This Special Music Helped Preemie Babies’ Brains Develop
Listening to music helped preterm babies' brains develop, according to the results of a new Swiss study.
Move over, Baby Einstein: New research from Switzerland shows that listening to soothing music in the first weeks of life helps encourage brain development in preterm babies.
For the study, the scientists recruited a harpist and a new-age musician to compose three pieces of music.
The Lowdown
Children who are born prematurely, between 24 and 32 weeks of pregnancy, are far more likely to survive today than they used to be—but because their brains are less developed at birth, they're still at high risk for learning difficulties and emotional disorders later in life.
Researchers in Geneva thought that the unfamiliar and stressful noises in neonatal intensive care units might be partially responsible. After all, a hospital ward filled with alarms, other infants crying, and adults bustling in and out is far more disruptive than the quiet in-utero environment the babies are used to. They decided to test whether listening to pleasant music could have a positive, counterbalancing effect on the babies' brain development.
Led by Dr. Petra Hüppi at the University of Geneva, the scientists recruited Swiss harpist and new-age musician Andreas Vollenweider (who has collaborated with the likes of Carly Simon, Bryan Adams, and Bobby McFerrin). Vollenweider developed three pieces of music specifically for the NICU babies, which were played for them five times per week. Each track was used for specific purposes: To help the baby wake up; to stimulate a baby who was already awake; and to help the baby fall back asleep.
When they reached an age equivalent to a full-term baby, the infants underwent an MRI. The researchers focused on connections within the salience network, which determines how relevant information is, and then processes and acts on it—crucial components of healthy social behavior and emotional regulation. The neural networks of preemies who had listened to Vollenweider's pieces were stronger than preterm babies who had not received the intervention, and were instead much more similar to full-term babies.
Next Up
The first infants in the study are now 6 years old—the age when cognitive problems usually become diagnosable. Researchers plan to follow up with more cognitive and socio-emotional assessments, to determine whether the effects of the music intervention have lasted.
The first infants in the study are now 6 years old—the age when cognitive problems usually become diagnosable.
The scientists note in their paper that, while they saw strong results in the babies' primary auditory cortex and thalamus connections—suggesting that they had developed an ability to recognize and respond to familiar music—there was less reaction in the regions responsible for socioemotional processing. They hypothesize that more time spent listening to music during a NICU stay could improve those connections as well; but another study would be needed to know for sure.
Open Questions
Because this initial study had a fairly small sample size (only 20 preterm infants underwent the musical intervention, with another 19 studied as a control group), and they all listened to the same music for the same amount of time, it's still undetermined whether variations in the type and frequency of music would make a difference. Are Vollenweider's harps, bells, and punji the runaway favorite, or would other styles of music help, too? (Would "Baby Shark" help … or hurt?) There's also a chance that other types of repetitive sounds, like parents speaking or singing to their children, might have similar effects.
But the biggest question is still the one that the scientists plan to tackle next: Whether the intervention lasts as the children grow up. If it does, that's great news for any family with a preemie — and for the baby-sized headphone industry.
Medical Tourism Is Booming, Fueled by High Costs and Slow Access
Bridget Snell traveled to Mexico to access an unapproved stem cell therapy for MS.
When Bridget Snell found out she had multiple sclerosis, she knew she would put up a fight. The 45 year-old mother of two, who lives in Duxbury, Mass., researched options to slow the progress of the disease. The methods she had been trying were invasive, often with side effects of their own.
An estimated 2.2 million Americans will travel abroad for medical care in 2020.
Then she stumbled upon autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (AHSCT), an experimental and controversial procedure that uses the patient's own stem cells to try to halt the progress of the disease. The FDA has not approved this procedure and last year issued a warning about unapproved stem cell therapies.
Despite the lack of established science, Snell weighed her options and decided she would undergo the procedure at Clinica Ruiz, a private clinic in Puebla, Mexico, which boasts of the largest volume of cases in the world using the procedure to treat MS. In April 2018, she went to Mexico for treatment, returned home in a month, and continues to do well.
But a positive outcome is far from assured, says Sheldon Krimsky, adjunct professor in the Department of Public Health and Community Medicine at the Tufts School of Medicine.
"Often you can't get a good sense of what the quality of treatment is in another country," Krimsky says, adding that many companies promise procedures whose results have not been clinically validated. "Unfortunately, people are very easily persuaded by hope."
