Resources & references

This video narrates a young girl progress through her music therapy treatment at Primary Children's Hospital. She was referred to music therapy for an important head injury, and slowly finds her skills back with the help of Kayla Zickerman, Music Therapist. In the end of her two-month hospitalization, the patient offers a recital that demonstrates the extent of what she was able to work on in music therapy at the hospital.

The mission of the Academy of Neurologic Music Therapy is to disseminate, advance, and protect the practice of NMT worldwide. The vision of the Academy is to promulgate NMT as the gold standard in music therapy practice and to increase the availability of this gold standard in the healthcare arena. While formalized training in Neurologic Music Therapy first began in 1999 in an effort to advance the professional education and understanding of the scientific and evidence-based practice of Neurologic Music Therapy, the Academy of Neurologic Music Therapy was established in 2014 as a non-for-profit organization (section 501 (c)3 ) whose mission is to disseminate, advance and protect the practice of NMT worldwide by facilitating endeavors in the areas of Continuing Education, Student Training, Research, Information Sharing, and Reimbursement.  The Academy maintains an Advisory Council, which consists of practicing NMT clinicians who advise on all matters related to the professional and scientific development of NMT.

A list of key NMT publications (research) is available here 

Music therapy is being used in Calgary to help individuals with neurological conditions work towards their goals

Watch the music therapy journey of a young girl with cerebral palsy and blindness. Her mother tells the changes she witnesses in her daugther during music therapy sessions. Also, this video explains how music therapy is provided in Northen Ireland. The Royal National Institute for the Blind advocates for more music therary access for children in this country. 

Music-based interventions (MBIs) are emerging as a new potential treatment strategy for neurologic and psychiatric patient populations, as they are safe, economic, and can be creatively tailored to meet specific functional goals. MBIs are typically selected and delivered by a credentialed music therapist based on empirically supported models and can involve active (improvisation, singing, clapping, or dancing) and/or receptive (purposeful music listening to identify emotional content emerging from music) techniques. Mechanistically, MBIs appear to engage both cortical and subcortical areas governing attention, working memory, planning, and flexibility and can modulate these areas over time.

This research article investigates how music therapy influences the mood levels of adults with multiple sclerosis (MS), traumatic brain injury (TB), and other types of brain injuries. The results demonstrated that participants had elevated mood levels after engaging in individual music therapy sessions.