Spotlight Symposium: Music Meets Medicine – Interdisciplinary Perspectives

This book explores how musical activities enhance health, well-being, and quality of life from interdisciplinary perspectives in musicology, neuroscience, and social sciences. It presents scientific foundations for using music therapeutically in clinical and everyday contexts. A wide range of activities—listening, making music, singing, and dancing—are shown to support prevention, treatment, and rehabilitation across diverse target groups, preferences, and health conditions. The volume also discusses music’s role during the COVID-19 pandemic and addresses risks arising from maladaptive musical behaviours.

www.springer.com

The Austrian Society for Music and Medicine (ÖGfMM) promotes research, education, and collaboration in music, medicine, physiology, and psychology, focusing on the health and well-being of performing artists. Its project “The Future of Youth Orchestra (TFOYO)” supports young musicians through VR training, stress monitoring, and hearing protection, fostering resilience and artistic growth. Explore free, sustainable learning and research resources at tfoyo.eu

www.oegfmm.at

Why might memory for music be spared in patients with dementia despite loss of other cognitive functions? Can we scaffold other types of memory through training memory for music? In this short talk, an ongoing study will be presented which is aimed to provide answers to these questions.

www.memory4music.net

This presentation will offer an easy-to-understand overview of contemporary, science-based insights into the causes and mechanisms relevant to induce myofascial pain syndromes in musicians. The multi-professional team 'PHilFit' will be introduced and the roles of its members in the context of preventive and therapeutic-rehabilitative interventions discussed. 

The multinational research project “Fighting addictions, improving lives: Comprehensive drug rehabilitation with music” (FALCO) connects the strength of a randomised controlled trial with the benefits of neurosciences and qualitative approaches – together for more scientific evidence, improved applicability of research results, and their appropriateness for the target group.

www.mdw.ac.at

An interdisciplinary, inclusion-oriented university projekt between the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna and the Medical University of Vienna, in which students of Instrumental Pedagogy and students of Propaedeutic Course in Medical Humanities work together under the guidance of the seminar leader to conduct practical music-based small group interactions with long-term patients in pediatric hemato-oncology. This educational institution implements the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which guarantees the right to the highest possible education, and implements the Index for Inclusion. Empirical research is being conducted to contribute to the topic of music-making in a hospital context. 

www.cccp.meduniwien.ac.at

This 10-minute talk offers an overview of where to seek support for mental health and introduces key topics from mental training and sport psychology that are especially relevant for musicians — such as focus, performance pressure, relaxation, and mental resilience.

www.leonhard-koenigseder.com

The Comprehensive Center for Musculoskeletal Disorders has set itself the task of establishing an interdisciplinary outpatient clinic to provide the best possible care for high performers in the fields of music and the performing arts. Subsequently, questionnaires will be used to systematically record the respective clinical pictures in order to identify and apply the most effective forms of therapy.

www.ccmsd.meduniwien.ac.at

Music accompanies our lives and is undoubtedly nice to have, but does music also have healing effects? Stefan Willich provides an overview of the tradition, scientific basis, and health-promoting potential of music therapy. 

‚Art of healing’, a former term for ‚medicine’, describes the different, holistic approach of TCM to illness in respect to western medicine. Based on the concept of ’Qi flow’, the treatment of pain syndromes by acupuncture changes the energy flow in the meridians and body. Like listening or playing to music may do.

www.tcm-sportsmedicine.info