Music for the Brain: Comprehensive Rehabilitation

Music is a new tool in the rehabilitation of patients with neurological damage and with problems adapting to new situations.

Music, beyond being a simple auditory pleasure, is revealed as a powerful therapeutic tool in neurological rehabilitation.

In fact, this type of therapy is not a new treatment; for three centuries, there has been knowledge about the effects that music has on people, both on patients and healthy people. Therefore, it was revealed that it produces positive effects on the body as a sedative, stimulating and harmonious.

Currently, music therapy is used as a tool in the rehabilitation of patients with neurological damage and with problems adapting to new situations.

In fact, according to studies carried out by cognitive researchers, the relationship between the state of rest and the functioning of memory are elementary components for good executive functioning. Thus, a basic elementary concept to understand why certain information is not retained in memory is the interference that prevents information from being consolidated in long-term memory.

Music is considered to be one of the stimuli that best influence the dopaminergic reward system of human beings. That is why its influence on such important aspects as learning and memory is being studied. In addition, these types of findings demonstrate that music has positive effects on the executive functions of human beings in general.

Music therapy is being used as a tool in the rehabilitation of patients with neurological damage, especially in cognitive flexibility, which is the ability to adapt to new situations. Likewise, seeking solutions to various problems, and in general, is a skill that allows normal functioning in people.

Neurological music therapy can benefit people with various conditions, such as:

• Stroke.
• Parkinson’s disease.
• Head trauma
• Dementia

Currently, we live in an era in which we find very exhausted individuals. Due to the load of tasks that demand simultaneous cognitive activity causes the executive function capacities that allow a functional life to decrease. In the same way, prolonged exposure to cell phone and computer screens can cause visual and cognitive exhaustion.

Study:

In a study carried out by Martini et al. (2022), they analyzed the influence of rest and music on the consolidation of information in working memory. Thus, the study consisted of comparing the functioning of memory through the execution of a list of words by the experimenters in two stages.

The first list was presented just after six minutes of a full rest, and for the condition of the second list it was having listened to six minutes of music.

The experiment consisted of two sessions, in the first session, a group of 25 participants was asked to rest sitting in a relaxed position with their eyes closed and in the dark for a period of 5.45 minutes.

Then, to test the effects of music on memory, another twenty-five participants were asked to listen to music with their eyes closed, with headphones, in the dark and at a soft and moderate volume for 5.45 minutes.

The songs they listened to were Aloe Blancc, Smallpools, American love, Can you do this, Wethe Kings, Kids in themoonlight, No regreets, NeonTrees.

The second session began nineteen hours after session one and consisted of participants having to remember the two lists of words in any order.

The results of the study reveal that there were no differences between the performance in the memory tasks, this means that both the participants who were in a state of rest with their eyes closed and the participants who listened to music remembered on average the same number of words.

Thus, we can deduce that, applying music in the neurorehabilitation of patients, is an economic tool, with scientific proof that it can be helpful in the management of various medical conditions.

Therefore, Music as a neurological therapy represents a significant advance in the field of rehabilitation.