Tag Archives: Singing

depression, Music, Parkinson's, Research, Reviews , , Leave a comment

Searching for the secret chord…

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These came out of a search, so might have been previously covered in a post:

This review covers music performed in groups and is not directly related to Parkinson’s: Collaboration and improvisation

Music performance is inherently social. Most music is performed in groups, and even soloists are subject to influence from a (real or imagined) audience. It is also inherently creative. Performers are called upon to interpret notated music, improvise new musical material, adapt to unexpected playing conditions, and accommodate technical errors. The focus of this paper is how creativity is distributed across members of a music ensemble as they perform these tasks

This article does cover Parkinson’s – singing as a way to help with vocal issues and depression. Positive results, but not a randomized control type experiment, so conclusions are tentative:

Individualized singing program

Here’s an interesting experiment in which participants are asked to improvise music which reflects varied feeling states. Not sure how the results can be applied, except that creating music or dance/movement to express emotions is probably of benefit to the brains of people with Parkinson’s, regardless of the strength of the research.
Effects of music making

This study has gotten some wide distribution – on how musicians (people who play an instrument) react more quickly than people who do not. This article digest is from Science Daily (January 2017)

Play an instrument?

“fine” as they say on the sheet music.

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Dance and exercise – a study and a publications review

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Not much new here – more evidence that dance exercises and physical exercise in general, is beneficial for people with PD.

Shall We Dance – master’s thesis  by Brittni Lynn McAlister, University of North Colorado

 In the words of one participant, the dance classes have been “. . . completely life-changing.”

Systematic review of exercises for Parkinson’s

This review revealed that people with Parkinson’s disease viewed physical activity as an enjoyable and positive experience, which aided with control of their symptoms and enhanced their wellbeing and quality of life.

 

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Music on the brain

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Rhythmic Auditory Stimulation (RAS) and Argentinean Tango

Results: Results showed significant improvements in the Tinetti scale total (mean±SD of post-pre change: 5.3±2.8, p<0.01), gait (2.5±1.2 p<0.01), and balance scores (2.8±2.0 p<0.01). TUG also improved by 3.6±0.8 seg (p<0.01). Statistically non-significant changes were recorded in mobility, bodily discomfort, stigma, social support and cognition PDQ-39 domains, with Cohen’s d sizes of 0.5-0.6 and NNTs of 5-7.

Conclusion: RAS could be combined with Argentinean Tango. Positive effects on gait and balance were observed, together with a trend towards improvement in some quality of life domains. A randomized, blinded, controlled trial in a larger number of patients followed-up during a longer period is underway.

And this:Brief review of music and cognition

Given that the participants were not musicians, it can be inferred that the results of the research can be applied in other non-musical contexts, what we call “generalization” in cognitive rehabilitation, which means, non-musical gains can be transferred to daily activities. In this perspective Billhiartz et. al. (2000) argue that there is a link between musical instruction and development in non-musical skills.

… we agree that music is an important element in human life that can be used in many contexts. The musical activity is multisensorial, simultaneously integrating several systems, mainly the sensorimotor, cognitive, and affective, within a specific context, which consecrates in the sphere of embodied musical cognition.

An interview with Tom Moore

This is just a darn interesting interview with a musician and musicologist. You can’t make this stuff up.

 

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Advice to People with PD: Sing while you walk

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Internal cueing improves gait more than external cueing in healthy adults and people with Parkinson disease 

Results indicate that internal cueing was associated with improvements in gait velocity, cadence, and stride length in the backward direction, and reduced variability in both forward and backward walking. In comparison, external cueing was associated with minimal improvement in gait characteristics and a decline in gait stability. People with gait impairment due to aging or neurological decline may benefit more from internal cueing techniques such as singing as compared to external cueing techniques.

The feasibility of singing to improve gait in Parkinson disease.

Abstract

Brain regions important for controlling movement are also responsible for rhythmic processing. In Parkinson disease (PD), defective internal timing within the brain has been linked to impaired beat discrimination, and may contribute to a loss of ability to maintain a steady gait rhythm. Less rhythmic gait is inherently less efficient, and this may lead to gait impairment including reduced speed, cadence, and stride length, as well as increased variability. While external rhythmic auditory stimulation (e.g. a metronome beat) is well-established as an effective tool to stabilize gait in PD, little is known about whether self-generated cues such as singing have the same beneficial effect on gait in PD. Thus, we compared gait patterns of 23 people with mild to moderate PD under five cued conditions: uncued, music only, singing only, singing with music, and a verbal dual-task condition. In our single-session study, singing while walking did not significantly alter velocity, cadence, or stride length, indicating that it was not excessively demanding for people with PD. In addition, walking was less variable when singing than during other cued conditions. This was further supported by the comparison between singing trials and a verbal dual-task condition. In contrast to singing, the verbal dual-task negatively affected gait performance. These findings suggest that singing holds promise as an effective cueing technique that may be as good as or better than traditional cueing techniques for improving gait among people with PD.

 

Exercise, Parkinson's, Research, Reviews , , , , Leave a comment

Biomarkers,cardio training, singing and dancing, and how jokes work.

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This is a long post. Most of the links are to free, full text articles or reports.

Recent advances in Biomarkers for Parkinson’s A review of the advances currently being made in the search for a cure.

INTERVAL TRAINING FOR CARDIOMETABOLIC AND BRAIN HEALTH

 

1. Engaging in interval exercise can boost fitness and improve your mood in a time-efficient manner.

2. Short exercise breaks like climbing the stairs can refocus attention and help maintain productivity in the workplace.

3. Combining interval exercises with motor skill training in a clinical setting can augment the recovery of function.

Dance and Health Training research report   

The aim of this research was to create a best practice model of dance and health continuing professional development (CPD); to create a dynamic, interdisciplinary course of study for dancers who are engaged in facilitating dance across a range of dance genres within health care contexts.

