The Future of Medical Music Therapy In Neuro-Rehabilitation

Abstract

"Acquired Brain Injury (ABI) is an umbrella term that includes a range of conditions stemming from rapid onset of brain injury. The underlying causes range from: traumatic injuries, caused by head injury or postsurgical insult; vascular accidents including hemorrhagic or ischemic strokes and subarachnoid hemorrhage; cerebral anoxia caused by a starvation of oxygen within the brain; toxic or metabolic events such as hypoglycemia; and viral infection or inflammation (Royal College of Physicians, 2004). Other conditions that involve acquired brain injury to some degree, but follow a different trajectory from ABI from rapid onset and may be neuropalliative in nature, include Parkinson’s Disease, Multiple Sclerosis, Huntington’s Disease and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis/Motor Neurone Disease (also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease). The purpose of rehabilitation with people with rapid onset ABI is to restore the person’s functioning to levels comparable to those the person had prior to brain injury, and to enable optimal levels of independence. This is different from the goal of rehabilitation with a person with a degenerative disease. In these cases, the purpose of rehabilitation is to maintain the person’s current level of functioning for as long as possible and to provide technological aids as functional levels degenerate. This paper will only discuss music therapy with people with ABI from non-degenerative causes."