Can sound therapy help with long-term concussion symptoms?

CALIFORNIA: According to new research, acoustic brain stimulation may alleviate chronic symptoms in people who have had mild traumatic brain injuries in the past.

The study was published in the Annals of Clinical and Translational Neurology.

It involved 106 military service members, veterans, or their spouses who had a mild traumatic brain injury 3 months to 10 years earlier and had persisting symptoms.

Participants were randomised 1:1 to receive 10 sessions of engineered tones linked to brainwaves (intervention) or random engineered tones not linked to brainwaves (sham control). All participants sat in a zero-gravity chair in the dark with their eyes closed, listening to the computer-generated tones using earbud-style headphones.

The primary endpoint was symptom score change, with secondary outcomes including heart rate variability and self-reported sleep, mood, and anxiety measurements.

Symptom scores increased clinically and statistically across all trial participants compared to baseline, with benefits substantially sustained at 3 and 6 months; however, there were no significant differences between the intervention and control groups. Secondary outcomes followed a similar pattern.

The findings suggest that, while acoustic stimulation is associated with significant improvement in postconcussive symptoms, listening to acoustic stimulation based on brain electrical activity, as used in this study, may not improve symptoms, brain function, or heart rate variability any more than randomly generated, computer engineered acoustic stimulation.

"Postconcussive symptoms have proven very difficult to treat, and the degree of improvement seen in this study is virtually unheard of, though further research is needed to identify what elements are key to its success," said corresponding author Michael J Roy, MD, MPH, of Uniformed Services University and the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, in Bethesda.