Senior Gillian Gutierrez combined her passion for music and medicine for her Math and Science Academy senior project. According to Gutierrez’s research, music is used in many ways to heal the body and brain.
“I chose to do my project on this topic because I’ve had a lifelong passion for music, and am interested in going into the medical field. So, I decided to take elements of both and study music therapy,” Gutierrez said.
Music therapy is used in many different facilities around the United States to assist cancer, mental health and memory care patients. Gutierrez opened the presentation by singing and playing the guitar to “Party in the U.S.A.” by Miley Cyrus.
“Nearly every part of your brain lit up when you were singing that song,” Gutierrez said.
Gutierrez has done this with some of the memory care patients during her internship under Nicole Harney with Tidewater Music Therapy Practice. Most of the sessions open with a hello song, and close with a goodbye song. Gutierrez found that different patients responded to different music. For example, with the younger patients they used more popular songs; however, with the older patients they used songs from the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s.
Gutierrez has learned a lot in her time of researching this topic, but there was one key takeaway.
“My biggest takeaways from this project are all the soft skills I was able to refine as a result of the journey,” Gutierrez said. “I got better at time management, communication and gained experience working in a professional environment, which will be very helpful to me in the future.”
