Abstract
Stroke is the second most common cause of death and major cause of disability worldwide. Hand motor dysfunction is a common impairment in stroke patients, as the cortical projection area of our fingers is large. Once it is damaged, it will be very difficult to restore the function, and has long been the focus and difficulty of stroke rehabilitation. Music- supported therapy in recent study was shown to induce improvements in motor skills in stroke survivors.
Objective: This study aimed at assessing the motor recovery of the affected hand induced by music-supported therapy in chronic stroke patients.
Methods: 14 patients with subcortical stroke, mild to moderately impaired hand function fulfilling the inclusion criteria were randomly assigned to the music group and control group. Both groups received keyboard (Yamaha) training for 30min, 20 times over 4 weeks in addition to conventional treatments. And the only difference between the two groups was that control group’s keyboard could not make any sound. They were trained in an intensive step by step training program. Patients were assessed by Wolf Motor Function Test before and after training.
Results: Both groups showed improvement in motor function assessed by Wolf Motor Function Test scores, and the improvement in music group was significantly better than that of the control group.
Conclusions: The music-supported training with sound can enhance the restoration of hand function much better than the training with no sound in which the music played an important role.
Introduction
Stroke is the second most common cause of death and major cause of disability worldwide [1]. The majority of patients suffering from a stroke have motor impairments, preventing them to live independently. Music therapy has been used to improve patients’ health in several domains, such as cognitive functioning, emotional development, social skills, and quality of life, by using music experiences such as free improvisation, singing, and listening to, discussing, and moving to music to achieve treatment goals. Music- supported therapy (MST) in recent studies has been used in the rehabilitation of stroke survivors with mild or moderate motor disfunction [2-7]. Most of the randomized controlled trial studies were interested in the gross motor function of affected upper extremities after stroke, and the results often showed greater improvements compared with other traditional rehabilitation therapies. But the affected hand function was not especially focused on. Hand motor dysfunction is a common impairment in stroke patients, as the cortical projection area of our fingers is large. Once it is damaged, it will be very difficult to restore the function, and has long been the focus and difficulty of stroke rehabilitation. So we wanted to find out what can music-supported therapy do to the affected hand function after stroke. Since the improvement of the upper extremities after music- supported training was demonstrate, we supposed that the affected hand function would also regain after certain MST programme. It is well known that repetitive practice is one of the basic elements of music supported therapy which can induce the recovery of motor function after stroke, and we would like to find out what the music itself played part in this new therapy.
TBI Rehabilitation 