Skip to main content
University of Nebraska Omaha logo University of Nebraska Omaha
APPLY MY UNO DIRECTORY

Students Faculty Staff Community
APPLY MY UNO DIRECTORY
Students Faculty Staff Community
  • About
    About UNO
    • Leadership
    • Mission and Strategic Plan
    • Accreditation
    • Our City: Omaha
    • Facts & Figures
    • News
    • Events
    • Organizational Units
    • Campus Safety
    • Buildings and Maps
    Get Started
    • Apply
    • Campus Visit
    • Contact Us
    Front view of UNO's ASH building
    Get Started Today

    Apply Now
  • Academics
    Majors and Programs
    • Undergraduate Programs
    • Master's Programs
    • Doctoral Programs
    • International Programs
    • Online Programs
    • Class Search
    Colleges
    • College of Arts and Sciences
    • College of Business Administration
    • College of Communication, Fine Arts and Media
    • College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences
    • College of Information Science & Technology
    • College of Public Affairs and Community Service
    • Graduate Studies
    Resources
    • Catalogs
    • Academic Calendar
    • Library
    • Advising
    • Academic Affairs
    • Registrar
    • Academic Support
    • Request Transcript
    Top view glance of calendar showing August 2024
    Deadlines Are Approaching

    View year-at-a-glance calendars that include term start and end dates, and school holidays.

    Academic Calendar
  • Cost & Aid Backback to Main menu
    • Undergraduate Tuition
    • Graduate Tuition
    • Financial Support
    • Cost of Attendance
    • Undergraduate Scholarships
    • All Scholarship Information
    • Military and Veterans Benefits
    • Consumer Information
  • Admissions
    Get Started
    • Apply
    • Complete Your FAFSA
    • Schedule a Campus Visit
    • Request Info
    Admitted Students
    • Orientation
    • Enrollment Deposit
    • Transcripts
    • UNO 101
    • New Student & Family Events
    Cost & Aid
    • Undergraduate Tuition
    • Graduate Tuition
    • Financial Aid
    • Cost of Attendance
    • Scholarships
    • Military and Veterans Benefits
    • Consumer Information
    Admissions
    • Undergraduate Admissions
    • Transfer Students
    • Graduate Admissions
    Students walking together on campus for a tour
    Visit UNO's Campus

    Schedule a Tour
  • Student Life
    Campus Life
    • Event Calendar
    • Athletics
    • Campus Dining
    • Student Housing
    • Campus Recreation
    • Milo Bail Student Center
    • Parking and Transportation
    • Campus Safety
    Involvement and Leadership
    • Student Organizations
    • Student Government
    • Career Services and Internships
    • Spirit and Tradition
    • Student Leadership, Involvement, and Inclusion
    Support
    • Academic Support
    • Maverick Advising Center
    • Accessibility
    • Durango's Advancement & Support Hub (DASH)
    • Student Service
    • Student Safety
    Resources
    • Health Services
    • Military-Connected Resources
    • Student Conduct and Community Standards
    • Division of Student Life and Wellbeing
    Students participating in a beading craft activity
    Get Involved on Campus

    See Events Calendar
  • Engagement
    Students
    • Student Service and Leadership Collaborative
    • Find Volunteer Opportunities
    • Maverick Food Pantry
    • Voter Information
    • Internship Opportunities
    • Career Services
    • Student Resources
    • Become an Engaged Scholar
    Faculty and Staff
    • Faculty Senate
    • Center for Faculty Excellence
    • Staff Advisory Council
    • Faculty Resources
    • Engaged Research
    • Service Learning Academy
    • Community-Based Learning Courses
    Community
    • Campus Resources
    • Service Learning Academy
    • Samuel Bak Museum: The Learning Center
    • Promote Volunteer Opportunities
    • Promote Internship Opportunities
    • Rent Office Space
    • Senior Passport Program
    • Community Engagement Partnership Initiative
    Office of Engagement
    • Connect to Campus
    • Barbara Weitz Community Engagement Center
    • Service Learning Academy
    • Rent Office Space
    • Samuel Bak Museum: The Learning Center
    • Partner With Us
    • Senior Passport Program
    • Nebraska Business Development Center
    • Community Partners on Campus
    Student volunteering with a food bank
    Connect with Us

