Michael Thaut

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Verified

Michael verified their affiliation via an institutional email.

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• PhD
• Professor (Full) director at University of Toronto

Phenotypic investigations have shown that actively engaging with music, i.e., playing a musical instrument or singing may be protective of motor decline in aging. For example, music training associated with enhanced sensorimotor skills accompanied by changes in brain structure and function. Although it is possible that the benefits of active music...

Background/Objectives: Cognitive challenges in attention and executive function worsen over time in individuals with major depressive disorder (MDD) and suicidal risk. These difficulties persist beyond acute episodes, with limited targeted treatments available. Neurologic music therapy (NMT) is effective for cognitive rehabilitation in brain injuri...

Background The dual‐cyclical relationship between language and cognition, encapsulated in linguistic relativity, underscores the reciprocal influence of thoughts on communication and vice‐versa. This study explores the intricate changes in pragmatics, a fundamental aspect of human communication, during the aging process, considering changes in sens...

Background Verbal fluency (VF) is crucial for language processing and cognitive flexibility, involving selective attention, inhibition, set shifting, response generation, and self‐monitoring. VF assessment includes two distinct tasks, i.e., phonemic and semantic VF. It assesses long‐term verbal semantic memory, phonological awareness, lexical–seman...

Background: Humans exhibit a remarkable ability to synchronize their actions with external auditory stimuli through a process called auditory-motor or rhythmic entrainment. Positive effects of rhythmic entrainment have been demonstrated in adults with neurological movement disorders , yet the neural substrates supporting the transformation of audit...

Introduction Parkinson’s disease (PD) is one the most common neurodegenerative movement disorder, leading to motor and non-motor symptoms, including deficits in executive functions (EF), memory, visuospatial abilities, and psychomotor speed. Current treatments are primarily symptomatic, involving pharmacological, surgical strategies. Neurologic Mus...

Children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD) display difficulties in perception-action coupling when engaging in tasks requiring predictive timing. We investigated the influence of awareness on auditory-motor adjustments to small and large rhythmic perturbations in the auditory sequence to examine whether children synchronize their movem...

Neurologic Music Therapy (NMT) has been developed over the past 25 years into an important field in neurorehabilitation. Research has produced strong evidence for neural mechanisms in brain processing of music perception, music cognition, and music production as the basis for applications to the recovery of sensorimotor, speech/language, and cognit...

Background: A cochlear implant (CI) enables deaf people to understand speech but due to technical restrictions, users face great limitations in noisy conditions. Music training has been shown to augment shared auditory and cognitive neural networks for processing speech and music and to improve auditory–motor coupling, which benefits speech percept...

Bilingual experience may enhance attentional control, but little work has addressed whether monolinguals and bilinguals differ in attentional resource allocation, especially in the auditory domain. Focusing on spoken language processing, we used pupillometry to examine listening effort in English monolinguals (n = 36) and simultaneous bilinguals (n...

Background Many autistic children experience motor skill deficits which can impact other areas of functioning, and research on therapeutic interventions for motor skills in autism is in a preliminary stage. Music-based therapies have been used extensively to address motor skills in non-autistic populations. Though a handful of studies exist on the...

A wealth of research has investigated the associations between bilingualism and cognition, especially in regards to executive function. Some developmental studies reveal different cognitive profiles between monolinguals and bilinguals in visual or audio-visual attention tasks, which might stem from their attention allocation differences. Yet, wheth...

Introduction Autistic individuals demonstrate greater variability and timing error in their motor performance than neurotypical individuals, likely due at least in part to atypical cerebellar characteristics and connectivity. These motor difficulties may differentially affect discrete as opposed to continuous movements in autistic individuals. Augm...

The 2019 coronavirus disease pandemic influenced music therapists to migrate services to online platforms, though some lost clinical hours during the pandemic when telehealth was not a viable option. This survey study aimed to ascertain factors that helped music-based therapists to continue serving autistic clients over telehealth during the pandem...

Although remote music training has its limitations, the use of technology can lower barriers to its accessibility. This exploratory study compared the effects of remote and in-person percussion training on motor performance, performance quality, and students’ enjoyment. The training involved the motor aspects of playing legato on percussion instrum...

Accumulating evidence suggests that the neural activations during music listening differs as a function of familiarity with the excerpts. However, the implicated brain areas are unclear. After an extensive literature search, we conducted an Activation Likelihood Estimation analysis on 23 neuroimaging studies (232 foci, 364 participants) to identify...

