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from http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releas...-ltm021508.php

Listening to music improves stroke patients' recovery

Listening to music in the early stages after a stroke can improve patients’ recovery, according to new research published online in the medical journal Brain today (Wednesday 20 February).

Researchers from Finland found that if stroke patients listened to music for a couple of hours a day, their verbal memory and focused attention recovered better and they had a more positive mood than patients who did not listen to anything or who listened to audio books. This is the first time such an effect has been shown in humans and the researchers believe it has important implications for clinical practice.

-As a result of our findings, we suggest that everyday music listening during early stroke recovery offers a valuable addition to the patients’ care- especially if other active forms of rehabilitation are not yet feasible at this stage-by providing an individually targeted, easy-to-conduct and inexpensive means to facilitate cognitive and emotional recovery, says Teppo Särkämö, the first author of the study.

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-We found that three months after the stroke, verbal memory improved from the first week post-stroke by 60 percent in music listeners, by 18 percent in audio book listeners and by 29 percent in non-listeners. Similarly, focused attention-the ability to control and perform mental operations and resolve conflicts among responses-improved by 17 percent in music listeners, but no improvement was observed in audio book listeners and non-listeners. These differences were still essentially the same six months after the stroke, Särkämö says.

In addition, the researchers found that the music listening group experienced less depressed and confused mood than the patients in the control group.

-These differences in cognitive recovery can be directly attributed to the effect of listening to music, says Särkämö. -Furthermore, the fact that most of the music (63 percent) also contained lyrics would suggest that it is the musical component (or the combination of music and voice) that plays a crucial role in the patients’ improved recovery.