You may have heard the following on ABC radio Sunday May 6th ( Ockham’s Razor ), which is more wonderful evidence for including Music Therapy in Dementia Programmes.  He may not have said specifically it could help dementia patients, but dementia is a neurological disease. It was sent to me from a contact in Domiciliary Care, from one of her professional contacts.

Extracts from Professor Roger Rees, Flinders University, Rehabilitation:-

“When a person is traumatised by brain injury, stroke, or the onset of a neurological disease such as multiple sclerosis or Parkinson’s syndrome, that every creative strategy across disciplines, must be used to enable the person to achieve as normal a life as possible.

A technique known as rhythmic auditory stimulation or RAS is used to improve the temporal and spatial parameters of gait for stroke and head injury victims.  Rhythmic auditory stimulation improves gait by effectively cueing movement involved in standing and walking.  We find that a rhythmic cue provides a continuous time reference for the execution of the entire walking movement pattern.  Following repetitive practice, using rhythmic auditory stimulation, positive outcomes can then transfer to walking without music.

In a brief clinical trial people with Parkinson’s syndrome who walked with RAS for 30 minutes per day for three weeks showed improvement in velocity, cadence and stride length.  However, this intervention has to be maintained in order for improvement to be sustained.  Nevertheless, music’s capacity for neural activation was demonstrated for this sample of severely disabled people.

When people experience visual neglect as a result of right hemispheric lesions following a stroke or traumatic brain injury then listening to music is shown to stimulate arousal and results in significantly improved visual attention. Auditory receptive fields within the brain are known to be larger than visual ones.  Thus auditory stimuli can activate neurons over a larger region, even extending into visual receptive fields.

The music then became a precursor to more effective communication and speech within the group. People expressed their passions about the music. In turn this initiated communication with others that in the absence of the music rarely occurs.

Rhythm turned listeners into participants.

This is because every brain, whether intact or impaired, has a built-in element of plasticity.  It adapts itself to input.  Patterns of music make sense of our inner experience, giving structure and coherence to our feelings.  I submit that because music possesses the capacity to restore one’s sense of personal wholeness that we find it so life enhancing.  It is life- enhancing for people experiencing the effects of trauma and mental illness.

Neurologic based music therapy promotes rehabilitation of functional behaviours in the sensorimotor, speech/language, cognitive and emotional domains.  Music, whether it’s Bach or birdsong, John Lennon or Miles Davis, Lady Gaga or the Rolling Stones, Debussy or Chopin, nurtures the brain and mind.”