Auditory rhythm-based therapeutic interventions such as rhythmic auditory stimulation (RAS) are effective in improving gait and balance and preventing falls in idiopathic Parkinson's disease (PD). Research showing associated neuromodulatory effects of RAS on brain oscillations is also emerging. The neuromodulation may be induced by neural entrainme...

Background: There is equivocal evidence regarding the effectiveness of robotic guidance on the (re)learning of voluntary motor skills. Robotic guidance can improve the performance of continuous/ tracking skills, although being seldom more effective than unassisted practice alone. However, most of the previous studies employed robotic guidance on a...

As with typically developing children, children with cerebral palsy (CP) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) develop important socio-emotional rapport with their parents and healthcare providers. However, the neural mechanisms underlying these relationships have less studied. By simultaneously measuring the brain activity of multiple individuals, in...

Developmental coordination disorder (DCD) remains largely underdiagnosed and masked by other co-occurring conditions. The aim of this study was to (1) provide the first review of research regarding auditory–motor timing and synchronization abilities in children with DCD and (2) examine whether reduced motor performance may be associated with diffic...

Effectively executing goal-directed behaviours requires both temporal and spatial accuracy. Previous work has shown that providing auditory cues enhances the timing of upper-limb movements. Interestingly, alternate work has shown beneficial effects of multisensory cueing (i.e., combined audiovisual) on temporospatial motor control. As a result, it...

A wealth of research has investigated the effects of bilingualism on cognition, especially on executive function. Developmental studies reveal different cognitive profiles between monolinguals and bilinguals in (audio-)visual attention tasks, which might stem from their attention allocation differences. Yet, whether such distinction exists in the a...

Absolute pitch (AP) is the ability to rapidly label pitch without an external reference. The speed of AP labeling may be related to faster sensory processing. We compared time needed for auditory processing in AP musicians, non-AP musicians, and nonmusicians (NM) using high-density electroencephalographic recording. Participants responded to pure t...

During the COVID-19 pandemic, music therapists transitioned services from in-person to telehealth due to health and safety concerns. Though online delivery of music therapy services for autistic individuals occurred prior to 2020, the number of North American music therapists using telehealth with autistic clients rose substantially during the pand...

This study presented a novel kinematic assessment of paretic limb function “online” during the actual therapeutic exercisers rooted within the acceleration domain. Twenty-eight patients at chronic stroke stages participated in an auditory-motor intervention mapping reaching movements of the paretic arm unto surfaces of large digital musical instrum...

The present study examined spatial accuracy of mallet endpoints in a marimba performance context. Trained percussionists performed two- (i.e., Experiment 1) and four-mallet (i.e., Experiment 2) excerpts in three tempo conditions including slow, intermediate, and fast. Motion capture was utilized to gather data of upper-limb and mallet movements, as...

Shared emotional experiences during musical activities among musicians can be coupled with brainwave synchronization. For non-speaking individuals with CP, verbal communication may be limited in expressing mutual empathy. Therefore, this case study explored interbrain synchronization among a non-speaking CP (female, 18 yrs), her parent, and a music...

Sound-producing movements in percussion performance require a high degree of fine motor control. However, there remains a relatively limited empirical understanding of how performance level abilities develop in percussion performance in general, and marimba performance specifically. To address this issue, nine percussionists performed individualise...

Research in basic and clinical neuroscience of music conducted over the past decades has begun to uncover music’s high potential as a tool for rehabilitation. Advances in our understanding of how music engages parallel brain networks underpinning sensory and motor processes, arousal, reward, and affective regulation, have laid a sound neuroscientif...

Objectives During their lifetimes, a majority of musicians experience playing-related musculoskeletal disorders (PRMD). PRMD prevalence is tied to instrument choice, yet most studies examine heterogeneous groups of musicians, leaving some high-risk groups such as oboists understudied. This paper aims to (1) ascertain the prevalence and nature of PR...

The present study investigated motor kinematics underlying performance-related movements in marimba performance. Participants played a marimba while motion capture equipment tracked movements of the torso, shoulders, elbows, wrists, and hands. Principal components analysis was applied to assess the movements during the performance related to sound...

