ABSTRACT
Neurologic Music Therapy (NMT) was formally established in 1999 through the Training Manual for Neurologic Music Therapy. The techniques of NMT address the four core areas of cognitive rehabilitation: attention, memory, executive function and psychosocial function. Important to emphasise is that although NMT exercises are different in content to cognitive tasks in daily life, their functional structure simulates the structure of non-musical tasks and functions. A recent study by Zuk et al. showed that adult musicians and children with musical training had enhanced performance on measures of several constructs of executive functions (EF), including cognitive flexibility and verbal fluency, and significantly greater frontal network activations compared to musically untrained subjects. A current review of NMT in EF rehabilitation was offered by Hegde. Important for NMT is that if psychosocial dysfunctions are the focus of neurorehabilitation or neurodevelopment, NMT needs to be able to offer functional support to improve those dysfunctions.
