[WEB SITE] Taking music therapy into the mainstream – ACNR

Taking music therapy into the mainstream

Posted in on 3rd Jun 2018

Conference details: March 15th, 2018, London, UK.
Report by: Daniel Thomas, Joint Managing Director at Chroma.
Conflict of interest statement: None declared.
Published online: 3/6/18

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Every 90 seconds, someone in the UK is admitted to hospital with an Acquired Brain Injury.

With over one million people in the UK currently living with the effects of a brain injury the estimated bill to the UK is £15 billion. The devastating impact radiates across families causing distress, relationship strain, financial hardship and an uncertain future. The injury has a huge physical and psychological payload.

Neurologic Music Therapy (NMT) offers an effective rehabilitation treatment that is backed by a wealth of clinical evidence and has been shown to have a profound influence on the brain. However, raising awareness of the benefits of arts therapies, including NMT, can be extremely difficult.

Chroma’s recent ABI conference entitled ‘Arts Therapies and Brain Injury: Optimising Outcomes Across Assessment, Treatment and Care’ brought together some of the leading international authorities and influencers in the arts therapies field. They delivered the latest research and scientific evidence on how arts therapies are improving outcomes for patients recovering from acquired brain injuries.

Chris Bryant, MP, and chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Acquired Brain Injury opened the conference by highlighting the growing problem of brain injuries and the wider impact it has on society.

Caroline Klage, Head of the Child Brain Injury Team at leading niche London law firm, Bolt Burdon Kemp, who sponsored the conference, welcomed the delegates.

She said: “As a firm, Bolt Burdon Kemp is keen to support NMT and raise awareness of its benefits. We are driven by the desire to ensure our clients receive the best quality input at the earliest point possible, with a view of enabling them to flourish and thrive post brain injury. NMT definitely has a role to play in that.”

Dr Jeanette Tamplin, of the University of Melbourne, provided an introduction to the evolving field of the creative arts therapies, specifically Neurologic Music Therapy. Dr Tamplin is pioneering the use of Virtual Reality to improve the participation and engagement of rehab patients on music therapy protocols.

“Music can bypass damaged areas, providing a scaffold to do the part of the work the brain is not doing in coordinating movement. But there is also the basic ‘use it or lose it principle’. When you exercise something, it gets stronger and the more you exercise, the better it becomes.”

The inspiring responses seen in some cases still needs to be backed up by more clinical research and Dr Tamplin added: “I want people to understand that we are an evidence-based profession and there are functional outcomes from music therapy.

“There are amazing benefits for quality of life and participating in life as well as being able to walk a bit better. Music makes us feel better and we use it in ways to help us through life but I’d like people to understand the research and evidence behind what we are doing.”

Sarah Johnson, a Neurologic Music Therapist and NMT pioneer from Colorado State University, presented a session on demonstrating the efficacy of NMT. She outlined the ‘Transformational Design Model’ a system that uses a clinical reasoning process to link assessments, goals, and learning through music.

Using case studies, video examples and clinical data, Sarah O’Doherty and Rebecca O’Connor, from the National Rehabilitation Hospital in Ireland, illustrated an innovative approach to assessing and treating children with acquired brain injuries. The approach involves a systematic observation and recording of the development of the child by a neuropsychologist during a music therapy treatment.

Practical hands-on workshops on applications in neuro-rehabilitation and articulating art therapy allowed delegates to experience, engage with and understand an arts therapy process from a client’s/patient’s point of view.

Dr Wendy Magee, a professor in the Music Therapy Department, at Temple University, Philadelphia, US showcased the MATADOC assessment for patients with prolonged disorders of consciousness (PDOC) that she and her colleagues pioneered.

According to Dr Magee, music is the auxiliary engine that has the power to reboot the brain following a catastrophic head injury, tumour or stroke. Dr Magee said: “A human being is born with the capacity to express emotions such as distress, anger and pleasure through musical parameters such as volume, dynamic range, pitch and melodic contour. So, in working with people who have lost the ability to communicate we can see that music is an innate way to communicate feelings.

“There is strong neurological evidence that music activates many different areas across the brain. The motor system is very sensitive to picking up cues from the auditory system so when we hear music, particularly pulse or rhythm, it kicks straight into the motor system going around the brain.”

