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Sunday, April 12, 2026
Music Therapy on Gait Intervention in Parkinson's
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 Aug 4;19(15):9568. doi: 10.3390/ijerph19159568
Research Progress of Music Therapy on Gait Intervention in Patients with Parkinson’s Disease
Zhuolin Wu 1, Lingyu Kong 1, Qiuxia Zhang 1,*
Editor: Paul B Tchounwou1
Music therapy is an effective way to treat the gait disorders caused by Parkinson’s disease.
Rhythm music stimulation, therapeutic singing, and therapeutic instrument performance are often used in clinical practice.
The mechanisms of music therapy on the gait of patients with Parkinson’s disease include the compensation mechanism of cerebellum recruitment, rhythm entrainment, acceleration of motor learning, stimulation of neural coherence, and increase of cortical activity.
All mechanisms work together to complete the intervention of music therapy on patients’ gait and help patients to recover better. In this paper, the effect of music therapy on gait disorders in Parkinson’s disease patients was reviewed, and some suggestions were put forward.
Music for people with Dementia
Ref
. 2014 Jan 13;18(6):706–716. doi: 10.1080/13607863.2013.875124
The importance of music for people with dementia: the perspectives of people with dementia, family carers, staff and music therapists
Introduction
Music-based interventions including music therapy, community singing groups and music listening are widely accepted as beneficial for the
psychological well-being of people with dementia.
Music may be valued as an easily accessible and stimulating medium, which can be enjoyed alone or with others even in the context of severe dementia.
Care home residents with dementia and families have highlighted music listening, singing and dancing as particularly meaningful amongst all care home activities (Harmer & Orrell, 2008).
Sixsmith and Gibson (2007) conducted interviews with 26 people with dementia and their carers and found that music was not only enjoyed in its own right, but was also valued as a social activity. The ability to appreciate and engage with music remained intact even as cognitive functions deteriorated. A disadvantage of their study may be that it made a limited attempt to link the study findings with a theoretical framework of dementia care, other than mentioning that the study was ‘guided by the ecological model of well-being’ (Sixsmith & Gibson, 2007, p. 129). A recent narrative synthesis systematic review on music therapy in dementia also identified a limited use of relevant theoretical frameworks (McDermott, Crellin, Ridder, & Orrell, 2013). To understand how and why music interventions may be beneficial for the psychological well-being of people with dementia, it is necessary to go beyond summarising the study findings and contextualise the study outcome with the aim of developing a theoretical model for music in dementia.
The centrality of engaging directly with the experience of people with dementia and trying to understand the viewpoint of the person with dementia became prominent in the 1990s (Brooker, 2007). Kitwood is particularly known for establishing the concept of person-centred care in dementia where the personhood of an individual with dementia forms the basis of care (Brooker, 2007; Kitwood, 1993a, 1997; Kitwood & Bredin, 1992). Kitwood (1997) defined personhood as: ‘a standing or status that is bestowed upon one human being, by others, in the context of relationship and social being. It implies recognition, respect and trust’ (Kitwood, 1997, p. 8). He argued how the personal psychology of the person with dementia is affected by the social psychology of the care culture and debated how the clinical manifestation of a dementia may arise from a complex interaction between personality, biography, physical health, neurological impairment, and social psychology (Kitwood, 1993b). The quality and sensitivity of the interpersonal process between a person with dementia and a carer is one of the key components of person-centred care. This has a particular relevance to music therapy where relationship-building through musical interactions is the core of the therapeutic intervention. Trevarthen and Malloch (2008) argued that music making was a human activity that communicates motives. The theory of communicative musicality (Trevarthen & Malloch, 2008) also resonates with Kitwood's argument on understanding the communicative attempt made by people with dementia.
Spector and Orrell (2010) proposed an updated biopsychosocial model of dementia that ‘disaggregates psychosocial and biological processes, with the aim of understanding the inter-relationship between the two’ (p. 959). The biopsychosocial model also disaggregates tractable factors (‘aspects which may be amenable to change’) and fixed factors (‘aspects which relate to history or risk factors and therefore may not be amenable to change’). Examples of tractable psychosocial factors include mental stimulation, mood, coping strategies, personal psychology and social environment, whereas fixed psychosocial factors are closely linked to the person's personality traits, previous life events and education. The biopsychosocial model urges clinicians and researchers to view dementia as ‘something which is malleable and where change, adaptation and improvement is possible’ (Spector & Orrell, 2010, p. 959). Although the model has not been empirically tested yet, it provides a comprehensive framework where the impact of dementia is presented as a process, rather than just as an end-product, thus allowing an intervention to influence its process.
Some aspects of musical experiences may influence a person's psychosocial tractable factors, or may be linked with the person's psychosocial fixed factors. This paper does not explore the effects of music on the biological aspects of the biopsychosocial model, even though the effects of music therapy on physiological changes in people with dementia have been discussed (McDermott et al., 2013). The investigation of the effects of music on the psychosocial factors may help us understand how and why music impacts on people with dementia and guide the development of a theoretical model.
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