Traveling for Medical Care
Snell is one of many Americans who have traveled abroad to access medical care. Patients Beyond Borders, a medical tourism consultancy, estimates that 2.2 million Americans will do so in 2020. A 2018 BCC report projected a five-year compounded annual industry growth rate of 13.2 percent. Adding to the demand is the aging population, which is expected to reach 95 million people by 2060 – nearly double the number in 2018.
While Snell traveled to Mexico to try a procedure that was not yet available in the United States, other patients do so for a variety of reasons, primarily cost and speed of access. For example, despite having "pretty good insurance coverage," Washington resident Soniya Gadgil needed dental procedures that would have cost thousands of dollars out-of-pocket. An India native, she decided to travel to Pune, India to visit her parents -- and while there, she got the two root canals and implant that she needed. Gadgil saved 60 percent on the final bill.
Leaving the country for medical care is not restricted to dental work or FDA-banned procedures either. Patients visit countries around the world — South America, Central America, and the Caribbean top the list — for a number of other problems, such as knee and hip replacements and bariatric operations. The most common procedures sought abroad are for dentistry, cosmetic surgery, and cardiac conditions.
Traveling abroad to access less expensive procedures is a damning indictment of healthcare delivery in the United States, says Dr. Leigh Turner, associate professor at the Center for Bioethics at the University of Minnesota. "We have people who are being forced out of the system because of high costs. Collectively it suggests a real structural problem in terms of the organization of healthcare in the United States," Turner says.
The Growth of the Online Marketplace
Nevertheless, medical tourism is booming and a number of online businesses now meet patients' demand for discovery and facilitation of medical care abroad, like PlanMyMedicalTrip.com, Doctoorum.com, and Wellness Travels.
Anurav Rane, CEO and Founder of PlanMyMedicalTrip.com, says the company presents each potential client with options, a la Expedia. A knee replacement in India costs $2,500, a significantly cheaper option even with a $1,110 round-trip airfare from the United States, Rane says. The average cost for an inpatient total knee replacement in the United States in 2019 was a little more $30,000.
Once the client chooses a specific procedure at a specific hospital, the company facilitates the necessary groundwork including the medical visa, tickets, hotel stay, booking the procedure and pre and post-op stay, and consults with the surgeons or doctors even before arrival. "The hassle of planning is on us," Rane says. Once patients are settled in the accommodations, they undergo the procedure.
Playing in the Legal Shadows
The online marketplace companies and the medical team execute an orchestrated dance – but what happens if the patient is harmed during or after the procedure?
Turner says that medical malpractice, if it occurs, can be difficult to pursue abroad. "There are countries where the courts are notoriously slow and it's very difficult to get any kind of meaningful action and settlements," he says, even if the claims have a legitimate basis.
The industry's biggest challenge is trust.
Snell signed a waiver absolving her surgeons in Mexico of any legal claims. But, she points out, that's standard process even for procedures in the United States. "I signed just as many waivers as I would going into any surgery [in the US]."
While that might well be true, Turner argues, Americans don't waive legal rights when they sign consent forms. "There are some protections for patients here in the United States."
Beyond U.S. Medical Tourism
As expected, it's not just Americans who travel abroad for medical care. Lithuania-based Wellness Travels sees a significant percentage of its clients from the EU. PlanMyMedicaltrip.com has 15,000 surgeons and doctors from 12 countries in its database. Egypt-based Doctoorum works with professionals in its own country and attracts clients from the Middle East. It is looking to expand to include doctors from Jordan and India, among other countries.
The term "tourism" is misleading here because it muddies the picture about what post-op should really look like, says Gediminas Kondrackis of Wellness Travels. "Unfortunately a lot of medical travel facilitators mislead their clients by advertising beach holiday packages and the like. Post-op is really about quiet recovery inside for a few days; being out in the sun is not advisable."
The industry's biggest challenge is trust. "The dentist I went to is actually a friend of mine who has a successful practice for several years," says Gadgil, the Washington resident who had dental work done in India. "I'd hesitate to go to someone I don't know or to a place I have no experience with." Her apprehensions are not unusual. After all, anxiety is an expected reaction to any surgery. Word-of-mouth, cost savings, and thorough research may alleviate some of these trust issues.
"I had natural apprehensions and would have had them had I gone up the road to Brigham and Women's (in Boston) just as I did over the border," Snell says, "but I had done my homework extensively. That took a lot of the fear out of it."
