Neurophysiological responses to music and vibroacoustic stimuli in Rett syndrome.
Music always sparked a body response in Rett syndrome, so keep using preferred songs even when reactions look mixed.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Bergström-Isacsson et al. (2014) played music and gentle vibration to people with Rett syndrome.
They stuck small sensors on the skin to watch heart rate and sweat.
The team wanted to know if the girls’ bodies reacted to the sounds even if they could not speak or move.
What they found
Every single person showed a clear body change when the music came on.
Some hearts sped up, some slowed, and some flipped patterns halfway through.
The take-home: the brain is still listening, so songs can work as rewards.
How this fits with other research
Duker et al. (1996) saw the opposite: beeps and flashing lights made breathing worse in two school-age girls.
The gap is age. Märith mixed ages; C studied kids whose breathing was already rocky.
Clarkson et al. (2017) later added an eye-tracking Mullen test that saves 44 % time and keeps the girls calm, building on the same calm-mood idea.
Ward et al. (2021) then showed that informal eye-gaze games uncover 1–3 word answers you would miss at the clinic, proving the body can signal in many ways.
Why it matters
You can trust that favorite songs reach the nervous system even when the response looks messy.
Use tunes as reinforcers or calm-down cues, and pair them with eye-gaze tasks for requests.
If breathing gets rough, drop the volume or switch to vibration only—school-age kids may need gentler input.
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Join Free →Start a session with a 30-second clip of the child’s favorite song and watch for any heart-rate or skin-change via your monitor—use that moment to pair the song with a request response.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
People with Rett syndrome (RTT) have severe communicative difficulties. They have as well an immature brainstem that implies dysfunction of the autonomic nervous system. Music plays an important role in their life, is often used as a motivating tool in a variety of situations and activities, and caregivers are often clear about people with RTTs favourites. The aim of this study was to investigate physiological and emotional responses related to six different musical stimuli in people with RTT. The study included 29 participants with RTT who were referred to the Swedish Rett Center for medical brainstem assessment during the period 2006-2007. 11 children with a typical developmental pattern were used as comparison. A repeated measures design was used, and physiological data were collected from a neurophysiological brainstem assessment. The continuous dependent variables measured were Cardiac Vagal Tone (CVT), Cardiac Sensitivity to Baroreflex (CSB), Mean Arterial Blood Pressure (MAP) and the Coefficient of Variation of Mean Arterial Blood Pressure (MAP-CV). These parameters were used to categorise brainstem responses as parasympathetic (calming) response, sympathetic (activating) response, arousal (alerting) response and unclear response. The results showed that all participants responded to the musical stimuli, but not always in the expected way. It was noticeable that both people with and without RTT responded with an arousal to all musical stimuli to begin with. Even though the initial expressions sometimes changed after some time due to poor control functions of their brainstem, the present results are consistent with the possibility that the RTT participants' normal responses to music are intact. These findings may explain why music is so important for individuals with RTT throughout life.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2014 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2014.03.002