Outcomes of the project:  Full listing of international and national examples of best practice, core literature, key expert practitioners, full course content and delivery requirements are set out in this report.

(Note: specifically related to Ireland).

Sing while you work

This pilot study is the first Irish study of the health and wellbeing benefits of HSE workplace choirs. It is one of few studies to investigate the health and
wellbeing benefits of choir for Health Service Staff internationally.  Qualitative data confirms previous study findings; namely that a workplace choir can promote social connectedness, enjoyment at work, and staff
engagement; reduce stress; and improve perception of health and wellbeing.
Benefits of attending are noticed across workplace communications.

Comparison of two different exercise programs  (abstract only)

After treatment, UPDRS-II scores improved (mean change: EXE, -4.5 points; CYC, -3.2 points). The results for the other outcomes (EXE and CYC, respectively) were: PDQ, 13 and 17%; BDI, -2.5 and -2.1 points; 6MWT, 129.6 and 141.6 m; and EQ-5D, 12 and 9% (all p < 0.05, but there was no difference between groups). EXE vs. CYC resulted in improved SE-ADL (8.4 and 4.0 points, effect size [ES]: 0.12), BBS (8.8 and 4.2 points, ES: 0.44), and 2 measures of posturography (ES: 0.11 and 0.21) (p 0.05).

CONCLUSION:
Two highly different exercise programs resulted in similar improvement of most motor and clinical symptoms in PD patients.

One thing Parkinson’s People do to help cope with  an incurable (so far), progressive, degenerative, neurological disease is to use humor.

The following showed up in the Dance+Parkinson’s search feed, and are included here with a caveat that some of the jokes used to illustrate the ways in which humor works (theoretically) can be be considered offensive.

How do jokes work?

Back before the Internet, there was a Humor list-serve, dedicated to the study of humor and how it works.  The above PDF attempts to address the varieties of jokes, and repeats some potentially offensive ones to illustrate its concepts. Much of the text refers to the following free e-book on the Gutenberg project.

Laughter: an essay on the meaning of humor   by Henri Bergson

 

 

 

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Music, Rhythm, etc.

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therapeutic effects of singing on neurological diseases Don’t know if I’ve sent this out before. A review of benefits of singing on PD and other conditions.

“Walking to New Orleans” or rhythmic auditory cues improve gait

Results

Gait variability decreased and prefrontal HbO2 levels increased during cued walking relative to usual

walking. Older adults showed greater HbO2 levels in multiple motor regions during cued walking although the response reduced with repeated exposure. In older adults, lower depression scores, higher cognitive functioning and reduced gait variability were linked with increased HbO2 levels during RAC walking.

Conclusion

These findings suggest that walking improves with RAC in older adults and is achieved through increased activity in multiple cortical areas. The cortical response decline with repeated exposure indicates older adults’ ability to adapt to a new task

 

THE BEAT GOES ON AUDITORY CUES FOR PEOPLE WITH PARKINSON’S DISEASE A Powerpoint presentation that covers everything you might want to know about PD and auditory cues. Basically, folks did as well or better with music than a metronome beat, and enjoyed walking to music better. significant results reported and apparently both CMTs and PTs were in agreement.
 
Not Cure but heal: Music and Medicine  a chapter in a book, but the references are listed, and some of them are available free on PubMed Central

Internal cues better than external in improving gait

Results indicate that internal cueing was associated with improvements in gait velocity, cadence, and stride length in the backward direction, and reduced variability in both forward and backward walking. In comparison, external cueing was
associated with minimal improvement in gait characteristics and a decline in gait stability. People with gait impairment due to aging or neurological decline may benefit more from internal cueing techniques such as singing as compared to external cueing techniques.
Meter and learning (open access article) Both dance and music performers must learn timing patterns (temporal learning, or ‘when‘) along with series of different movements (ordinal learning, or ‘what‘). It has been suggested that the organization of temporal events into regular beat cycles (meter strength) may enhance both temporal and ordinal learning, but empirical evidence is mixed and incomplete. In the present study, we examined meter-strength effects on the concurrent temporal and ordinal learning of sequences. Meter strength enhanced ordinal learning (‘what’) when the concurrent temporal learning was incidental, but it had no effects on temporal learning itself (‘when’). Our findings provide guidelines for dance and music teaching as well as rhythm-based neurological rehabilitation.
 
just catching up on my inbox.
I got rhythm, I got music, and if I quote more than that UMG’s lawyers will probably sue me, too.
depression, Music, Parkinson's , Leave a comment

Nostalgia can be good for you

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Contrary to what had been thought for many years, psychology as a science has within the last few years done research into nostalgia, and has found that it can be positive in its results.

It has been so good, in fact, that the University of Southampton in the UK has created a Nostalgia Center.

And to do research, they’ve created a Nostalgia scale for measurement.

some other overlapping research involves music and nostalgia

At UC Davis, they study how music and nostalgia interact.

It’s all good.

 

Exercise, Music, Parkinson's, Uncategorized , Leave a comment

What are we going to do tonight, Brain?

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Same thing we do every night, Pinkie – SING!!!

Okay, if you caught the reference to Pinkie and the Brain, you probably already like to do stuff that stimulates the neurons with witty references to arcane bits of history, pop culture, and the like. So you won’t be terribly disappointed if I caper about with just a few links to reports on and research on how singing benefits the brain and the lives of those who sing.

http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4448634.stm

How singing makes you happy  (summary article and its sources below:

Can Music provoke involuntary body responses?  Now I’ve heard everything – using music to provoke salivation!