The short version
- Sixteen adults in treatment for alcohol and drug use got six weekly music therapy sessions with EEG recorded, the first such recordings in an addiction setting.
- Participants reported lower cravings right after sessions, and the therapy group showed lower frontal beta activity and a different frontal alpha asymmetry than controls.
- The lead author calls the results trends that need longer and larger studies to confirm.
A pilot study published September 30 in Addiction Neuroscience is the first to record brain activity during music-therapy sessions for addiction treatment, according to EurekAlert. The team, Clemens Maidhof, Filippo Pasqualitto and Jörg Fachner of Anglia Ruskin University’s Cambridge Institute for Music Therapy Research, worked with 16 adults at a London community addiction service in treatment for alcohol and drug use, including heroin, cocaine and cannabis. Those in the therapy arm got six weekly music therapy sessions, group and individual, on top of standard treatment; the comparison group got standard treatment alone. Sessions used drum pads, guitar, keyboard, percussion and computer music software, with EEG recorded alongside questionnaires and interviews.
Participants reported lower cravings immediately after sessions on a “Craving Thermometer” scale. The therapy group showed lower frontal beta activity than controls and a significant difference in frontal alpha asymmetry, a pattern the authors link to emotion regulation and control of anger and frustration.
Sixteen people is small, and self-reported craving right after an engaging hour is a soft endpoint. Fachner says so himself: “given the small sample size of this pilot study, the trends we found require confirmation in longer and larger-scale investigations.” What the study establishes is feasibility, that EEG can be run inside a working clinic during real sessions, more than effect.
A larger, longer trial is the next step the authors name.
