Investigating music-based cognitive rehabilitation for individuals with moderate to severe chronic acquired brain injury: A feasibility experiment

Abstract

Background: Acquired brain injuries often cause cognitive impairment, significantly impacting participation in rehabilitation and activities of daily living. Music can influence brain function, and thus may serve as a uniquely powerful cognitive rehabilitation intervention.

Objective: This feasibility study investigated the potential effectiveness of music-based cognitive rehabilitation for adults with chronic acquired brain injury.

Methods: The control group participated in three Attention Process Training (APT) sessions, while the experimental group participated in three Music Attention Control Training (MACT) sessions. Pre-and post- testing used the Trail Making A & B, Digit Symbol, and Brown-Peterson Task as neuropsychological tests.

Results: ANOVA analyses showed no significant difference between groups for Trail A Test, Digit Symbol, and Brown-Peterson Task. Trail B showed significant differences at post-test favouring MACT over APT. The mean difference time between pre-and post-tests for the Trail B Test was also significantly different between APT and MACT in favour of MACT using a two-sample t-test as well as a follow-up nonparametric Mann Whitney U-test.

Conclusions: The group differences found in the Trail B tests provided preliminary evidence for the efficacy of MACT to arouse and engage attention in adults with acquired brain injury.

Keywords: Attention Process Training (APT); Auditory Consonant Trigram; Brown-Peterson Task; Digit Symbol Test; Music Attention Control Training (MACT); Neurologic Music Therapy (NMT); Trail Making Test; Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI); acquired brain injury (ABI); attention; cognitive impairment; efficacy; executive functioning; female; humans; intervention; male; music; music therapy; neurological rehabilitation; randomized controlled trial; working memory.