Project team
Jorg Fachner
Professor
Jodie Bloska
Clinical Research Fellow
Music is often used in dementia care, for example, to reduce agitation and stress, to spark musical and related memories, to express emotions, or to connect with individuals. Understanding how this works in the brain, especially during interactive situations, is of scientific interest to us.
Actress Vicky McClure and members of Our Dementia Choir visited our lab to learn more about CIMTR’s research. Two choir members volunteered to be connected to our EEG hyperscanning equipment, which measures brain activity of two or more people simultaneously. They then participated in a music therapy session with our therapist.
Video footage of this session, along with the experiences of a participant and his wife, were featured in the BBC1 documentary Our Dementia Choir, which aired in May 2019.
After the session, we asked the therapist to select moments during the session that stood out and were of particular therapeutic interest. For comparison, we also asked for moments that seemed less interesting. Additionally, we asked two other therapists from our research team at CIMTR to do the same.
They watched the video, selected moments of interest and no-interest, and based on their choices, we then decided to analyse two contrasting selections in which both were making music together, specifically two drumming improvisations.
Together with Dr Olivier Lartillot (University of Oslo) and Dr Kat Agres (National University of Singapore), we analysed the audio data of the sessions utilising the Music Therapy Toolbox. This allowed us to describe who is leading and following in the playing, and when both are playing in synchrony. We analysed the EEG hyperscanning data along with Dr Viktor Müller (Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin).
During the Moment of Interest (MOI), we observed stronger brain-to-brain coupling between both brains than during the Moment of No Interest (MONI). At the same time, the improvisations also showed higher synchrony values during MOI then during MONI.
Maidhof, C., Mueller, V., Agres, K., Lartillot, O., Bloska, J., Asano, R., Odell-Miller, H. and Fachner, J. (2023) 'Intra- and inter-brain coupling and activity dynamics during improvisational music therapy with a person with dementia: an explorative EEG-hyperscanning single case study', Frontiers in Psychology, 14. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1155732
Brains in sync, ARU research case study
Professor
Clinical Research Fellow
