Anna Palumbo, Rehabilitation Sciences, successfully defended her dissertation “Optimizing Music-Based Interventions for Upper Limb Rehabilitation Post-Stroke” this April. Her dissertation explored how playing drums, especially when improvising, might help patients recover from a stroke. The study included 16 stroke patients and 16 healthy individuals and had them play drums along with a recording or as part of a live jam session. There were various measures of participants’ responses to therapy, including: (1) hand and wrist movement, (2) brain activity, (3) changes in skin activity as a measure of reward and pleasure, and (4) participants’ feelings of how enjoyable or difficult the therapy was.
The study indicated that improvisation led to faster, stronger hand movements, more excitement, and more activity in parts of the brain linked to movement and reward. Participants enjoyed live jams more than playing with recordings, and greater enjoyment was associated with greater improvement in movement. Overall, this research indicates that improvisational drum playing is a useful therapeutic activity for rehabilitation after a stroke.
Dr. Palumbo will continue to study the therapeutic effects of musical improvisation at the Nordoff-Robbins Center. There, she will carry out research supported, in part, by a Renée Fleming Neuroarts Investigator Award awarded recently to her and Dr. Pablo Ripollés, Assistant Professor of Psychology. This award supports teams of early-career researchers working in the interdisciplinary field of neuroarts, a discipline that explores how the arts and aesthetic experiences change the brain, body, and behavior in ways that can be applied to advance health and wellbeing. With the award, she will study the benefits of musical therapy in improving social motor skills in children with Autism. Read more about about the project and award here.
Congratulations to Dr. Palumbo on completing her doctoral degree and on continuing her work at NYU.
