This spring, when COVID-19 spread perniciously around the world, many people turned to music for comfort. They organized virtual benefit concerts, sang from their balconies, and wrote both humorous and poignant songs about hand washing, physical separation, and other facets of pandemic existence.
“We’re all dealing with this very stressful and traumatizing situation, and music is universally accepted as something helpful during these periods,” says Nikki Haddad, an incoming BWH psychiatry resident who received her MD this May from Brown University’s Warren Alpert Medical School.
In a 2018 research on the neurobiological impacts of music on the brain, Silbersweig and BWH psychiatry colleague Samata Sharma, MD, described the immensely intricate process by which we are able to perceive a series of sounds as music. The process begins with…
