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Scientists find music improves stroke patients' recovery

20/02/2008

People who have suffered a stroke could aid their recovery by listening to music everyday, a new study suggests.

Researchers found that if stroke patients listened to music for a couple of hours each day their verbal memory and focused-attention recovered better than those who did not.

Listening to music also created a more positive mood.

The study's authors say the findings suggest music could be a "valuable addition" in rehabilitation after stroke.

The team from the University of Helsinki and the Helsinki Brain Research Centre studied three groups of people undergoing standard stroke rehabilitation.

One group was assigned to daily music that they chose themselves; the second group listened to audio books; and the third group received no listening material.

The results, published in the medical journal Brain, revealed that three months after stroke, verbal memory improved from the first week post-stroke by 60 per cent in the group listening to music.

This compared to 18 per cent in audio book listeners and by 29 per cent in non-listeners.

Focused-attention - the ability to control and perform mental operations - improved by 17 per cent in music listeners but no improvement was observed in audio book listeners and non-listeners.

After six months the differences were said to be roughly the same.

"These differences in cognitive recovery can be directly attributed to the effect of listening to music," said researcher Teppo Sarkamo.

"Furthermore, the fact that most of the music (63 per cent) also contained lyrics would suggest that it is the musical component (or the combination of music and voice) that plays a crucial role in the patients' improved recovery."

However he added: "I would like to emphasise the fact that this is a novel finding made in a single study that is promising but will have to be replicated and studied further in future studies to better understand the underlying neural mechanisms.

"Since the result is based on a group study, I would also caution people not to interpret it as evidence that music listening works for every individual patient.

"Rather than an alternative, music listening should be considered as an addition to other active forms of therapy, such as speech therapy or neuropsychological rehabilitation."