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. 2024 Mar 5:15:1358726.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1358726. eCollection 2024.

Five-week music therapy improves overall symptoms in schizophrenia by modulating theta and gamma oscillations

Lujie Wang #  1   2   3 , Liju Wang #  4 , Jiaxian Chen  4 , Chenxi Qiu  4 , Ting Liu  5 , Yulin Wu  6 , Yan Li  4 , Pengyu Zou  4 , Sijia Guo  4 , Jing Lu  4
Affiliations

Five-week music therapy improves overall symptoms in schizophrenia by modulating theta and gamma oscillations

Lujie Wang et al. Front Psychiatry. .

Abstract

Introduction: Some clinical studies have shown that music therapy as an adjunctive therapy can improve overall symptoms in patients with schizophrenia. However, the neural mechanisms of this improvement remain unclear due to insufficient neuroimaging evidence.

Methods: In this work, 17 patients with schizophrenia accepted a five-week music therapy (music group) that integrated listening, singing, and composing, and required patients to cooperate in a group to complete music therapy tasks. Meanwhile, 15 patients with schizophrenia received a five-week visual art intervention as the control group including handicraft and painting activities. We collected the Manchester Scale (MS) and Positive and Negative Symptom Scale (PANSS) scores and electroencephalography (EEG) data before and after intervention in two groups.

Results: Behavioral results showed that both interventions mentioned above can effectively help patients with schizophrenia relieve their overall symptoms, while a trend-level effect was observed in favor of music therapy. The EEG results indicated that music therapy can improve abnormal neural oscillations in schizophrenia which is reflected by a decrease in theta oscillation in the parietal lobe and an increase in gamma oscillation in the prefrontal lobe. In addition, correlation analysis showed that in the music group, both reductions in theta oscillations in the parietal lobe and increases in gamma oscillations in the prefrontal lobe were positively correlated with the improvement of overall symptoms.

Discussion: These findings help us to better understand the neural mechanisms by which music therapy improves overall symptoms in schizophrenia and provide more evidence for the application of music therapy in other psychiatric disorders.

Keywords: EEG; music therapy; neural oscillations; power spectral density; schizophrenia.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
(A, C) Changes in the MS/PANSS scores (higher scores indicating more severe overall symptoms) within two groups. (B, D) comparison of post-pre differences in the MS/PANSS scales between two groups.
Figure 2
Figure 2
(A) The difference of post-pre PSD in theta (5-7Hz) and gamma (30-45Hz) bands within the music group (t-plot) and (B) the difference of post-pre PSD in theta and gamma bands within the visual art group (t-plot). (C) Comparison of post-pre PSD differences between two groups.
Figure 3
Figure 3
(A, B) Correlation between (The change of MS score/Original MS score) and the change of theta PSD in the parietal lobe and gamma PSD in the prefrontal lobe in the music group. (C, D) Correlation between (The change of PANSS score/Original PANSS score) and the change of theta PSD in the parietal lobe and gamma PSD in the prefrontal lobe in the music group (dashed intervals indicate 95% confidence intervals for the best-fit straight line).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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