perimenting with the therapeutic use of music during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As early as 1804, Edwin Atlee, wrote an essay in which he hoped to show that music, "has a powerful influence upon the mind, and consequently on the body." Modern music therapy began to develop in the 1940's when psychotherapists used music to calm anxious patients, and music therapy programs were established in several university psychology departments. The relatively new field of neuro-musicology has been developed to experiment with music as a tool and to dissect and shape it to the needs of society.
             The visible portion of the ear consists of an external shell, with an aperture known as the meatus or auditory canal in the lower half. At the other end of this canal, about an inch inside the head is a small membrane of skin about 3/1000 of an inch thick. This piece of skin is stretched tightly over a framework of bone much like skin is stretched over a frame of wood to make a drum, and hence the name eardrum. Just behind the eardrum lies a chain of three small bones known as ossicles. The first ossicle is in contact with the eardrum, and the last presses against the oval window that leads to the cochlea. The ossicles serve to amplify the tiny changes in air pressure. The oval window passes the motion on to the fluid inside the cochlea. The neural tissue in the cochlea lies on the basilar membrane. The basilar membrane holds the auditory receptors, tiny hair cells called cilia. Waves in the fluid of the ear stimulate the hair cells to send signals to through the thalamus to the temporal lobes of the brain.
             Sound reaches the ear in the form of waves which have traveled through the surrounding air. When the waves reach the ear, they exert varying pressures on the ear-drum and it is sent into motion. This motion is eventually detected by nerves and sent to the brain (as described above). The ear-drum is a remarkably sensitive instrumen...