    Contact the Office of Engagement
  • Research
    Student
    • Research and Creative Activity Fair
    • Graduate Research (GRACA)
    • Student Conference Travel Fund
    • Undergraduate Scholarly Experience (FUSE) Fund
    Faculty
    • Grant Databases
    • External Funding
    • Awards and Committees
    • Office of Sponsored Programs
    Research at UNO
    • Office of Research and Creative Activity
    • Research News
    • Centers and Institutes
    Students giving presentations on research projects
    UNO Pushes Innovation Forward

    Read UNO Research News
  • Athletics
    Men's Teams
    • Baseball
    • Basketball
    • Golf
    • Hockey
    • Soccer
    • Swimming & Diving
    • Tennis
    Women's Teams
    • Basketball
    • Cross Country
    • Golf
    • Soccer
    • Softball
    • Swimming & Diving
    • Tennis
    • Track & Field
    • Volleyball
    Game Day Resources
    • Purchase Tickets
    • Team Schedules
    • Buy Maverick Gear
    Baxter Arena
    • Calendar
    • Tickets
    • Directions & Parking
    • Clear Bag Policy
    • Public Skating
    Hockey player walking out on the ice arena
    Cheer on our Mavericks!

    Buy Tickets
  • Alumni Backback to Main menu
    • Alumni
    • Transcripts
    • Thompson Center
  1. UNO
  2. News
  3. 2015
  4. November
  5. UNO Magazine: "Sound Health"

UNO Magazine: "Sound Health"

UNO researchers explore the ways music helps us heal

  • contact: Rick Davis
  • search keywords:
  • UNO Magazine
  • research
  • music
UNO Jazz Band

Members of the UNO Jazz Band performing in Roskens Hall

The story below appears in the Fall 2015 Edition of UNO Magazine.


Doctor, doctor, give me the news … 
music can help chase away your blues.

And soothe the nerves of patients, sharpen the focus of surgeons and improve movement in the elderly or those suffering from neuromuscular disorders.

UNO researchers in several disciplines are exploring the connection between what we hear and how we heal.

That includes Mary Perkinson, an assistant professor of music at UNO and a concert violinist who has performed with the Omaha and Madison, Wis., symphonies and toured internationally with the Broadway musical The King and I. Perkinson developed the Sound Health program while a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The award-winning program has musicians from UW performing in public spaces at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Hospital.

“Patients said that it made them feel less anxious during their wait time to see the doctor,” Perkinson says.

She tells the story of one patient in her 60s who normally took anti-anxiety medication before visits to her ear, nose and throat doctor. The music had a dramatic effect on her stress levels.

“She told me she didn’t need to take it (the medication) because she felt so calm from 
the music.”

 Patient

Perkinson initiated the program at UW in 2010 after visiting her father-in-law at the Cleveland Clinic as he awaited surgery. “I had not spent much time at hospitals, and it was very stressful,” she recalls.

Leaving the room to get something to eat, she heard the relaxing sounds of a harpist playing in the hospital’s atrium. An audience of doctors, hospital staff and patients, joined by family and friends, had gathered to listen. 
“I felt really inspired and moved by that experience, and I wanted to be on the giving end of something like that.”

Perkinson joined the UNO faculty in the fall of 2014 and started a similar project in Omaha this past spring —  launching a pilot program at CHI Health Bergan Mercy Medical Center.

The result was four performances at the hospital — with presentations ranging from percussion and string ensembles to piano music — that involved 21 UNO students.

“The students were really excited about it,” Perkinson says. “It gives them a chance to perform in a welcoming environment and to contribute to the community.”

