Latest news and publications

Monday 24th March at 11am I will be presenting on music-based exercises for upper limb rehab at Hinchingbrooke Country Park, Brampton Road, Huntingdon PE29 6DB. This is part of a two-hour Meet the Researcher event, where you can learn about stroke research and how current studies are progressing. 

Members of Headway Bedford took part in another workshop. They used touchscreen instruments to play musical patterns designed to help arm and hand recovery. Some used to play instruments before their injury. All stroke trials with music for upper limb rehabilitation exclude musicians. We are trying to change this by designing protocols and developing technology to support recovery of more nuanced movements required for instrumental playing. The Headway participants gave really useful feedback on how exercises and technology should be designed, including simplified setup and onboarding that generates bespoke exercises; audio-visual guides to ensure digital and ethnic inclusion and support cognitive communication difficulties.

LATEST ARTICLE:

Music listening for psychological well-being in adults with acquired vision impairment: a feasibility randomised controlled trial

It would be great to conduct an efficacy study now, with a reliable method of recording music listening fidelity. The study shows enough feasibility to ensure recruitment, retention and data collection, and data indicate potential benefits for managing anxiety and depression with this home-based music intervention. Read it here

Our article 'The Art and Craft of Music Therapy for Stroke Rehabilitation in a Remote North Indian Community: A Case Study' has gained some interest https://voices.no/index.php/voices/article/view/3724. In the article the music therapists discovered the music that was important to the client and this helped them engage and benefit. There is a need for more research into all aspects of neurorehabilitation that provides access where needed to clients' culture specific music preferences, whether for listening to improve mood and cognitive recovery, or to provide temporal frameworks to facilitate sensorimotor exercises and cognitive training. The Garageband app is not a rehabilitation app but touchscreen instruments can be adapted for arm and hand exercises, and there are several instruments from China, Japan, Java and West Africa. I would be very interested in supporting researchers from anywhere in the world in discovering how music from their cultures can be accessed and developed to help increase access to music therapy.

The ocarina is a popular instrument in Brazil and simple to play. A team of researchers have built an electronic version that will have the capability to electronically measure the user's breath velocity, pressure and duration. Intended users are people with Chronic, Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), but it could also help people with stroke and other neurorehabilitation populations recover breath control and speech. Mouth pieces are removable, enabling effective infection control. Let's see how they continue to develop the instrument:

Dedicated low-cost electronic ocarina for people with COPD: Rationale and prototype development

chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/08098131.2024.2410043?needAccess=true

 At the Society for Research in Rehabilitation hosted at the University of Essex on 15th January we presented a poster of our upper limb rehabilitation EEG study, sharing progress. Stroke survivors have received 15 sessions in their home in three-weeks, a treatment dosage for these home-based exercises that has not been delivered previously anywhere in the world.

Below is a video that shows the stages through which it is possible to configure Touchscreen guitar chords for alternating thumb stumming up or down the screen, or holding a stylus to practice pinch grip. The sound quality is excellent when connected to an external speaker, such as the JBL Charge 4 or 5.

We published results from the first biomedical music therapy feasibility study in the UK in 2017, which also included these iPad exercises.

Home-based neurologic music therapy for arm hemiparesis following stroke: results from a pilot, feasibility randomized controlled trial

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0269215517717060

Protocol details are here:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26441586/

CONFERENCES

At The Neurosciences and Music | VIII13-16 JUNE 2024, Helsinki, Finland & Online we discussed the role of machine learning to aid in delivery of music-based interventions in the community for arm rehabilitation post-stroke. This would be to address the challenges of intervention delivery - insufficient clinicians and time in community rehab - so that larger, multi-site trials can be facilitated, working towards development and implementation of app-based exercises.

The literature from previous research suggests that a reduction from fatigue might result from 1-hour listening to preferred music daily for 6-8-weeks, and that the autonomic nervous system responds to musical emotional arousal, i.e. the right music (tempo, arrangement, etc) can relax, enliven, and everything in between.

Discussions with leading figures in neurorehab on the active ingredients of interventions, including music-based ones, at The Sociey for Research in Rehabilitation took place on 29 April 2024

PUBLICATIONS AND BROADCASTS

August 2024: Preferred music listening for people living with dementia: Two home-based case studies discussing compilation process, autobiographical and biophysical responses. In the journal 'Geriatric Nursing.'

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gerinurse.2024.07.022

BBC World Service: People Fixing the World featuring two participants & Dr Alex Street from the RadioMe for dementia study:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0hm9q83 (listen from about 8-minutes)

What might an interactive music therapy service bring to the adult intensive care unit? A suggested service based on data from a scoping review

https://doi.org/10.1177/13594575241235126