Document Type
Article
Disciplines
Medicine and Health Sciences
Abstract
The rising incidence of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) has led to a surge in the number of children needing autism interventions. This paper is a call to clinicians to diversify autism interventions and to promote the use of embodied music-based approaches to facilitate multisystem development. Approximately 12% of all autism interventions and 45% of all alternative treatment strategies in schools involve music-based activities. Musical training impacts various forms of development including communication, social-emotional, and motor development in children with ASDs and other developmental disorders as well as typically developing children. In this review, we will highlight the multisystem impairments of ASDs, explain why music and movement therapies are a powerful clinical tool, as well as describe mechanisms and offer evidence in support of music therapies for children with ASDs. We will support our claims by reviewing results from brain imaging studies reporting on music therapy effects in children with autism. We will also discuss the critical elements and the different types of music therapy approaches commonly used in pediatric neurological populations including autism. We provide strong arguments for the use of music and movement interventions as a multisystem treatment tool for children with ASDs. Finally, we also make recommendations for assessment and treatment of children with ASDs, and provide directions for future research.
Recommended Citation
Srinivasan, Sudha M. and Bhat, Anjana N., "A Review of “Music and Movement” Therapies for Children with Autism: Embodied Interventions for Multisystem Development" (2013). Open Access Author Fund Awardees' Articles. 13.
https://digitalcommons.lib.uconn.edu/libr_oa/13
Comments
Originally published in :
Front Integr Neurosci. 2013; 7: 22. Published online Apr 9, 2013. Prepublished online Feb 11, 2013. doi: 10.3389/fnint.2013.00022 PMCID: PMC3620584 Copyright © 2013 Srinivasan and Bhat. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in other forums, provided the original authors and source are credited and subject to any copyright notices concerning any third-party graphics etc.