Dr. Megha Sharda shares insights on the impact of music on individuals on the autism spectrum based on a research project conducted at University of Montreal and McGill University.
Tell us about your study on the impact of music on individuals on the autism spectrum. What kind of music was used? How did you select participants and remove bias in selection
Music is an area of strength in individuals on the autism spectrum, but until now we did not have neuroscientific evidence supporting its therapeutic use. Here, we show for the first time that 8-12 weeks of a one-on-one intervention involving musical activities such as singing and playing instruments can improve social communication, family quality of life, and associated brain functional connectivity in school-age children with autism. This research was conducted by researchers at University of Montreal and McGill University.
The study
We screened over 100 families for the study out of which 51 children with autism, aged 6-12 years, met study criteria and could commit to the 4 months required for participation. Children with autism with a range of intellectual and language abilities were included. As a result, we did not “choose” specific participants with a specific range of abilities to minimize selection bias.
Families completed questionnaires about their child’s social communication and their family quality of life. Children also completed an MRI brain scan. Participants were then randomly assigned to receive a one-on-one music intervention or a control non-music play intervention for 8-12 weeks. The random assignment of participants to different groups, allows researchers to attribute any changes seen after intervention, to be causally linked to the intervention, rather than any other factors. Randomized Controlled Trials are therefore very important to understand which interventions work and which do not.
We partnered with Westmount Music Therapy to deliver the interventions. The music intervention involved singing and playing different musical instruments in a social interaction context. The control play intervention was extremely well-matched in objectives and format, and was delivered by the same therapist, but did not involve musical activities. Families returned for a post-intervention visit, completing questionnaires and a second brain scan.
What did the study find? What was the most interesting and/or surprising finding?
Findings: Following the sessions, parents of children in the music group reported significant improvements in their children’s communication skills and family quality life, beyond those reported for the control group. They did not report any reductions in autism severity. Importantly, families with a child who participated in music intervention reported significantly greater family quality of life improvements than families participating in the control therapy, suggesting broader positive impacts beyond the child to the family.
Data collected from the MRI scans suggest that improved communications skills in children who underwent the music intervention could be a result of increased connectivity between auditory and motor regions of the brain, and decreased connectivity between auditory and visual regions, which are commonly observed to be over-connected in people with autism.
Optimal connectivity between these regions is crucial for integrating sensory stimuli in our environment and are essential for social interaction. For example, when we are communicating with another person, we need to pay attention to what they are saying, plan ahead to know when it is our turn to speak and ignore irrelevant noise. For persons with autism, this can often be a challenge.
This is the first clinical trial to show that music intervention for school-age children with autism can lead to improvements in both communication and brain connectivity, and provides a possible neuroscientific explanation for improvements in communication
Why is the non-music group showing a downward trend over time - rather than being flat?
This particular finding of the downward trend in the non-music group is in the parent-reported measure of family quality of life. Participating in a long-term research study can often be demanding for families of children with disability who often lead stressful lives. IF families do not observe any immediate benefits (As was the case for the non-music group) research participation can be more demanding than helpful and this might explain the trend of reduced family quality of life in the non-music group.
What got you interested in this topic
I did my Masters and Phd in India working with children on the autism spectrum. The reason for choosing to study autism was personal. I have a cousin who is on the spectrum and through him I have met and interacted with a number of people on the spectrum over the years. During one of my first research studies, when I was interviewing parents of children with ASD for a study on speech production, many parents told me about the extraordinary effect music has on many of their children. In fact I even observed it first hand with many individuals, who had difficulty communicating through spoken language often found unique ways to express themselves through music. I then started looking at the literature on music and autism more deeply and found that while the link between the two was as old as the first description of autism, research studies on the topic were quite limited and the impact of music for autism was really written about through parent or clinical perspectives.
The link between autism and music is as old as the first description of autism, where 6 out of 11 people with autism were described to possess “absolute pitch”. Since then, there have been many anecdotes about the profound impact music can have on individuals with autism.
A Music Prodigy In Carnatic Music
This motivated me further to study in detail the link between autism and music for my doctoral research conducted at the National Brain Research centre, India. I subsequently conducted the first brain imaging study of listening to speech versus songs in children with autism showing singing normalises speech-related activations in autistic brains (Sharda et al, 2015, Autism Research) and then followed it up with the current study in my post-doctoral work in Montreal, Canada.
I Know And Remember Many Songs
We were very interested in exploring this effect in a systematic study to see whether music can indeed have a measurable positive effect on people with autism and what were the brain mechanisms underlying it. Doing this in the form of a clinical trial was challenging because it required required families to attend weekly therapy sessions in addition to testing sessions pre- and post. We needed to collaborate with a clinic and therapists that were willing to invest the time in a research study. Alison Usher-Jones, of Westmount Music Therapy was very supportive of doing a research study on music interventions in autism. So we collaborated with Westmount and their employee, Melissa Tan, worked with us to structure and adapt the intervention for our research study and led all the interventions.
What next in terms of research?
In order to understand these effects further, we are currently investigating dyadic engagement between therapist and child during the course of the interventions as well as the effect of music therapy on movement coordination during social interaction.
We are also currently developing tools to assess if the improvements in communications skills can also be observed through direct observation of the interaction between child and therapist.
Should all parents now put their kids into music classes? What activities can they do at home?
Music is highly accessible, in contrast to many interventions for children with autism. That is, the universal appeal of music makes it globally applicable and can be implemented with relatively few resources on a large scale in multiple settings such as home and school. Thus, music can be helpful in many different settings. However, each child is different and it is possible that some children do not like music. Based on the findings of our study, we find that many children enjoy as well as benefit from music-based interventions in as little as 3 months time. Future research will help assess how these findings can be best implemented at home and school.
You can find the research here : https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-018-0287-3
Dr. Megha Sharda is a post-doctoral researcher at the International Laboratory for Brain, Music and Sound (BRAMS ) in Montreal, currently working with Dr. Isabelle Peretz. Her research combines neuropsychological and behavioural tasks with multimodal brain imaging to study the brain mechanisms underlying speech and sensorimotor processing in individuals with altered neurodevelopmental trajectories such as autism, congenital amusia and musical prodigies, with the potential for immediate translational impact. Dr. Sharda’s research has been funded by Fonds de la Recherche en Sante du Quebec, the Quebec Bioimaging Network, Autism Research Training Grant and the Grammy Foundation Grant.
