Towards personalised music-therapy; a neurocomputational modelling perspective
This work tackles the problem of enhancing music therapy effectiveness for patients with neurological and mood disorders, as well as healthy individuals, by proposing a neurocomputational approach, but it is incremental as it builds on existing theories without introducing new methods.
The paper addresses the need for personalized and automated music selection in therapy by reviewing current theories and evidence of music-based interventions, highlighting opportunities to improve quality of life and reduce stress in clinical and healthy populations.
Music therapy has emerged recently as a successful intervention that improves patient's outcome in a large range of neurological and mood disorders without adverse effects. Brain networks are entrained to music in ways that can be explained both via top-down and bottom-up processes. In particular, the direct interaction of auditory with the motor and the reward system via a predictive framework explains the efficacy of music-based interventions in motor rehabilitation. In this manuscript, we provide a brief overview of current theories of music perception and processing. Subsequently, we summarise evidence of music-based interventions primarily in motor, emotional and cardiovascular regulation. We highlight opportunities to improve quality of life and reduce stress beyond the clinic environment and in healthy individuals. This relatively unexplored area requires an understanding of how we can personalise and automate music selection processes to fit individuals needs and tasks via feedback loops mediated by measurements of neuro-physiological responses.