Proposing Music-based Interventions for the Treatment of Traumatic Brain Injury Symptoms: Current Evidence and Future Directions.

Adriano Mollica,Michael Thaut,Matthew J Burke

doi:10.1177/07067437211007811

Abstract

Proposing Music-based Interventions for the Treatment of Traumatic Brain Injury Symptoms: Current Evidence and Future Directions.

Highlights

Regardless of the classification of initial injury severity, traumatic brain injury (TBI) can result in debilitating neurologic and psychiatric symptoms that may last months to years.[1]
There is promising evidence to suggest that Music-based interventions (MBIs) may have potential in rehabilitating cognitive impairments across various levels of TBI severity with most evidence for moderate–severe TBI.[6,7]
Conclusions on efficacy are limited at this time given the lack of randomized trials for each level of injury severity small sample sizes, lack of active control groups, and overall poor study quality

Summary

Association des psychiatres du Canada

Music-based interventions, traumatic brain injury, concussion, cognitive rehabilitation. Regardless of the classification of initial injury severity, traumatic brain injury (TBI) can result in debilitating neurologic and psychiatric symptoms that may last months to years.[1] These post-TBI symptoms can vary widely from patient to patient, but core symptoms involve depressed mood and cognitive impairment.[1] The underlying pathophysiology of persistent cognitive dysfunction following TBI has yet to be fully understood, but disruptions in large scale neural networks, those governing resting state functional connectivity (e.g., default mode network) and cognitive control (e.g., salience network), are strongly implicated across TBI severities.[2] the presence of post-traumatic depression may have bi-directional interactions on prolonging the overall recovery process.[3] Given the deficits in multiple domains of functioning following TBI, novel rehabilitation approaches that can target multiple symptoms simultaneously are needed for this complex neuropsychiatric patient population. Music-based interventions (MBIs) are emerging as a new potential treatment strategy for neurologic[4] and psychiatric[5] patient populations, as they are safe, economic, and can be creatively tailored to meet specific functional goals. MBIs are typically selected and delivered by a credentialed music therapist based on empirically supported models and can involve active (improvisation, singing, clapping, or dancing) and/or receptive (purposeful music listening to identify emotional content emerging from music) techniques.[4,5] Mechanistically, MBIs appear to engage both cortical and subcortical areas governing attention, working memory, planning, and flexibility and can modulate these areas over time.[4]

MBIs for TBI

Conclusions and Future Directions