“Starting in the fall of this year, an innovative music-motor education protocol entitled “Listen, Feel, Move and Express With Us”, specially designed for people suffering from Parkinson’s disease, will be offered at TEFAA of the University of Thessaly, in collaboration with the University of Wolverhampton, Great Britain, the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, the Department of Molecular Medicine of the Karolinska Institute, Sweden, as well as the School of Medicine of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens”, emphasizes the emeritus professor and former president of the National Center “Exercise is Medicine-Greece” Yiannis Koutentakis.

“Parkinson’s disease,” he continues, “is the second most common neurodegenerative disorder after dementia. Its symptomatology includes motor and non-motor features, such as dyscoordination of gait, rest tremor, anxiety and depression, which in turn degrade the sufferer’s quality of life. Focusing now only on the motor features of the disease, which are usually the result of muscle contractions acting antagonistically at a joint, the relevant literature links them to disturbances of the patient’s internal rhythm, since the periodicity is missing.”

“The internal rhythm is based on the innate perception of time but also on the ability to synchronize the movements of each person. Many physiological parameters are linked to the internal rhythm and at the same time, they are indicators of good health”, emphasizes Clairi Karpodini who, as part of her doctoral thesis, examines the effect of music-motor therapy on Parkinson’s patients.

Ms. Karpodini goes on to explain that “people tend to synchronize their pace with the beat of, for example, the music they are listening to. This phenomenon highlights the close relationship between rhythm and movement as fundamental aspects of human evolution. According to the existing scientific literature, rhythmic walking seems to improve with the help of an external stimulus in Parkinson’s patients. However, there is no targeted study that examines the effect of a rhythmic or music-motor training protocol on this group of people. Until now, music-motor education has been the privilege of children.”

“This gap will try to be covered by the aforementioned innovative protocol of music-motor therapy, with the aim of improving the quality of life of people suffering from Parkinson’s disease,” concludes Professor Emeritus Yiannis Koutentakis.