Resources & references

When Robert Gupta was caught between a career as a doctor and a violinist, he realized his place was in the middle, with a bow in his hand and a sense of social justice in his heart. He tells a moving story of society's marginalized and the power of music therapy, which can succeed where conventional medicine fails. .

This video (in Spanish), includes interviews with Antoni Aceves and Joel Olivé from Spain and Rolando Benenzon from Argentina. Each of them is highly experienced music therapists and provide a definition of music therapy, explain its potential applications, and describe its therapeutic benefits.

This article reviews the use of Rhythmic Auditory Stimulation (RAS) to improve gait and other motor behaviors in Parkinson's Disease (PD). It aims to appraise the current state of knowledge in order to direct further neuroimaging studies about the therapeutic effects of rhythm and music based interventions for motor and non-motor symptoms of PD. 

Music therapy is an ancient and yet very modern practice that has the power to heal and transform our brains and bodies in significant ways. Kathleen Howland, speech language and music therapist explains how music really does have the power to heal our brain and heart.

 Elizabeth Stegemöller presents at the TEDx Iowa State University event on music therapy and its impacts on the brain. She is a music therapist and utilizes music therapy to treat people with Parkinson's disease.

This research article explains the scientific basis of Neurologic Music Therapy. In this music therapy approach, trained professionals use rhythm and auditory perception to enhance physical, cognitive, speech, and language rehabilitation along clients with various diagnoses such as Parkinson's disease and aphasia.

Modern music therapy, starting around the middle of the twentieth century was primarily conceived to promote emotional well-being and to facilitate social group association and integration. Therefore, it was rooted mostly in social science concepts. More recently, music as therapy began to move decidedly toward perspectives of neuroscience. This has been facilitated by the advent of neuroimaging techniques that help uncover the therapeutic mechanisms for non-musical goals in the brain processes underlying music perception, cognition, and production. In this paper, we focus on executive function (EF) and attentional processes (AP) that are central for cognitive rehabilitation efforts. To this end, we summarize existing behavioral as well as neuroimaging and neurophysiological studies in musicians, non-musicians, and clinical populations. 

Review of current literature on sound, movement, and rhythmic auditory information showing that it can improve movement execution, control, and relearning processes in sports and motor rehabilitation.

This is an Editorial on the following Research Topic: The Clinical Neuroscience of Music: Evidence Based Approaches and Neurologic Music Therapy. Driven by new insights from research in music and brain function, a new understanding of the capabilities of music as a complex auditory language in therapy and rehabilitation has emerged over the past 25 years. Research has shown that music engages complex perceptual, cognitive, affective, speech/language, and motor control processes in the human brain. Furthermore, translational research approaches have shown that brain processes in music perception, music cognition, and music production can engage and shape non-musical perceptual, cognitive, language, and motor functions to effectively retrain the injured brain in neurorehabilitation and neurodevelopment. Music has become a language of science again as well as a new language to change the brain.

In this video series, Berklee College of Music Faculty Dr. Suzanne B. Hanser, a board certified music therapist, and Annette Philip, founder and director of the renowned Berklee Indian Ensemble, share simple strategies from the Berklee Online course "Music Therapy Techniques for Wellness" to help you enrich your mind, body, and spirit through music.