We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
Music in Research and Rehabilitation of Disorders of Consciousness: Psychological and Neurophysiological Foundations.
- Authors
Kotchoubey, Boris; Pavlov, Yuri G.; Kleber, Boris
- Abstract
According to a prevailing view, the visual system works by dissecting stimuli into primitives, whereas the auditory system processes simple and complex stimuli with their corresponding features in parallel. This makes musical stimulation particularly suitable for patients with disorders of consciousness (DoC), because the processing pathways related to complex stimulus features can be preserved even when those related to simple features are no longer available. An additional factor speaking in favor of musical stimulation in DoC is the low efficiency of visual stimulation due to prevalent maladies of vision or gaze fixation in DoC patients. Hearing disorders, in contrast, are much less frequent in DoC, which allows us to use auditory stimulation at various levels of complexity. The current paper overviews empirical data concerning the four main domains of brain functioning in DoC patients that musical stimulation can address: perception (e.g., pitch, timbre, and harmony), cognition (e.g., musical syntax and meaning), emotions, and motor functions. Music can approach basic levels of patients' self-consciousness, which may even exist when all higher-level cognitions are lost, whereas music induced emotions and rhythmic stimulation can affect the dopaminergic reward-system and activity in the motor system respectively, thus serving as a starting point for rehabilitation.
- Subjects
LOSS of consciousness; MUSIC therapy; MEDICAL rehabilitation; NEUROPHYSIOLOGY; NEURAL stimulation; THERAPEUTICS
- Publication
Frontiers in Psychology, 2015, p1
- ISSN
1664-1078
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01763