ArticleFrontiers in neuroscience2015
A pilot study into the effects of music therapy on different areas of the brain of individuals with unresponsive wakefulness syndrome.
Article in Frontiers in neuroscience, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 32 citations in OpenAlex.
- Effects of music interventions on disorders of consciousness: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2026Pooled it
- Techniques of cognitive rehabilitation in patients with disorders of consciousness: a systematic review.Neurological sciences : official journal of the Italian Neurological Society and of the Italian Society of Clinical Neurophysiology · 2018Pooled it
- Article
- The Role of [Diagnostics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- The impact of frequency-specific music stimulation on consciousness in patients with disorders of consciousness.Frontiers in neurology · 2025Article
- The Cerebellum in Musicology: a Narrative Review.Cerebellum (London, England) · 2024Review
- Olfactory response is a potential sign of consciousness: electroencephalogram findings.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2023Article
- Music and the Cerebellum.Advances in experimental medicine and biology · 2022Article
- Psychophysiological Effects of Biographical Interventions in People With Unresponsive Wakefulness Syndrome and Minimally Conscious State.Frontiers in neurology · 2022Article
- Current and Future Perspectives of the Cerebellum in Affective Neuroscience.Advances in experimental medicine and biology · 2022Article
- Increase in Low-Frequency Oscillations in fNIRS as Cerebral Response to Auditory Stimulation with Familiar Music.Brain sciences · 2021Article
- Music Stimulation for People with Disorders of Consciousness: A Scoping Review.Brain sciences · 2021Article
- Emotional consciousness preserved in patients with disorders of consciousness?Neurological sciences : official journal of the Italian Neurological Society and of the Italian Society of Clinical Neurophysiology · 2019Article
- Clinical Research: Auditory Stimulation in the Disorders of Consciousness.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2019Review
- Editorial: Dialogues in Music Therapy and Music Neuroscience: Collaborative Understanding Driving Clinical Advances.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2016Article
- Music in Research and Rehabilitation of Disorders of Consciousness: Psychological and Neurophysiological Foundations.Frontiers in psychology · 2015Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The global cerebral network allows music " to do to us what it does." While the same music can cause different emotions, the basic emotion of happy and sad songs can, nevertheless, be understood by most people. Consequently, the individual experience of music and its common effect on the human brain is a challenging subject for research. Various activities such as hearing, processing, and performing music provide us with different pictures of cerebral centers in PET. In comparison to these simple acts of experiencing music, the interaction and the therapeutic relationship between the patient and the therapist in Music Therapy (MT) provide us with an additional element in need of investigation. In the course of a pilot study, these problems were approached and reduced to the simple observation of pattern alteration in the brains of four individuals with Unresponsive Wakefulness Syndrome (UWS) during MT. Each patient had three PET investigations: (i) during a resting state, (ii) during the first exposure to MT, and (iii) during the last exposure to MT. Two patients in the MT group received MT for 5 weeks between the 2nd and the 3rd PET (three times a week), while two other patients in the control group had no MT in between. Tracer uptake was measured in the frontal, hippocampal, and cerebellar region of the brain. With certain differences in these three observed brain areas, the tracer uptake in the MT group was higher (34%) than in the control group after 5 weeks. The preliminary results suggest that MT activates the three brain regions described above. In this article, we present our approach to the neuroscience of MT and discuss the impact of our hypothesis on music therapy practice, neurological rehabilitation of individuals in UWS and additional neuroscientific research.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.