Background: A common and debilitating challenge experienced by people with TBI is gait-associated mobility impairment and persisting cognitive impairments. Cognitive and physical impairments are often addressed independently during rehabilitation, however, increasing evidence links cognitive and motor processes more closely. Objectives: (1) To dete...

Research Objectives To use a novel limb acceleration measure to reveal mechanisms of improved paretic limb control following music-based rehabilitation. Design A consecutive sample. Setting A music and health research facility in Toronto, CA. Participants 30 community dwellers aged 30-79 years in the chronic stroke phase with minimal volitional...

Objective To investigate the potential benefits of three Therapeutic Instrumental Music Performance (TIMP)-based interventions in rehabilitation of the affected upper-extremity [UE] for adults with chronic post-stroke hemiparesis. Design Randomized-controlled pilot study Setting University research facility Participants Thirty community-dwelling...

Sound production in a percussion context like marimba results from using two mallets held in each hand to strike a unique bar/target location. If the mallets contact the bar above the resonator below, optimal sound production occurs. This study examined mallet accuracy to further understand mechanisms underlying motor control in marimba performance...

Musicians execute thousands of complex movements during a performance. This study examined the accuracy of such movements in a marimba performance context. Marimba performance is associated with an idealistic performance accuracy component wherein the terminal position of the mallets should strike the bar over the resonator to produce optimal sound...

Background Repeated exposure to long-known music has been shown to have a beneficial effect on cognitive performance in patients with AD. However, the brain mechanisms underlying improvement in cognitive performance are not yet clear. Objective In this pilot study we propose to examine the effect of repeated long-known music exposure on imaging in...

Children with hearing loss (HL) who use listening and spoken language as their methods of communication are now being integrated into classrooms with typically hearing peers upon school entry due to the development of sophisticated hearing technology. However, areas in overall development may lag as the delay in accessibility to speech and language...

Background Presently available medications and surgical treatments for Parkinson’s disease have limited effects on fine motor problems and often leave patients with significant fine motor disability. Standard of care occupational therapy (OT) yields low efficacy, potentially due to a lack of standard protocols. Neurologic music therapy (NMT) techni...

Absolute Pitch (AP) is the ability to identify an auditory pitch without prior context. Current theories posit AP involves automatic retrieval of referents. We tested interference in well-matched AP musicians, non-AP musicians, and non-musicians with three auditory Stroop tasks. Stimuli were one of two sung pitches with congruent or incongruent ver...

The auditory and motor systems have rich connectivity during movement to the predictable auditory rhythmic stimuli, promoting the synchronization of the two systems through a process called rhythmic entrainment (Thaut, 2003). Auditory-motor entrainment occurs when the frequency of external rhythmic auditory cues determines the frequency of activity...

The study compared the prevalence of the Val66Met Brain-derived Neurotrophic Factor single nucleotide polymorphism (rs6265) in a sample of musicians (N = 50) to an ethnically matched general population sample from the 1000 Human Genome Project (N = 424). Met-carriers of the polymorphism (Val/Met and Met/Met genotypes) are typically present in 25–30...

Background Presently available medications and surgical treatments for Parkinson’s disease have limited effects on fine motor problems and often leave patients with significant fine motor disability. Standard of care occupational therapy (OT) yields low efficacy, potentially due to a lack of standard protocols. Neurologic Music Therapy (NMT) techni...

Objective The aim of this study was to determine the mechanisms by which Rhythmic Auditory Music Stimulation (RAMS) improves exercise among patients participating in cardiac rehabilitation. Methods 168 English speaking patients over the age of 18 years, were recruited from the Cardiac Rehabilitation and Prevention Program. Participants were random...

Background: The burden of post-stroke cognitive impairment, as well as affective disorders, remains persistently high. With improved stroke survival rates and increasing life expectancy, there is a need for effective interventions to facilitate remediation of neurocognitive impairments and post-stroke mood disorders. Objective: To investigate th...

Background: Acquired brain injuries often cause cognitive impairment, significantly impacting participation in rehabilitation and activities of daily living. Music can influence brain function, and thus may serve as a uniquely powerful cognitive rehabilitation intervention. Objective: This feasibility study investigated the potential effectivene...

Background: The plastic nature of the human brain lends itself to experience and training-based structural changes leading to functional recovery. Music, with its multimodal activation of the brain, serves as a useful model for neurorehabilitation through neuroplastic changes in dysfunctional or impaired networks. Neurologic Music Therapy (NMT) co...

