This is a part of podcast series from the Model Systems Knowledge Translation Center on Disorders of Consciousness. Caitlin Hebb explains how neurologic music therapy supports recovery for people with disorders of consciousness by stimulating arousal, awareness, speech, and movement. 

Our program here, we specialize in neurologic music therapy, and it's really about how music impacts the brain and then how it affects non-musical functions like walking and talking. And for disorders of consciousness specifically, we're looking at the arousal and awareness and really using music as more of a stimulus to elicit certain behaviors.  

Some of the early memories I have with Hannah was actually in her room when I'm trying to get her to sing. I would pause in certain parts of songs; and the speech therapist and I actually had a bit of a competition going on of who could really get Hannah to say her first words. And so we were using music to really get her voice out and to have her start verbalizing.  

The other memory I have is really with the music helping with her walking. We actually worked with her physical therapist to help with her walking and her movement patterns. We have this rhythmic stimulus or this rhythm, this pulse, this kind of steady, predictable pattern. And so when we use that for walking, because walking is intrinsically rhythmic, and then when it's not, you're trying to restore that pattern, so you're giving them a rhythmic cue to walk to. And it was pretty profound in seeing how she could walk to the beat, and we weren't using devices and really trying to work on the consistency of her walking pattern using rhythm predominantly to impact the motor system. 

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