Rhythmic auditory stimulation in rehabilitation
Thaut (NM II no. 31, pp. 303-308) reviews studies related to music therapy and neuroscience. He
states that as a stimulus, music engages human behavior and brain function by arousing, guiding,
organizing, focusing, and modulating perception, attention, and behavior in the affective, cognitive,
and sensorimotor domains. In particular, he focuses on rhythmic entrainment of motor function,
which can facilitate the recovery of movement in patients with stroke, Parkinson’s disease, cerebral
palsy, or traumatic brain injury (p. 304). In a subsequent article, he elaborates on rhythmic auditory
stimulation in rehabilitation of movement disorders (Thaut & Abiru 2010).
Attention and memory
Attentive listening
In an fMRI study, Janata et al. (NM II no. 12, pp. 111-124) used a piece of real music, a 15-sec. ex-
cerpt from a Schubert piano trio. They asked the participants to perform specific tasks, focusing on
either a single instrument or on the entire three-voice polyphony. Their results show that attentively
focused listening recruits a network involving prefrontal cortex, cerebellum, basal ganglia, thalamus,
and the pre-supplementary motor area (pre-SMA) (p. 114). This observation suggests an important
relationship between movement, movement planning, memory, and music. The authors have pub-
lished a complete report of their study (Janata et al. 2002)^10
Embodiment, motion, and emotion
Mozart, mood and cognitive abilities
Schellenberg and Hallam (NM II no. 20, pp. 202-209) have retested the ”Mozart effect” experiment,
which suggested that listening to a Mozart piano sonata produced significant short-term enhance-
ment of spatial-temporal reasoning in college students (Rauscher et al. 1995). Schellenberg and Hal-
lam review attempts to replicate the experiment, which indicate that the effect is real but somewhat
ephemeral. Their own experiment included more than eight thousand 10-and 11 year-old children in
207 U.K. schools.
Three different listening stimuli, 10 minutes of contemporary pop music, 10 minutes of a Mo-
zart String Quintet, and 10 minutes of a verbal discussion of the experiment, were broadcast simul-
taneously on three different BBC radio stations. In each school, the children were randomly divided
into three listening groups. After listening, the children completed two tests of spatial abilities, a
square completion test and a paper-folding test. Analyzing the data, the authors found that the chil-
dren who listened to pop music performed better on the paper-folding test than the two other groups.
They conclude that a pleasant stimulus can improve a perceiver’s emotional state, which can, in
turn, affect cognitive performance (p. 202).
Fast emotional responses
Two studies by Bigand et al. (NM II no. 46, pp. 429-437) focus on the timing of emotional experience
in music. In their first study, they presented 27 excerpts of classical nonvocal music^11 to groups of
musically trained and untrained listeners. The excerpts were chosen to illustrate a variety of emo-
tions, and the task was to indicate excerpts that induced similar emotional experiences. The partic-
ipants were allowed to listen as many times as they wished (p. 432). The critical point of the study
was to compare two experimental conditions. In the first condition, the excerpts lasted 25 seconds.
10 In the published article, the authors emphasize that ”the role of the pre-SMA/SMA and premotor circuits in action
planning, imagined movements, and attention to temporal patterns is of particular importance to understanding the effect
of music on the brain.” (Janata et al. 2002:138).
11 The 27 classical excerpts are specified in Bigand et al. (2005:1135-1137).