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While 99% of the time I'm a director of photography, sometimes I get to produce and direct. Like the segment "Soothing with Music"
Oliver Sacks, a neurologist and a fine writer. His book AWAKENINGS was made into a film with Robert DeNiro, and Robin Williams played Sacks. Another book deals music and the brain, MUSICOPHILIA.
Sacks explains the human brain's plasticity, its ability to repair itself, to adapt to circumstances such as stroke. Music can help guide a patient to a higher quality of life.
But not just any music.
No, it has to be music that is especially meaningful to the patient. For most of us, the most meaningful music of our lives is what we loved when we were teenagers and young adults.
So, for someone born in the 1920's, it could be the music of Tin Pan Alley. For me, it would probably be the Beatles.
After reading MUSICOPHILIA, I was offered a job filming a story about an Alzheimer's patient named Eleanor, and her benefiting from music therapy at the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function, coincidentally founded by Dr Sacks and Dr Consetta Tomaino.
 A music therapist working with Alzheimer's patients must be a detective of sorts -- the therapist must figure out what were the important songs for a given patient. Often the patient can't speak, can't tell the therapist "You know, if you played 'When Irish Eyes Are Smiling,' I'd be able to sing along with you." So the therapist has to make some educated guesses.
It was remarkable, the change that comes over these patients when they hear and sing to music. The brain goes through remarkable changes when music therapy is present.
Eleanor, the woman I filmed, had been suffering from Alzheimer's -- she was paranoid, agitated, afraid, and had physically attacked members of her family. Once the music therapy began, her behavior changed. She was much calmer, happier, and her son and daughter-in-law were grateful for getting back someone they loved.
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