Some years ago, the Journal of Neuroscience published an experiment we ran demonstrating that specific brain activity underlies specific rhythmic tasks. The BBC picked it up and covered it in a short article. Shortly thereafter I got a phone call from someone from Inter-active Metronome (IM) who had seen the news coverage. IM had been in the digital music medicine intervention space for a decade or more at that time, but it was not really on my radar. According to its (current) website homepage, “IM is proven to improve cognition, attention, focus, memory, speech/ language, executive functioning, comprehension, as well as motor and sensory skills.” There is an array of peer-reviewed research backing up the website’s assertions with gains reported in the realms of physical dexterity, strength, balance, and coordination, reading and language skills, and cognition. There is evidence of IM being an efficacious therapeutic approach for the treatment of stroke, cerebral palsy, brain injury, and ADHD. But the questions of why and how IM brings about these improvements remained.

 

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