Music for Autism? – an acquired taste, apparently

Today’s post is about music and music therapy.

A new study reports that music therapy does not improve autism symptoms.

In an earlier post we saw that singing reduces the level of your stress hormone cortisol; this was based on testing adults in a choir, so not music novices.

Music has actually been shown to do much more than just reduce your level of stress, it can actually affect the expression of your genes, but only in those who are “musically experienced”; in people with little experience of music it does nothing. 

The effect of listening to music on human transcriptome

Although brain imaging studies have demonstrated that listening to music alters human brain structure and function, the molecular mechanisms mediating those effects remain unknown. With the advent of genomics and bioinformatics approaches, these effects of music can now be studied in a more detailed fashion. To verify whether listening to classical music has any effect on human transcriptome, we performed genome-wide transcriptional profiling from the peripheral blood of participants after listening to classical music (n = 48), and after a control study without music exposure (n = 15). As musical experience is known to influence the responses to music, we compared the transcriptional responses of musically experienced and inexperienced participants separately with those of the controls. Comparisons were made based on two subphenotypes of musical experience: musical aptitude and music education. In musically experienced participants, we observed the differential expression of 45 genes (27 up- and 18 down-regulated) and 97 genes (75 up- and 22 down-regulated) respectively based on subphenotype comparisons (rank product non-parametric statistics, pfp 0.05, >1.2-fold change over time across conditions). Gene ontological overrepresentation analysis (hypergeometric test, FDR < 0.05) revealed that the up-regulated genes are primarily known to be involved in the secretion and transport of dopamine, neuron projection, protein sumoylation, long-term potentiation and dephosphorylation. Down-regulated genes are known to be involved in ATP synthase-coupled proton transport, cytolysis, and positive regulation of caspase, peptidase and endopeptidase activities. One of the most up-regulated genes, alpha-synuclein (SNCA), is located in the best linkage region of musical aptitude on chromosome 4q22.1 and is regulated by GATA2, which is known to be associated with musical aptitude. Several genes reported to regulate song perception and production in songbirds displayed altered activities, suggesting a possible evolutionary conservation of sound perception between species. We observed no significant findings in musically inexperienced participants.

  

Apparently there are about 7,000 music therapists in the United States and about 6,000 in Europe.  One of the target groups for these therapists is children with autism.

So should parents pay out their cash for music therapy classes?  Well a very recent large study carried out in nine countries by a team from Norway suggests you might not want to open your wallet.

I must say that I hold a different view and that this simplistic kind of research is rather unhelpful. 

From the research in this blog we know that people who develop a love of music express a measurable biological effect, which does indeed look beneficial.

How do you develop a love of music, or indeed dance? Well you have to be exposed to it and engage in it.

Music therapy is all about engaging in music.

Monty, now aged 14 with ASD, has been dancing almost since he was walking, in great part because his then assistant loved music.  Later on you can start to make your own simple music, later you can sing and eventually play an instrument.  This process takes years.  

Music therapy is just a start, years later you can be trampolining to Abba, lying in bed listing to classical music, or just playing the piano.  But it is a long road.

In the recent research they gave 5 months of music therapy to 364 children aged 4 to 7 and then tested their social skills using the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS).  Their social skill score did not improve. I am not sure why they picked this variable to measure.

This is yet more flawed research, which will then be quoted as fact by others.

You could make a study on teaching judo to kids with autism. I think you would find after 5 months it did not improve their social skills, but those who continue for 5 years might benefit considerably, versus those sat on the sofa watching videos on their iPads.

Clearly not everyone likes music, or indeed judo. Many kids with more severe autism have little interest in anything and so they need a lot more encouragement than typical kids.

The only way to find out if children can develop an interest in music, sport or anything else is to expose them to it at a young age. This is all music therapy is supposed to be, it is not meant to be a cure for anything. 

Music therapy may not lead to big benefits for kids with autism

Researchers found that children with ASD in nine countries scored similarly on a test of their social skills whether or not they had received the music therapy.

"Music therapy - like many other interventions that have been suggested - does not improve autism symptoms," said senior author Christian Gold, of the Grieg Academy Music Therapy Research Center and Uni Research Health in Bergen, Norway.

ASDs are developmental disorders that can lead to social, communication and behavioral challenges. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that one in 68 children in the U.S. has been diagnosed with an ASD.

The anecdotal link between music and ASD goes back many years, Gold and colleagues write in JAMA. During music therapy, a person helps a child spontaneously make music through singing, playing and movement.

There are about 7,000 music therapists in the United States and about 6,000 in Europe, the researchers write.

For the new study, the researchers recruited 364 children ages 4 to 7 years from 10 treatment centers between 2011 and 2015. The centers were in Australia, Austria, Brazil, Israel, Italy, Korea, Norway, the UK and the U.S.

All of the children received the usual care a child with ASD would receive in their region, but half of the children were randomly assigned to also get music therapy.

Usual care could range from early intensive behavioral interventions, to speech and language therapy, to sensory-motor therapies and medications, Gold told Reuters Health by email.

"Music therapy is also among the interventions that have been recommended when it is available," he said. "Some parents who are frustrated with behavioral interventions may experience it as bringing back the joy of being with their child in a natural way."

After five months of therapy, the researchers did not find a difference between the two groups of children on a measure of social skills.

Gold said parents should continue to pursue music therapy if they feel it's a good match for their children, but don't expect it to be a so-called treatment.

The article below is quite a good one:

 Study casts doubt on music therapy for kids with autism

The study itself:

Music Therapy for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

In this issue of JAMA, Bieleninik and colleagues¹ present the results of a large, well-designed, multicenter randomized clinical trial (RCT) of improvisational music therapy for young children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Music therapy is “a systematic process of intervention wherein the therapist helps the client to promote health, using musical experiences and the relationships that develop through them.”² Among 364 children aged 4 to 7 years, over 5 months, the mean scores on the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS), social affect domain, decreased from 14.08 to 13.23 among children randomized to improvisational music therapy and from 13.49 to 12.58 among those randomized to enhanced standard care, a mean difference in change scores of 0.06 (95% CI, −0.70 to 0.81), with no significant differences between groups.

  

How Much Music?

I think you need music lessons twice a week to have a meaningful impact and, as with all therapies, you need more practice at home.  Most kindergartens have music and dance as part of their activities. Taken together it is not so hard to get quite a lot of exposure to music at a young age. Then, if the child really likes music, you just keep going.  

Conclusion

Is music therapy a quick fix for autism? Definitely not.

Is music therapy a fun way to engage many young children with autism? The recent research does not say so, but it is clear that many people, with all levels of autism severity, can enjoy music and participate in it.

I think we should put music alongside sport, as a useful activity that young children should be encouraged to engage in.   It can be a struggle to get some people with autism to engage in anything, which is where a music therapist comes in.

Is it worth the investment in time and money? That all depends on the child and the therapist. Buying a piano, 7 years ago, was certainly one of my better investments; but you do also need a lot of lessons.  The end result is someone with a genuine love of many kinds of music and I expect he is now in the cortisol lowering, gene expression modifying category of the musically experienced.

Five months of unspecified music therapy may not be enough to see results and quite possible those results are not increased sociability anyway.