Whether it’s jazz, blues or a bracing Finnish folk song, music may do more than soothe nerves and inspire a little air guitar. It may help stroke victims recover specific verbal and cognitive functions.
In a six-month study of 60 recent victims of stroke ages 35 to 75, researchers in Finland found that exposure to music for at least one hour a day improved verbal memory by 60 percent, compared with an 18 percent improvement among participants listening to audiobooks. In addition, as reported in the journal Brain, exposure to music led to a 17 percent boost in performance on concentration tasks, such as mental subtraction.
Music alone can’t work miracles, says lead author Teppo Sarkamo, a doctoral student at the University of Helsinki Department of Psychology and the Helsinki Brain Research Center. “But … in the early recovery stage, when other rehabilitation is not yet possible, music could provide a valuable addition to the patient’s care.”
