Autism and Music Therapy

At FOCUS Center for Autism, we're using music as a part of our therapy. According to studies released in the 2004 music in interventions used with children and teens with ASD can improve social behaviors, increase focus and attention, increase communication attempts (vocalizations, verbalization, gestures, and vocabulary), reduce anxiety, and improve body awareness and coordination. The study was released by The Journal of Music Therapy. Marcela DeVivo, mother of a child with severe disabilities, an attorney and writer, wrote about this in an essay for the Autism Science Foundation. Her article cites several other studies.

Music encourages social interactions.
A 2009 study by Kim, Wigram, & Gold found that children with autism showed more emotional expression and social engagement during music therapy sessions than in play sessions without music. 

Music can improve behavior.
In a 2012 study of 41 children with autism over a ten-month period, See found that weekly music therapy sessions seemed to improve overall behavior, with the most improvement seen in inattentive behaviors

Music can improve communication.
Wan et. al. (2004) found music to improve the mapping of sounds to actions, by connecting the auditory and motor sections of the brain, which may help improve understanding of verbal commands. 

Music can reduce anxiety.
Children with autism are more sensitive to anxiety than the average child, as they are unable to filter out provoking stimuli. A small four-week study, conducted at the University of Wisconsin La Crosse in 2006, found preliminary success in reducing anxiety in patients with autism through music therapy.

As DeVivo points out, the most important aspect, music is fun! There's more on using music as therapy in a 2011 episode of Science Friday.http://www.sciencefriday.com/segment/12/16/2011/treating-stress-speech-disorders-with-music.html

Music Therapy on Science Friday

Like so many other interesting conversations on public radio, I happened to jump in the middle of a conversation about music therapy on Science Friday this afternoon. A caller mentioned how music therapy had helped two of her autistic sons...both non-verbal. Unfortunately, the therapy is not covered by most insurance companies.

There was a good exchange on Music Therapy for children with autism and on why insurance companies do not cover the therapy.


Joke Bradt is an associate professor in the Creative Arts Therapies Department at Drexel University in Philadelphia explained: Sure. I think, unfortunately, in this era of evidence-based practice where evidence really drives our health care industry, as well as our funding and reimbursement industry, we really need more evidence in terms of randomized control trials that show that this - that music therapy really is effective. We all know it is extremely effective with children with autism, but there are a lot of skeptical minds out there, like the caller was herself initially. Fortunately, we do have one Cochrane review out already, but it only included a few trials.


Autism is an area of interest for me. I'm on the board of Focus Center for Autism.


You can hear the entire conversation on Science Friday. That's what I did to find out more.