Can Music Rehabilitate Stroke Victims? Universal Music Group Thinks So

 But I bet your doctor doesn't think so having done nothing for over a decade.

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Can Music Rehabilitate Stroke Victims? Universal Music Group Thinks So

Music has long been touted for its abilities to heal, whether it be helping cope with loss or evoking old memories. Now, one ambitious medical startup — with the endorsement of the world’s largest music company — is looking to use music for a much more clinical purpose: teaching people to walk again. 

MedRhythms is a Portland, Maine-based medical startup founded in 2015 that combines music and health care technology to help patients with neurological injuries and diseases improve their ability to walk. It’s fast-growing, having closed a $25 million funding round in July, and its tech has gone through trials at major hospitals across the country, including Cleveland Clinic, Johns Hopkins and Massachusetts General Hospital. Now MedRhythms has closed on another crucial partnership, a licensing deal with Universal Music Group that gives the company’s platform and its patient base access to one of the deepest catalogs in music. 

“Everybody can relate to the fact that music evokes emotions and memories, and that’s the social science of music, but what MedRhythms is doing is shifting that paradigm to look at music purely through the lens of neuroscience,” says MedRhythms co-founder and CEO Brian Harris. “Music has a profound impact on our brains, objectively. Regardless of age, culture, ability or disability, almost everybody’s brain responds the same way to music. At a high level, when we as humans are passively listening to music that we like, it engages parts of our brain responsible for movement, language, and attention. There’s no other stimulus on Earth that engages our brain like music does.”

The basis of MedRhythms’ research comes from what’s called auditory motor entrainment, a subconscious link between a person’s auditory and motor systems. The average person displays such a link when they nod their head or tap their foot to the beat of a song. Those with neurological injuries or diseases like strokes or Parkinson’s disease often have a damaged motor system, but because of the link with the auditory system, Harris says, music works as a strong external stimulus to activate the motor system more effectively once again. The process could aid in neuroplasticity, the process that allows our brains to adapt and learn even as we grow older. 

During a session, MedRhythms patients hook up sensors to their shoes and listen to music through an app with headphones while the program tracks patients’ gait and lets algorithms change the music according to rhythm. Patients walk to the music, which speeds up or slows down accordingly. 

Success through MedRhythms is far from surefire — patients need some level of walkability in the first place, and there’s no guarantee on how effective the therapy is on any one person — but the results so far have been compelling. Patients have seen notable improvement after MedRhythms’ intervention, with Harris seeing the most notable success for stroke victims. One super-responder began seeing significant gait improvement as late as 20 years after suffering a stroke. MedRhythms’ research eventually led to the company’s products earning breakthrough-device status from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

The partnership MedRhythms has with UMG is unique in the music business. Because the music in MedRhythms’ platform will be used for strictly medical purposes, the two companies had to develop what UMG is calling a first-of-its-kind sort of prescription-music license, one that complies with the FDA.