The Importance of Music for Emotion Processing in Children with Autistic Spectrum Disorder
Ramirez Melendez Rafael*
Department of Information and Communications Technologies, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain
Submission: September 8, 2022; Published: September 20, 2022
*Corresponding author:Ramirez Melendez Rafael, Associate Professor, Department of Information and Communications Technologies, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain
How to cite this article:Ramirez M R. The Importance of Music for Emotion Processing in Children with Autistic Spectrum Disorder. Glob J Intellect Dev Disabil, 2022; 10(4):555793. DOI:10.19080/GJIDD.2022.10.555793
Keywords: Astronomy outreach; Caribbean astronomy; Inclusive astronomy; Equity in education
Opinion
People with Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD), including high functioning ASD, often have difficulties in identifying and sympathizing with emotions and intentions in others [1]. As a consequence, ASD is often characterised by difficulties in social and interpersonal communication [2]. It has been shown that it is difficult for people with ASD to identify emotions represented in facial expressions [3,4], in affective speech [3,5], in non-verbal vocal expressions [6] and in body movements [3,7]. This difficulty for emotion processing in ASD individuals is associated with abnormal brain activity when compared with neurotypical people, e.g., ASD individuals show less fusiform gyrus and amygdala activity when viewing facial expressions with emotional content [8], and unusual superior temporal and inferior frontal gyrus activation when listening to speech [9,10].
People with ASD often enjoy music listening, are affected emotionally by music, and are usually musically talented [11]. Previous studies have shown that individuals with ASD process melodic information (i.e., contour and intervals) in the same way as neurotypical people [12], and that they are better at pitch processing [13] and show superior pitch memory [13,14]. Notably, studies have also shown that individuals with ASD are able to correctly identify emotions in music just as well as neurotypical individuals [15,16]. Previous studies have found that ASD individuals listened to music as often as people without ASD because they feel emotionally affected by it [17]. Furthermore, it has been shown that the physiological responses to music in ASD individuals are the same as for neurotypical people [18] and previous studies have observed preserved neural activity for music processing in children with ASD [19]. ASD individuals recruit brain regions involved in processing of emotion and reward when they listen to happy and sad music, in the same way as neurotypical people do [16].
The fact that people with ASD are sensitive to and affected emotionally by music in the same way as neurotypical people provides a window of opportunity to use music as a tool for improving the emotional processing in ASD individuals and reducing their difficulties in social and interpersonal communication. In the past, music interventions have been proved to be effective for treating some medical and emotional conditions by using melodies, rhythm, and movement [20] Therapists have attempted to take advantage of the musical sensitivity and abilities of ASD individuals to compensate for the social interaction deficits [21]. Despite music interventions being widely used for treating neurological and cognitive disorders [22], its application and evaluation for improving social skills in ASD [23,24] remains an open area. Most of the research on using music as an intervention for ASD has centred in communication behaviours [25], but other more recent approaches have been proposed. For instance, Ramirez et al. [26] explore the potential usefulness of music as a tool for improving ASD children’s emotion recognition in facial expressions. By exposing children with ASD to facial expressions with different emotions with and without emotion-matching background music, emotion identification improvement was measured both in terms of verbal response accuracy (perceived emotion), and brain (EEG) activity response (induced emotion). Comparison of the children’s verbal responses at the end of the intervention showed a significant improvement compared to their responses at the beginning of the intervention, and their emotional states computed from their EEG data were higher correlated with the presented visual stimuli [27].
Taking into account the results of previous studies on using music as an intervention for ASD, it is clear that music can be an extremely useful non-invasive tool for improving the difficulties in social and interpersonal communication suffered by individuals with ASD.
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