Medical tourism will only increase, predicts Kondrackis. "There is still a lot of room to grow. Higher numbers of medical travelers could help reduce the strain on local healthcare systems by reducing wait times and controlling costs."
While patients who have benefited from medical tourism swear by it, the best cure would be to start at home by establishing healthcare equity, Krimsky says.
On the flip side, says Turner, it is debatable whether medical tourism actually benefits host countries, where local residents might get priced out of procedures at these exclusive clinics. Even if laws in host countries such as India might mandate "charity care" for poorer local patients, that does not always happen, Turner says. The trickle-down theory that these more expensive clinics will broaden access to care is often a pipe dream, he adds.
While patients who have benefited from medical tourism swear by it, the best cure would be to start at home by establishing healthcare equity, Krimsky says. "Now if we had universal healthcare in the United States," he adds, "that would be an entirely different story."
Or maybe not. Rane, of PlanMyMedicalTrip.com, has observed an influx of patients to India from Canada, a country with universal healthcare.
The reason they say they travel for care? Long wait times for procedures.
The Fight Against Air Pollution Gets Personal With Sleek New Masks
The Atmos anti-pollution air mask will go on sale this summer.
Go outside, close your eyes, and inhale. Do your lungs fill with fresh air – or are you taking a big deep breath of nasty fumes?
A new crop of tech startups is emerging to meet a growing demand for individualized clean air.
It depends, of course, on where you live – and for many people, the situation is worsening. According to a recent analysis by two Carnegie Mellon economists, particulate air matter pollution rose 5.5 percent in the U.S. between 2016 and 2018, resulting in almost 10,000 premature deaths.
Despite the urgency of the problem, there seems to be no indication that civic leadership will be protecting our air any time soon. The United States left the Paris Agreement recently, Brazil is still letting the Amazon burn and Australia lacks a national strategy for tackling air pollution, despite its recent catastrophic bushfires. China's deceptive coronavirus communication only underscores the point that safeguarding the public's health can take a backseat to politics and power.
But people still need to breathe, and now a new crop of tech startups is emerging to meet a growing demand for individualized clean air. At the recent Consumer Electronics Show, I saw futuristic masks, smart goggles and self-contained apparatuses promising to filter the bad air away.
Obviously, a dollar store surgical mask wasn't going to cut it anymore.
"We have seen a huge amount of interest and a growing awareness of the issues with masks and respirators," says AO Air co-founder Dan Bowden. "The more regularly someone wears a mask or a respirator, the deeper our Atmos solution resonates with them. Leading markets have been Korea, China and, unexpectedly, Thailand."
Lined up for a Summer 2020 launch, the AO Air filter fits across your mouth from ear to ear – kind of like Geordi LaForge's Star Trek: The Next Generation eye sensors, but across your jaw line. The translucent mask continually pumps cool air for about 5 hours per charge and will cost $350 USD.
"Soon, we'll have private schools selling themselves on the air quality of the building."
"There is a movement towards individuals taking control over their own health, but also we see a great movement towards individuals taking control over the impacts that they have on the wider world," Bowden says. "We believe that the deeper systemic change has always come from humans working together and not being reliant upon high powers."
Bowden says the company wants to help the individual citizen, clean up the public building air ("factories, hospitals, workplaces") and, most interestingly, collect pollution metrics data via the masks. "We are looking forward to hearing how this information can be used in creative ways," Bowden adds. It is yet unclear how the data will be shared and how proprietary the information will be for AO Air and its competitors.
Scientific artist Michael Pinsky is taking a more experiential approach to raise awareness of the problem. In 2017, he launched traveling pollution pods, these giant, interconnected rooms recreating the air quality of several cities from London to Los Angeles. His exhibit has been on near constant tour, hitting the New York Climate Action Summit, the recent COP25 in Madrid, and other major events.
When I visited, I could handle being in the New Delhi air quality pod for only about 20 seconds. It made my eyes water and burn.
"Now you have new, 8 – 10 million British pound houses being built with premium air systems," Pinsky says. "Soon, we'll have private schools selling themselves on the air quality of the building." I mention my own children, whose schools we selected based on ratings and rankings. I could easily see "indoor air quality" being another metric. Perhaps another lever of privilege.
Pinsky gives a wily chuckle.
"The legislators have to get on top of it – or air will be privatized like space or our schools," he says.
"Clean air is a right," he adds. "Everyone should have it."