Katelyn Kukoly of Fremont, Neb., who is studying violin performance and music education at UNO, enjoyed the unique setting.

“It was cool being in a hospital, somewhere completely different,” Kukoly says. “Everyone seemed to really appreciate the music.”

Kukoly, who also plays violin in a local rock band, performed in the lobby of the hospital with two other UNO music students for about an hour. She played duets with a cellist, while the third student also played the violin.

The hospital’s staff was grateful to have the students perform.

“Sound Health’s mission to enrich the hospital environment for patients, community and staff through live music is a perfect complement to our hospital’s healing ministry,” says Cheryl Morehouse, volunteer and guest services manager and healing arts ministry coordinator at Bergan. “As a musician myself [flute and piano], I also understand the value of live performances being extended to participating students. It’s a win-win situation.”

Morehouse says feedback comments included “That just made my day!” and “Brightened my whole week!”

This fall, Perkinson plans to partner again with CHI Health Bergan Mercy Medical Center and add Children’s Hospital and Medical Center.


Every Step You Take, Every Move You Make

Don McLean dug those rhythm and blues in American Pie, but the Go-Go’s more accurately sum up UNO professor Nick Stergiou’s research on music’s influence on human gait with the group’s 1982 hit We Got the Beat.

Stergiou, director of the Biomechanics Research Building at UNO, has been studying the influence of auditory signals on human gait. This research holds potential for improving the gait of patients suffering from neuromuscular disorders and for older individuals who are experiencing deteriorating gait.

Stergiou and his team conducted trials in which subjects were fitted with headphones and listened to Beethoven’s Fur Elise while walking around an indoor track at UNO. The subjects wore an electronic device to measure their strides.

Researchers then manipulated the beat of the music — from random (white noise) to predictable (brown noise) to somewhere in between (pink noise).

What did they find?

“We believe that not all auditory signals are created equal,” Stergiou says. He references a theory of aesthetic value developed by the late American mathematician George David Birkhoff that basically states that a work of art is pleasing if it is neither too regular and predictable nor packs too many surprises.

The same is true for healthy human gait, Stergiou says.

“When you walk, every step that you make is not exactly the same as the previous one,” he says. “If every step that you take is extremely repetitious, that is not good for you. You are like a robot. On the other hand, if you walk all over the place, you’re kind of like a drunken sailor.”

The healthy human gait is somewhere in between — most like the pink noise. Stergiou’s hope is that his team could help individuals suffering from an irregular gait — perhaps due to Parkinson’s disease or a stroke — by having them walk to this pink noise that mimics healthy gait.

“We found that you are actually capable of following this (music pattern),” Stergiou says. “We found that elderly people with compromised gait who walk to music with a pink-noise beat exhibit gait that is similar to healthy people.”

The specific song or music genre doesn’t particularly matter — it’s the rhythm or the nonrandom, 
nonpredictable beat.

“It’s not Fur Elise, itself, it is the distance between the beats which is very important,” Stergiou says. “We believe if you train with this structure, in terms of the beats, that will eventually be good for you … and help you walk better in the future.”


Surgery Sounds

Music — as UNO’s Perkinson notes — can help 
patients relax, but its effect doesn’t have to be limited to the waiting room. Music often blares in the operating room, too.

And it turns out that Bob Marley and Snoop Dogg might help surgeons best.

A study published in 2010 by UNO researchers found that music has a beneficial effect on surgical performance. The study tested medical students in performing two surgical tasks that required significant dexterity and coordination: suture tying and mesh alignment using the da Vinci robotic surgical system.

The students, who had limited experience with the system, performed the study with no music and while listening to songs representing four different genres — jazz, classical, hip-hop and Jamaican. The genres were selected based on interviews with surgeons on the music most commonly heard in operating rooms.

What did they find?

All participants performed the surgical tasks more efficiently and effectively while listening to music. And the most significant improvements came when they were listening to hip-hop and Jamaican music — music with high rhythmicity.

