JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Methods of sound therapy have proliferated in the last decades, mainly focusing on music among all types of sound stimulation. Much evidence documented music therapy's integrative impact on psycho-emotional and physiological outcomes, which makes it helpful for treating stress-related conditions, such as pain syndromes, depression, and anxiety. However, the therapeutic component of sound, as well as how and why it works, is still not fully elucidated. The current body of research on music as a holistic cultural phenomenon leaves unexplored crucial aspects of sound therapy mechanisms related to speech acoustics or the so-called "music of speech".

Objective:

This work aims to overview empirical studies of sound interventions to clarify how and why these interventions have positive effects. Especially, we are focusing on the therapeutic factors and mechanisms of change. We are going to compare the most common types of sound interventions presented in the clinical studies and experiments. We will explore the therapeutic effects of sound not only in music but more widely in natural human speech and intermediate forms such as traditional poetry performances.

Methods:

This review follows the methodological guidance of the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI), as well as the PRISMA-ScR (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Extension for Scoping Reviews) checklist for reporting review studies adapted from the Arksey and O'Malley framework. It runs the search query in PubMed, Web of Science, Elsevier, and PsyclNFO/EBSCOhost in the year range from 1990 till the present because the neurobiology of music and sound therapy emerged as a separate field in the 1990s. In terms of study types, randomized controlled trials (RCT), clinical trials (CT), laboratory experiments, and field experiments were included.

Results:

Data collection began in October 2022. We found in total of 2027 items. The initial search reveals an imbalance in the number of studies of music therapy compared to studies of prosody in spoken interventions such as guided meditation or hypnosis. For instance, there are 1370 results on music therapy against 191 results on the list of various sound interventions other than music on PubMed (see query details in the 'Results' section). We extracted and selected articles using Rayyan software, and identified 41 eligible articles after title and abstract screening.

Conclusions:

In the next step, we will perform a quality evaluation of the articles, and then conduct charting and grouping of the therapeutic factors extracted from the articles, to reveal conceptual gaps in studies.