The Healing Power of Sound
Israel is a leader in medical innovation, contributing groundbreaking research and life-saving technology, particularly (though not limited to) imaging, cancer treatment, and trauma care.
An Israeli ‘start-up’ piqued my interest as an audiologist and someone who’s married to an amazing psychotherapist. My wife has been regaling me about the amazing treatments she’s been learning and using with her clients, such as EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques), EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing)/Flash Technique, and Brainspotting.
Some sobering statistics. One in four people worldwide has a mental health condition. In low- and middle-income countries, about 80 percent of people with severe mental health disorders receive zero treatment. None. The World Health Organization (WHO) puts the cost of depression and anxiety alone at a trillion dollars a year in lost productivity.
Psychotherapy treatments that actually work require trained therapists working with individuals for weeks, months or even years. Something the world is in very short supply of.
How can a phone app help?
Our autonomic nervous system (ANS) regulates involuntary body processes (heart rate, blood pressure, breathing, digestion, etc.), maintaining balance through three distinct but intertwined systems (sympathetic/SNS, parasympathetic/PNS, enteric/ENS). The SNS, our “fight or flight” nerve response, and PNS, our “rest and digest” response, are ‘antagonistic’ or opposites. Long after a traumatic event or a physical injury heals, the body may keep responding to ‘threats’ that aren’t there anymore. The nervous system never receives the “all-clear” memo. PTSD, chronic insomnia, anxiety disorders all exhibit this ‘excited’ SNS state. The body needs PNS time.
A good indicator of the current state of our nervous system, apparently, is how we speak. Stress/anxiety involuntarily tightens vocal cords, shifts pitch, changes cadence, producing physiological signatures encoded in sound. New research published by the American Psychiatric Association recognizes voice biomarkers as an emerging tool for mental health assessment. Therapeutically, vibroacoustic therapy (VAT) goes back 50+ years, backed up by reams of research.
A senior physician specializing in pain management/rehabilitation and a musician/sound engineer/psychotherapist (already doing VAT via really expensive equipment) collaborated to create TuneMe, an app designed to address stress, improve sleep, and generally improve quality of life using only a smartphone and headphones. There are other digital therapeutic/wellness companies. None use personal biomarkers to deliver unique, individualized AI-based adaptive neuroacoustic treatment.
TuneMe analyzes your own vocal biomarkers from a simple 10-second sample to assess your overall ANS state. Based on this analysis, the app generates personalized vibroacoustic sound frequencies designed to positively stimulate the vagus nerve — the body’s relaxation central highway.
The vagus nerve, tenth of the 12 major cranial nerves, is the longest major nerve in your body, running from brainstem to butt, touching nearly every major organ along the way. It’s the central highway of your PNS. When it’s firing properly, heart rate drops, breathing slows, cortisol decreases. I’ve unfortunately experienced when it isn’t. The sound of a soup spoon on the side of a bowl was antagonistic!
You see, your auditory nerve is the eighth major cranial nerve (auditory/vestibular) which connects directly to the vagus nerve, sending signals straight into this highway. Research has shown that stimulating the vagus nerve through the eighth nerve can increase helpful parasympathetic activity, shifting the body’s autonomic balance toward calm.
TuneMe uses your own voice to determine your current autonomic state, then AI generates sound calibrated to your nervous system in that specific moment, adapting over time and learning your patterns to refine the response.
Their recent initial study enrolled 24 participants (a small sample size) with PTSD and insomnia, including war evacuees displaced from their homes. The results were impressive though: 100% reduction in high-stress physiological states, a 262% increase in physiological rest time, and statistically significant improvements across PTSD, depression, and anxiety metrics.
To be very clear, I’m in no way saying a phone app replaces actual psychotherapy. This is a tool, a band-aid if you will. But incredibly promising with effectively easy unlimited global access. Lord knows, we need all the effective tools we can find.
Please continue to show that you love your community by supporting our local businesses and remembering the humanity of those around you.
