Music-Based Cognitive Remediation Therapy

Throughout my research and the process of completing my annotated bibliography, I came across many interesting articles regarding the emotional health of traumatic brain injury (TBI) patients. One very compelling article I read was about how neurologic music therapy (NMT) is effective in improving the mental and cognitive health of TBI patients. According to the article, neurologic music therapy has shown “positive results” for reducing stress, anxiety, agitation, and inducing a stable mood state. Research has shown that NMT enhances mental health because it reduces the cortisol and beta endorphin levels in the body. Since these hormones are typically associated with high stress, lowering these levels can relieve anxiety, agitation, and anger. 

Neurologic music therapy was developed by the Academy of Neurologic Music Therapy in Colorado. There was a lot of research that led up to the first certification program that ran in 1999 (MEDRhythms) . Since then, the use of NMT has been continuously developed in hopes that there will be even more successful cases of NMT in the future. The researchers of the article "Music-Based Cognitive Remediation Therapy for Patients with Traumatic Brain Injury" used research from previous experiments to write their paper and explore why/how NMT is effective. 

http://medrhythmstherapy.com/neurologic-music-therapy/