That didn’t come as much of a surprise to Stergiou.

“Again, we are talking about rhythmicity. That is important. The rhythm is very, very important. That could be a common denominator with the other study (on gait).”

The principal investigator for the study was Ka-Chun “Joseph” Siu, who then was a postdoctoral student working with Stergiou. He now is an assistant professor in physical therapy at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.

Kirk Hutton, a former two-time Academic All-American football player at UNO who now is an orthopaedic surgeon at OrthWest in Omaha, says he listens to music in the operating room.

“My ‘go to’ is country and then some old rock and pop stuff,” Hutton says. “I find that it helps me concentrate more. If a room gets too quiet, I feel like the tension goes up. With music in the background, I tend to be able to concentrate and focus a little more.”

Hutton, a 1984 UNO biology graduate, estimates that 90 percent of the surgeons at the orthopaedic hospital listen to some type of music. Hutton says he performs about 15 surgeries per week; he specializes in shoulder surgeries. Often he’ll consult with his OR team — which usually includes four other individuals — before selecting the music.

“The nurses have a list of what the doctors like to listen to,” he says. “Mine says country. But a lot of times, I’ll go around the room and ask the anesthesiologist or the nurses, ‘What do you want to listen to?’ So we kind of pass it around a little bit.

“But they all know if a case gets tough or technical, we’ll need to turn the radio back to country.”

For those in the waiting room, classical sounds are what soothe. For those struggling to walk, the Go-Go’s might help them go-go.

Sound choices for sound health.

  • News Sections:
  • UNO News Center
  • Maverick Daily
  • The Bullseye
  • Campus Events

News Sections

  • News Center
  • Maverick Daily
  • The Bullseye
  • Campus Events

Featured Stories

  • 4,500 Students Named to UNO Dean’s and Chancellor’s Lists
  • UNO Hosts Ceremonial Groundbreaking for $17.1 Million Biomechanics Addition
  • UNO Celebrated Over 2,000 New Graduates at May 2025 Commencement
  • Terence “Bud” Crawford’s Commencement Knockout at UNO

Contact Us

If you have a story idea, news tip, or other question, please email the UNO News team at unonews@unomaha.edu.

About the Office of Strategic Marketing and Communications (MarComm)

Next Steps

  • Visit UNO
  • Request Information
  • Apply for Admission
  • The UNO Advantage
  • Our City (Omaha)

Just For You

  • Future Students
  • Current Students
  • Work at UNO
  • Faculty and Staff
  • A-Z List

Popular Services and Resources

  • my.unomaha.edu
  • Academic Calendar
  • Campus Buildings & Maps
  • Library
  • Pay Your Bill
  • Course Catalogs
  • Internships & Career Development
  • The Maverick Store
  • MavCARD Services
  • Military-Connected Resource Center
  • Speech Center
  • Writing Center
  • Human Resources
  • Center for Faculty Excellence

Affiliates

  • University of Nebraska System
  • NU Foundation
  • Buffett Early Childhood Institute
  • Daugherty Water for Food Institute
  • National Strategic Research Institute
  • Peter Kiewit Institute
  • Rural Prosperity Nebraska
  1. University Policies
  2. Privacy Statement
  3. Accessibility
  1. 402.554.2800

University of Nebraska Omaha
University of Nebraska Omaha, 6001 Dodge Street, Omaha, NE, 68182
  • ©  
  • Emergency Information Alert
  • MavsReport

Social Media


Omaha Skyline

Our Campus. Otherwise Known as Omaha.

The University of Nebraska does not discriminate based on race, color, ethnicity, national origin, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, disability, age, genetic information, veteran status, marital status, and/or political affiliation in its education programs or activities, including admissions and employment. The University prohibits any form of retaliation taken against anyone for reporting discrimination, harassment, or retaliation for otherwise engaging in protected activity. Read the full statement.