Can music also help people with Parkinson’s improve their speech?
Yes. Because many people with Parkinson’s tend to become very weak in their speech, or speed their speech so it’s unintelligible, you can use singing and articulation within singing to maximize intelligibility and volume. People tend to sing louder than they speak because they’re using a lot more diaphragm support. So early on in the Parkinson’s diagnosis, encourage people to sing to exercise the vocal folds, which tend to become weak and tight. Was there a body of scientific research on the effectiveness of music therapy when you first began doing it? When I first started, it was really frustrating to me that there wasn’t any information I could get my hands on. Even in 1988, they didn’t have human models of music memory! I wish I had known that there were a few people doing brain imaging of music perception, but that information just wasn’t available back then, or if it was, it was in some obscure library. Now, when we can readily learn about people’s discoveries as they happen, scie
