in de­ter­min­ing the fur­ther matu­ra­tion of the brain.

The audi­tory nerve is the first nerve to be­come fully op­era­tional and, within the nerv­ous sys­tem, is also the nerve which gen­er­ally main­tains its func­tion to the last.

When all other brain func­tions have ceased to react to ex­ter­nal stimu­la­tion and no longer show any rec­og­niz­able signs of life, this nerve can still be func­tion­ing and in­di­cate to the doc­tor that the per­son is still alive.

The au­di­olo­gist Pro­fes­sor Tomatis from Paris has shown very well that the ear is a kind of en­ergy cen­ter for our brain. As such, our hear­ing has the task of sup­ply­ing our cere­bral cor­tex with en­ergy – simi­lar to the way in which a dy­namo charges up a car’s bat­tery. In or­der to live, our brain needs sugar and oxy­gen, but with that alone it is still far from be­ing able to think.

For this func­tion, it needs a dif­fer­ent kind of sus­te­nance: in­vigo­rat­ing stim­uli, which reach it from all of the sen­sory or­gans as the con­duc­tion of elec­tri­cal po­ten­tials. The most im­por­tant sen­sory or­gan for this is our ear, which is in­volved in the sup­ply of around 90% of the en­ergy for our cere­bral cor­tex!

Now the bio­elec­tro­mag­netic im­pulses which ema­nate from the sen­sory or­gans and ar­rive at the cere­bral cor­tex are of ab­so­lutely de­ci­sive sig­nifi­cance for cross-link­ing the brain cells into cir­cuits. If, dur­ing cer­tain pe­ri­ods of growth, these im­pulses fail or if they are re­duced in qual­ity, cer­tain cross-link­ing will ei­ther be re­stricted or will not take place at all.

By way of ac­knowl­edg­ing the sig­nifi­cance of the brain for our health, I would like to quote Hippocrates, who said: ‘Let it be known, your ill­nesses and your health, your sad­ness and your joys – all of them come from your brain.’

Ger­many’s lead­ing ex­po­nent of psy­cho­so­matic medi­cine – Vik­tor von Weizsaecker – es­tab­lished four dec­ades ago: ‘A hu­man be­ing re­sponds to an ex­peri­ence with which he is un­able to cope, with ill­ness. Body and soul can rep­re­sent one an­other. The body speaks, when the soul is no longer able to do so.’ This also ex­plains why a happy per­son be­comes ill less often and re­cu­per­ates more quickly than the mis­an­thrope does.

Thus, via the senses, we have di­rect ac­cess to the cen­tral nerv­ous sys­tem. The bio­elec­tro­mag­netic im­pulses have an ef­fect on the cen­tral nerv­ous sys­tem, for one via their en­ergy lev­els and for an­other via their struc­ture. Re­search must have re­gard to both as­pects.