Summing up the conference, Daniel Thomas, managing director of Chroma, who organised the event, said: “As a neurologic music therapist and parent, I am deeply aware of the need for arts therapies to be provided in line with the rehabilitation code at the earliest possible point in someone’s recovery.

“As a profession, we regularly punch above our weight and this conference has demonstrated our ability to make a significant difference to the lives of people with brain injuries, their families and the professional teams around them.

“It has also given a glimpse into the future developments of arts therapies and shown how it can be an absolutely essential rehabilitation treatment in mainstream health services.”

via Taking music therapy into the mainstream | ACNR | Online Neurology Journal

[ARTICLE] Neurologic Music Therapy to Facilitate Recovery from Complications of Neurologic Diseases – Full Text

Abstract

Neurologic music therapy (NMT) has fostered recovery from complications in patients suffering from a wide variety of neurologic diseases. Combining music and virtual reality with standard rehabilitation therapies can improve patient compliance and make therapy more enjoyable. Listening to music can reduce epileptiform discharges and enhances brain plasticity. Music produces variations in brain anatomy between musicians and non-musicians. Music therapy is an inexpensive intervention to help post-stroke patients to recover faster and more efficiently if applied soon after the event. There is evidence that incorporating music into a rehabilitation program fosters recovery of hand function, dexterity, spatial movement, cognitive function, mood, coordination, stride length and memory. Learning words as lyrics, melodic intonation therapy and singing can help the aphasic patient to recover faster. NMT therapists are valuable members of the rehabilitation team. NMT has been approved by the World Rehabilitation Federation as an effective evidence based method of treatment.

Introduction

Incorporating music into routine rehabilitation programs not only fosters initial recovery but also contributes to improvement and enduring benefit after stopping the treatment. Disabilities stem from different neurologic disorders, work-related injuries and trauma such as motor vehicle accidents and sport injuries. Disabilities can have devastating physical, emotional and financial effects on the lives of patients and their families. It is important to identify and incorporate strategies that supplement traditional rehabilitation therapy in order to optimize the recovery of function and quality of life. NMT, by facilitating the patients’ recovery, contributes to positive patient outcomes. The following reviews the evidence base highlighting the importance of adding music to more standard forms of rehabilitation therapy. It references the neurobiological foundation of NMT, its history and applications. Evidence in support of its use to facilitate recovery from a wide range of complications related to specific neurological diagnoses will be discussed.[…]

Continue —>  Neurologic Music Therapy to Facilitate Recovery from Complications of Neurologic Diseases | Insight Medical Publishing

[ARTICLE] Music therapy in neurological rehabilitation settings – Full Text PDF

Summary

The neurologic music therapy is a new scope of music therapy. Its techniques deal with dysfunctions resulting from diseases of the human nervous system. Music can be used as an alternative modality to access functions unavailable through non-musical stimulus. Processes in the brain activated by the influence of music can be generalized and transferred to non-musical functions.

Therefore, in clinical practice, the translation of non-musical therapeutic exercises into analogous, isomorphic musical exercises is performed. They make use of the executive peculiarity of musical instruments and musical structures to prime, cue and coordinate movements. Among musical components, a repetitive rhythm plays a significant role. It regulates physiologic and behavioural functions through the mechanism of entrainment (synchronization of biological rhythms with musical rhythm based on acoustic resonance). It is especially relevant for patients with a deficient internal timing system in the brain.

Additionally, regular rhythmic patterns facilitate memory encoding and decoding of non-musical information hence music is an efficient mnemonic tool. The music as a hierarchical, compound language of time, with its unique ability to access affective/motivational systems in the brain, provides time structures enhancing perception processes, mainly in the range of cognition, language and motor learning. It allows for emotional expression and improvement of the motivation for rehabilitation activities.

The new technologies of rhythmic sensory stimulation (i.e. Binaural Beat Stimulation) or rhythmic music in combination with rhythmic light therapy appear. This multimodal forms of stimulation are used in the treatment of stroke, brain injury, dementia and other cognitive deficits.

Clinical outcome studies provide evidence of the significant superiority of rehabilitation with music over the one without music.

Full Text PDF