Approaching a new stroke rehabilitation therapy with a SonicPainter

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Approaching a new stroke rehabilitation therapy with a SonicPainter

Daniel S. Scholz^1*, Liming Wu¹, Johann Schneider¹, Jens Rollnik² and Eckart Altenmüller¹

• ¹Institute of Music Physiology and Musicians' Medicine, Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media, Germany
• ² BDH Klinik Hessisch Oldendorf, Germany

Despite cerebral stroke being one of the main causes of acquired disability worldwide there is still no well-established and effective therapy to improve motor functions. Recently, attempts have been made to improve gross-motor rehabilitation after stroke by mapping patient movements to sound, which provides an additional sensory input supporting impaired proprioception, and which we refer to as sonification. However, to date there exists no established sonification-supported therapy.
In order to examine and validate how a movement-to-sound mapping in sonification could be most effective, we designed a two-dimensional paradigm called “SonicPainter”. Participants' computer mouse movements were sonified in real-time with a modified sine-tone. In randomized blocks, the sound's parameters pitch and brightness were either mapped onto the vertical and horizontal movement axes, respectively, or vice versa. Twenty-six elderly healthy participants were tested and showed an advantage in learning pitch as compared to brightness as a means to learn spatial locations of sound parameter combinations.
In a future clinical study, 3D music-supported movement-sonification will be used as a therapeutic training method to enhance stroke patients' arm movement rehabilitation through supported proprioception.