One of the questions yet to be fully understood is to what extent the properties of the sensory and the movement information interact to facilitate sensorimotor integration. In this study, we examined the relative contribution of the continuity compatibility between motor goals and their sensory outcomes in timing variability. The variability of in...

It has been reported that MET carriers may express deficits in motor learning and neuroplasticity, possibly deterring musicianship. Here, we compared the prevalence of the Val66Met Brain-derived Neurotrophic Factor single nucleotide polymorphism (rs6265) in a sample of musicians (N=50) and an ethnically matched subset from the 1000 Human Genome Pro...

Restoration of upper limb motor function and patient functional independence are crucial treatment targets in neurological rehabilitation. Growing evidence indicates that music-based intervention is a promising therapeutic approach for the restoration of upper extremity functional abilities in neurologic conditions such as cerebral palsy, stroke, a...

Objective: In this experimental study, we aimed to determine whether guided music listening (GML) - a music intervention based on models of mood mediation and attention modulation - modulates masticatory muscle activity and awake bruxism in subjects with chronic painful muscular temporomandibular disorders (TMD myalgia, mTMD), a condition causing...

Background Restoration of upper limb motor function and patient functional independence are crucial treatment targets for neurologic recovery. Growing evidence indicates that music-based intervention is a promising therapeutic approach for the restoration of upper extremity functional abilities in neurologic conditions. In this context, music techn...

Objective: The objective of this study was to determine whether exposure to long-known music would evoke more extensive activation of brain regions minimally affected by Alzheimer disease (AD) pathology and outside traditional memory networks using a functional magnetic resonance imaging paradigm involving listening to long-known and recently-lear...

Objectives To explore the immediate effects of voice focus adjustments on the oral-nasal balance of hypernasal speakers, measured with nasalance scores. Methods Five hypernasal speakers (2M, 3F) aged 5-12 (SD 2.7) learned to speak with extreme forward and backward voice focus. Speakers repeated oral, nasal, and phonetically balanced stimuli. Nasal...

In the past 25 years, research in the basic and clinical neuroscience of music has begun to discover how music- and rhythm-based therapeutic exercises can effectively assist in brain rehabilitation. New music-based treatment avenues have been researched, especially in diseases associated with aging, such as dementia, Parkinson’s disease, and stroke...

Modern music therapy, starting around the middle of the twentieth century was primarily conceived to promote emotional well-being and to facilitate social group association and integration. Therefore, it was rooted mostly in social science concepts. More recently, music as therapy began to move decidedly toward perspectives of neuroscience. This ha...

This chapter provides an overview of multisensory processing in music by individuals with normal hearing, hearing loss, and deafness. The first section provides an account of theory and evidence regarding the neural mechanisms underpinning multisensory processing. The second section considers auditory-only processing of music with a focus on latera...

Musicians have considerable experience naming pitch-classes with verbal (e.g., Doh, Ré, and Mi) and semiotic tags (e.g., musical notation). On the one end of the spectrum, musicians can identify the pitch of a piano tone or quality of a chord without a reference tone [i.e., absolute pitch (AP) or relative pitch], which suggests strong associations...

Objectives: This study investigated the effect of training backward and forward voice focus adjustments on oral-nasal balance in speech and singing in typical speakers. Methods: Twenty participants (10M/10F) aged 24.25 (SD 3.73) years read phonetically balanced, nasal and oral speech stimuli, and sang a song in both forward and backward voice fo...

Medical therapies applied to Parkinson's disease (PD) have advanced tremendously since the 1960's based on advances in our understanding of the underlying neurophysiology. Behavioral therapies, such as rhythmic auditory stimulation (RAS), have been developed more recently and demonstrated efficacy. However, the neural mechanisms of RAS are only vag...

Unilateral visual neglect from right hemispheric stroke is a condition that reduces a person's ability to attend to and process stimuli in their left visual field, resulting in neglect and inattention to the left side of their environment. This perceptual processing deficit can negatively affect individuals' daily living which in turn reduces funct...

From neuroimaging and behavioral research investigating the unique relation between music and preserved cognitive skills to the clinical use of music to mediate the developmental and therapeutic processes, music has played a prominent role in clinical and research literature on autism spectrum disorder. In this chapter, we discuss the current state...

Music interventions have been widely adopted as a potential non-pharmacological therapy for patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) to treat cognitive and/or behavioral symptoms of the disease. In spite of the prevalence of such therapies, evidence for their effectiveness report mixed results in the literature. The purpose of this narrative review i...

Neurologic Music Therapy (NMT) is a novel impairment-focused behavioral intervention system whose techniques are based on the clinical neuroscience of music perception, cognition, and production. Auditory Stimulation (RAS) is one of the NMT techniques, which aims to develop and maintain a physiological rhythmic motor activity through rhythmic audit...

Fine motor assessments scores for both dominant and non-dominant hands before (pre) and after (post) a 5-week session of Neurologic Music Therapy. (A) Overall motor score, section 3 of the UPDRS; (B) Time to complete the pegboard, as part of the GPT (Grooved Pegboard Test); (C) Number of finger-to-thumb oppositions, as part of the NES (Neurological...

Participants' demographics and baseline characteristics. UPDRS, Unified Parkinson's disease rating scale, an overall marker for Parkinson's disease progression and symptoms severity.

Auditory-motor entrainment using rhythmic auditory stimulation (RAS) has been shown to improve motor control in healthy persons and persons with neurologic motor disorders such as Parkinson’s disease and stroke. Neuroimaging studies have shown the modulation of corticostriatal activity in response to RAS. However, the underlying neurochemical mecha...

The role of auditory information on perceptual-motor processes has gained increased interest in sports and psychology research in recent years. Numerous neurobiological and behavioral studies have demonstrated the close interaction between auditory and motor areas of the brain, and the importance of auditory information for movement execution, cont...

Objective To test whether rhythmic auditory stimulation (RAS) training reduces the number of falls in Parkinson’s disease patients with a history of frequent falls. Design Randomized withdrawal study design. Subjects A total of 60 participants (aged 62–82 years) diagnosed with idiopathic Parkinson’s disease (Hoehn and Yahr stages III or IV) with...

Introduction: Dementia has been described as the greatest global challenge for healthcare in the 21st century. Pharmaceutical interventions have dominated dementia treatment despite limited efficacy. There is increasing interest in alternatives to delay the progression of cognitive decline, such as community-based programs, promoting social and st...

Objective/Rationale. The study compared the prevalence of Val66Met BDNF SNP polymorphism (r6265) in musicians in professional training (N=30, M=15) to an ethnically matched general population sample from the 1000 Human Genome Project (N=424). The polymorphism is present in 25-30% of the general population and is associated with deficits in motor le...

This chapter presents a broad panorama of the current knowledge concerning the anatomical and functional basis of music processing in the healthy brain. Neuroimaging studies developed over the past 20 years provide evidence that music processing takes place in widely distributed neural networks. Here, attention is focused on core brain networks imp...

Objectives: This study explored the role of auditory feedback in the regulation of oral-nasal balance in singing in trained singers and non-singers. Study design: Experimental repeated measures study. Methods: Twenty non-singers (10M/10F) and 10 female professional singers sang a musical stimulus repeatedly while hearing themselves over headph...

Parkinson's disease (PD) is characterized primarily by a dysfunctional basal ganglia (BG) system, producing motor and non-motor symptoms. A significant number of studies have demonstrated that rhythmic auditory stimulation can improve gait and other motor behaviors in PD that are not well managed by the conventional therapy. As music, being highly...

The purpose of this study was to compare the effects of musical mnemonics vs. spoken word in training verbal memory in children. A randomized control trial of typically-developing 9–11 year old children was conducted using the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT), a test measuring a participant's ability to recall a list of 15 words over multi...

Neurophysiological research has shown that auditory and motor systems interact during movement to rhythmic auditory stimuli through a process called entrainment. This study explores the neural oscillations underlying auditory-motor entrainment using electroencephalography. Forty young adults were randomly assigned to one of two control conditions,...

Music has played a prominent role in the clinical and research literature on Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in regard to diagnosis, therapy, and behavioral observations of exceptional artistic abilities in this population. Music as therapy for ASD has traditionally focused on social interaction, communication skills, and social-emotional behaviors....

Aims: To evaluate the effects of Guided Music Listening (GML) on masticatory muscles and on the amplitude of wake-time tooth clenching in individuals with higher vs lower frequency of clenching episodes. Methods: The electromyographic (EMG) activity of the right masseter was recorded during three 20-minute music (relaxing, stress/tension, and fa...